Introducing a couple of new bloggers, this time from Wall Street roots, (I guess the East Coast has started noticing the influence of blogging!). I've always said that blogging is by far and away the most honest form of self-promotion out there, because if you can't walk your talk online, it becomes readily apparent.

Check out Tom Berquist with one of the first CFO blogs, and also insider Wall Street perspectives from Roger Ehrenberg:

Tom Berquist, the former star Wall Street software analyst, now CFO of Ingres, the open source enterprise database company has launched one of the first CFO blogs. Most companies are extremely concerned about SEC disclosure rules so who better to blog than the CFO?!

Here is Tom's blog called "On the Line" and an extract:

Everything that I know about the software industry: client/server applications, perpetual license models, complex on-site implementations, call center based support models, proprietary technology advantages, available financing, endless IPO exits—is under attack. Yet I fundamentally believe that organizations need innovative software now more than ever—consolidation is not the answer (sorry Oracle), rather, faster innovation and more rapid deployment of new technologies is the answer (sorry Microsoft).

So why did I go to Ingres? It turns out that Ingres is a perfect test case for the new software business model—open source licensing, web demand creation, service and support offerings, subscription revenue accounting, and community development and support. We are not the only test case for the new software business model. In fact, two well known companies that share our business model include Red Hat and Salesforce.com. However, we are dramatically different from traditional software vendors such as Oracle, Microsoft, and IBM’s software group. I’ll be discussing our business model in more detail in future posts.

Read more from the post "A software analyst decides to learn how the sausage is made."

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Also, Roger Ehrenberg, president of Monitor110, launched Information Arbitrage, providing excellent insights into the the shadow and light of Wall Street. His reasons for jumping into blogging...

After spending 17 years on Wall Street I decided to take a different path, throwing myself into the world of entrepreneurship at the intersection of Wall Street and the internet. I have spent the last two years immersing myself in the tools, technologies and approaches for extracting and analyzing information taken from the web, specifically with an eye towards better understanding the future of data and its applications to investment.

Having lived in this world for some time, and having a lot of things to say, it began to feel strange that I was not personally participating as a contributor to the bubbling online dialogue. It is much the same mind-set that I had in the investment business – how can I be in the investment business without actually being an investor, and feeling the same ups, downs, fears and concerns as whose with whom I work?

Starting a blog and actually creating content seemed like a logical way to accomplish several goals: developing deeper empathy and understanding of the millions of individuals making up the collective brain of the internet; gaining a clearer sense of the power and limitations of the online medium; and creating an insider perspective of where this tectonic shift in global communications could lead and how this knowledge could be applied to the business of investment.

Here is Convergence Redux a great post on the culture cash gap between hedge fund and private equity managers and Carlyle's plans!

This is where culture and cash really get into it. You have a bunch of senior people with huge egos with the same company name on the business card. They each have giant bank accounts and the trappings of financial success. But one set of guys gets a few million bucks a year and then a big wad of cash 5-7 years later, while the other set of guys get $25 million a year, every year, right now. How do you reconcile this fundamental structural difference between private equity and hedge funds? Insanely hard if not impossible.

When I started blogging, this was useful advice from my good buddy Om Malik of GigaOm: "Dude, you write too long!" It remains good advice to new bloggers.

I tend to write long, but my posts are getting shorter over time. I do cut out a lot, even though it is tough to do, especially if there is a nifty turn of phrase in the copy :-)