While many of today's web entrepreneurs were still wearing braces, Susan Scrupski, e2.0 evangelist at nGenera Corp. and auteur of the indispensible ITSinsider blog, was in the midst of a long, successful career as an analyst tracking the IT services market and the fortunes of such goliaths as EDS, CSC, and IBM Global Services.  In the late 90s, she noticed that a lot of  IT services executives were bailing out of large firms and joining startups.  She studied the sector and eventually joined a startup herself.  Then came the dotcom bust. 

"I basically left the working world altogether and stayed at home with my kids for five years," she says.  "I came back in 2006 and was once again drawn to the Internet sector.  Luckily for me, interest in Enterprise 2.0 was just cropping up about the same time I re-entered the workforce, and I started blogging on the new sector.   

"It was a tough transition having been out of the workforce and suddenly immersed in a new industry that I knew very little about.  Social networking and the open, collaborative nature of the the 2.0 web made it much easier for me to establish new relationships and get up to speed on the market."  

Scrupski confesses to being one of those "my blog got me a new job" folks.
 
"Although I had known Steve Papermaster (CEO, nGenera) from my tenure as an industry analyst and writer in the IT services sector, my blog gave me street cred with the other two nGenera founders and they offered me a job to help them launch their new startup," she says. "We have amazing clients and I thoroughly enjoy my work."

Her position at nGenera involved a relocation from NJ to Austin and she confesses to missing the northeast, but says Austin has delivered an exceptional quality of life experience and great schools for her children.    

Where does she think the 2.0 experience is headed?  

"Part of the reason I'm interested in this sector is the societal changes the technology is fostering.  At the very root of social-anything is people.  I believe all institutions are enriched when we tap the collective social conscience of a community.  Whether resulting changes from these communities improve lives or balance sheets, it's all good.  We are headed irrevocably in the right direction."

Let me just add that Susan is one the smartest and sweetest people I've met in this crazy business.