Broadcom makes a bid for Emulex, and someone want's to talk to me about it?

I guess the big news item for me today has got to be Broadcom's unsolicited offer to buy my former employer Emulex for $764 million, or $9.25 a share. For the sake of reference here is the ZDNet article about the offer: "Broadcom makes $764 million bid for Emulex"

While the news of the offer is interesting enough, for me what's even more interesting about this news item is that I didn't find out about it via the normal tech sites or RSS feeds. Instead I found out about the offer via an email from a 2nd tier contact on Linkedin.com. Apparently this person represents a consulting group, and they wanted to know if I was willing to offer my services as a "consultant" and speak with an analyst about Broadcom's offer, and provide any insight into the matter.

Now I am an "Experienced Technology Professional" (who's also unemployed and can use the extra funds), but the fact of the matter is that's all I am, just an experienced technology professional who really can not not provide any insight into this whole shebang. My only guess as to why this person contacted me is that as soon as they found out about the offer they then searched through their Linkedin contacts for anyone who had worked for Emulex, and who also listed their contact info. Once they had my contact info. they they shot off the email.

If this person had actually read my Linkedin profile they would seen that I was never in any real position to be able to offer an insight into something so significant as Broadcom's offer. I can definitely provide insight into some technology not covered by an NDA, but no way in Hell would I be of any use to the analyst, so this whole "consulting" thing is nothing more than a shotgun approach to finding information and profiting from it. I also state in my profile that while I am open to consulting, said consulting must not involve any current or past employers. Of course that fact is only visible if you are logged into Linkedin, but this person had to be logged into Linkedin to get my contact info, so they should have seen the limitations I set.

Such are the joys of being an open networker, lot's of potential offers (aka spam, scams, and shams), and only a few real offers or contacts that mean anything.

Since I am on the subject of Emulex, I want to take this time to mention the "Emulex Alumni Group" on Linked in that I started just last week. If you are a current or past employee of Emulex, you are more than welcome to join. It's sort of weird that I started this group last Thursday, and then this news hits today. Talk about coincidence!

Well that's it for this post. Keep an eye out for the next Friday Fun post ~ Jim