Looking back at the 2010 Annual Meeting in New Orleans, it would be hard to argue that the two AUTM Debates were not one of the major highlight of the meeting. Both were extremely well attended and fully delivered on their promise for insightful, thought-provoking dialog. I laughed, I cried, and even covered my eyes and ears a few times (hard to do at the same time without help).
For the 2011 Annual Meeting (in Vegas, baby), we are moving the Debate to its own dedicated time slot, away from the workshop and other educational offerings. This year’s Debate will center around the pros and cons of standardized/express licenses. Advocating for standardized licenses will be Cathy Innes of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Tara Branstad of Carnegie Mellon University – both institutions have employed standardized licenses as commercialization facilitation tools and have interesting data on their effectiveness. Debating opposite Cathy and Tara will be Fred Reinhart of Reinhart Consulting (formerly of Wayne State) and John Ritter of Princeton University. Kevin Wozniak of Georgia Tech will be organizing the event, and in keeping with the tradition, Immediate Past President of AUTM Arun Pradhan will be moderating the session.
We received a number of great questions from the audience at last meeting’s debates, and are hoping to kick it up a notch. I am writing to solicit comments from anybody that has an opinion on the benefits and drawback of express licenses. The intent is to pass along questions, comments and suggestions to Kevin and Arun, and also to create a “Lettermanesque” top 10 list of standardized license benefits drawbacks. If we get a good response rate, we’ll have a vote for the top 10s, and we will unveil the lists at the 2011 Annual Meeting at the Debate. You can offer your suggestions via reply to this blog, or you can email me directly at bentlea@ccf.org. Looking forward to hearing from you.