[FRIAM] Welcome to the "Friam" mailing list

[Don Begley]

On Oct 31, 2007, at 10:30 AM, friam-request at redfish.com wrote:

> Welcome to the Friam at redfish.com mailing list!  . . . .
> When you have the opportunity, please submit a brief introduction to
> the list with your current interests/pursuits.

I come to the FRAIM list as a prodigal-programmer type who abandoned  
the guild during a PDP-11 assembler class in the late '70s. I liked it  
too much and realized I would remain locked inside the computer's  
bowels, Tron-like, if I continued down that path. (It didn't help that  
UNM's newly-hired, highly-touted, NSF fellow, CIS chair returned to  
Purdue at that time.)

Since my linguistics/Spanish B.A. wasn't going to pay the bills,  
though I had a great time studying in Ecuador and traveling our sister  
continent to the south, I completed my MBA @ UNM's Anderson School. I  
concentrated in mgmt science with a focus on computer modeling &  
databases. I also worked as a grad asst in finance for Dr. Charles  
Moore who sent me to work at PNM to develop a computer simulation game  
for the electric utility industry.

That project ended when Charlie went to Texas Tech and his partner,  
Don Simonson, went to the Federal Reserve in St. Louis. I stayed at  
PNM doing financial modeling in Fortran until I moved to investor  
relations and did grunt work for SEC filings, annual reports, and so  
on. Along the way, I coordinated PNM's legal team (and collaborated  
with the consulting economists to establish damages for the price- 
fixing) in an antitrust lawsuit against Southern Union Gas that ended  
with the company acquiring Gas Company of New Mexico.

My next stop was deputy director  and then director of the rate dept.,  
where I managed the company's relations with the Public Service  
Commission (predecessor to todays PRC) and the Federal Energy  
Regulatory Commission.

My reward for raising rates was the public relations job for the  
electric utility. I managed media relations, advertising, employee  
communications and community relations, including charitable giving.

That was enough for me so I left in '90, travelled the Rockies in  
search of a new home and landed in Santa Fe, the place I never  
considered, in 1993. I went to work for a trade association of rural  
electric cooperatives and spent the next 14 years as its de facto PR &  
IT shop while I was nominally the editor of enchantment magazine, New  
Mexico's second-largest but least known publication.

It was a great job. New Mexico was my beat and I had free rein from  
the board. Still, by this spring it was time to move on. My final act  
was hosting a conference in Santa Fe for staff from enchantment's 32  
sister publications around the country. I met Steve G. in that  
capacity when he graciously agreed to talk to these ink-stained folks  
about the exciting work Redfish does.

Now I am consulting with small publishers and printers, primarily,  
working on their computer and software needs as well as designing and  
laying out their publications. The best part of the change is I now  
have time to learn about organizations like FRIAM.

And that's more than you ever wanted to know, I imagine.


Don Begley
5 Cagua Ct
Santa Fe, NM 87508

505.466.6748
505.670.9432



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