Meet Mindshare AdvantageTM
Eric Wilbur, Founder & Managing Partner
Eric earned his B.S. in Electrical Engineering at Kansas State University in 1988 and worked for Texas Instruments as a technical sales representative and field applications engineer with major accounts including HP, DEC, IBM, Maxtor and AT&T. In 1995 he transitioned to full-time technical training and workshop development with TI's Technical Training Organization.
During the next 20 years, Eric designed and developed technical hands-on workshops on topics including digital signal processors (DSPs), microprocessors, microcontrollers, wireless, multi-core devices, custom DSP cores, video/audio processors and real-time operating systems (RTOS). In addition to teaching these workshops, he also wrote application notes, delivered presentations at technical conferences worldwide, and developed online training now being used by many universities across the globe in upper-level engineering courses.
In a highly interactive, dialog-driven classroom environment, Eric has taught over 300 live workshops totaling more than 1000 days to over 3500 customer engineers in the U.S., Canada, U.K., France, Germany, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore and Australia. A regular comment from many engineers is that Eric is “the best instructor I have ever had.”
With his engineering expertise and knowledge of technical training and instructional design, Eric has consulted with numerous engineers to help them create workshops and presentations for their customers. Eric also has extensive experience collaborating with teams of technical instructors, design engineers, field sales/applications engineers and marketing managers.
Eric has mentored nearly 100 instructors across the U.S., Europe, Asia and Japan, and delivered train-the-trainer instruction to hundreds of engineers worldwide to help them create and deliver compelling, customer-focused technical presentations and workshops. Through one-on-one mentoring and train-the-trainer workshops, he transfers essential teaching and workshop facilitation skills to engineers and technical instructors.
With his proven track record, Eric founded Mindshare Advantage in 2015 with a passion to teach engineers how to design and deliver truly effective technical presentations and workshops that create “mindshare” and ultimately market share. Eric is a consultant with a passion for excellence and focus on continuous improvement of products, services and skills through research, education and customer feedback.
Scott Specker, Principal Consultant
Scott joined Mindshare Advantage as Principal Consultant in early 2017, bringing 25+ years of teaching and instructional design experience in addition to a unique combination of strong communication skills, engineering expertise, and a passion for working with others. Whether applying these skills to instructional design, technical documentation, or live teaching, his dynamic and approachable work product is often described by students as fun, challenging, and interactive.
Scott’s collaboration and consulting skills have been developed over three decades of interacting with teams of design engineers, marketing specialists, and customers. After earning a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Minnesota (1986), Scott joined Texas Instruments (TI) as a technical sales representative where he handled TI's Minnesota district distributor network and specialized in TI's digital signal processors (DSPs), supporting the entire upper midwest region.
In 1993, Scott transitioned to a full-time role in TI's Technical Training Organization (TTO). During the next 22 years, he developed and taught hands-on multi-day technical workshops focused on a variety of topics including digital signal processors (DSPs), ARM processors, microcontrollers (MCUs), real-time operating systems (RTOS), wireless, audio/video processing, as well as Linux-based embedded systems.
During his last two years at TI, Scott served as a Product Marketing Engineer (PME) for TI's MSP430 microcontroller business. Concentrating on software and tools, he defined requirements and priorities for their development and maintenance. He was also responsible for writing and editing the associated documentation, blogs, and online web collateral.
With 25+ years of presentations, classes and instructional design experience, Scott has taught more than 400 live workshops totaling more than 1500 days to over 4000 customer engineers across the United States, Canada, Mexico, South America, and Europe. Scott is also passionate about sharing his instructional design and technical skills and has mentored over 100 instructors and online training developers.
Scott spends most of his free time on the computer or with a book or two in hand. While he's not into gaming, he likes writing code and is driven to continue learning and improving efficiency in any and every process. While in the TTO he continually wrote macros to adapt Microsoft Office to improve the quality and speed of workshop development. Another of his programs ("proxy switcher") was deployed by TI to all corporate laptops, helping employees quickly navigate network firewalls.
Outside of work, Scott enjoys travel and the outdoors and has volunteered for a nonprofit summer camp by designing their brochures for the last 25 years.
Anne Wilbur, Editorial Consultant & Business Manager
A master’s degree in English along with 30 years of experience in writing, editing, publishing, communications and teaching is the foundation for Anne’s expertise. As business manager, Anne handles workshop scheduling, facilities arrangements, accounting, and web site management. As editor, she also handles all marketing and editorial content, as well as content design. Anne provides additional freelance consulting services to our clients in the area of technical editing, slide design and other editorial, publication or communication services.
