Greetings from Anaheim, California, where Fuentek’s Danielle McCulloch, Julie Markoski, and I are attending the annual meeting of the Association of University Technology Managers®. The conference has barely started, and we’re already very busy at this great meeting! AUTM 2012 began yesterday with a joint session with the Licensing Executives Society, which had its Winter Meeting here in the first half of the week. (And, no, it’s not coincidence that the LES and AUTM meetings are aligned like this. This was just one of several efforts this year in AUTM’s Strategic Alliances.) The two associations hosted a pair of sessions together on Wednesday. The first was called… Continue reading →
We at Fuentek have blogged often about how tweets, blogs, and “likes” are key paths by which a technology transfer office’s (TTO’s) messages reaches the general public as well as about how effective use of social media can connect TTOs with licensing prospects and potential partners for specific opportunities. But federal TTOs face unique challenges in developing and maintaining effective social media strategies. Aside from tight budgets and overloaded staff, these TTOs have to operate within the confines of the highly controlled federal government. TTOs want to get the word out about what they do but, in most cases, a public affairs or communications office is responsible for the information flowing out of a federal organization. So what’s a federal TTO to do? 
The urgency is growing surrounding a very important technology transfer issue: the free agency concept. This is the idea put forth by The Kauffman Foundation that university faculty should be able to shop their discoveries to any third party for licensing. A Quick Recap The free agency concept first gained attention in January 2010, when Harvard Business Review called it a breakthrough idea. I blogged at the time that it is, in fact, a naive idea. 
Technology transfer offices (TTOs) have much to gain from incorporating social media into their communications toolbox. With adequate planning and preparation, a TTO’s foray into the social media world can be a successful experience, yielding great exposure and benefits. We at Fuentek have blogged often about how social media’s tremendous reach can deliver real value to TTOs. And as of today, we have yet another resource for tech transfer professionals. We’ve released our white paper entitled, “Leveraging Social Media for Technology Transfer Marketing.” 
I had the good fortune yesterday to attend NASA’s Technology Day on Capitol Hill. NASA sponsors this event each year to demonstrate how investments in space and aeronautics technology help enable agency goals and at the same time create or improve products and services that benefit life here on Earth. This year’s event, “NASA Technology: Imagine. Innovate, Explore,” featured seven technologies developed in collaboration with NASA, including systems used to assess patient health, monitor water quality, and evaluate disaster risk. 
Your Web site is the doorway through which licensees, collaborators, and innovators enter your office, so make sure it enhances the perception of your organization and aligns with your tech transfer goals. This was the message that came through loud and clear from panelists at a session of the recent Association of University Technology Managers® (AUTM®) annual meeting in Anaheim, California. 
I’ve recently connected with Springboard Enterprises, an innovative organization that showcases high-quality, women-led companies that are seeking investors. Springboard has a good track record for facilitating spin-out companies (success stories include Constant Contact, ZipCar, Tikatok, and many more) and is providing great opportunities for women entrepreneurs. 
It’s a bit like a Tolstoy novel: Happy internship programs are all alike. Well, maybe not alike. But they are pretty consistent across the technology transfer spectrum. This was the consensus of panelists and attendees at a session of the recent Association of University Technology Managers® (AUTM®) annual meeting in Anaheim, California. The dynamic and interactive Frequently Asked Questions about Intern Programs session about effective internship programs attracted quite a crowd, especially considering it was one of the final sessions on the last day of AUTM 2012 (an indicator of how important this topic is to university TTOs). 
Danielle, Julie, and I are settling back into the swing of things now that we’re back from the AUTM® annual meeting in Anaheim. We’ll blog about our panels (which we previewed earlier) in the days to come. But today I wanted to recap some of my favorite moments from the conference.
As VP for Strategic Alliances, I was pleased to host a special-interest group (SIG) discussion yesterday morning at the AUTM® annual meeting. It turned out to be a popular session, with more than 40 attendees split about evenly between university and industry tech transfer offices (TTOs). All of them offered great ideas about the various initiatives that Strategic Alliances is pursuing. 