Blogs

Labor day has long since passed, and with it goes summertime, and most of my hopes and dreams.  All I have left in my life is fantasy football and preparing for next spring’s AUTM Annual Meeting (AM).  I’ve been wonderfully excited to blog about new initiatives for the upcoming AM, but the changes to the program are so substantial in comparison to previous years, I struggle to decide where to begin. 

Let’s start with the ‘firsts’.  This is the first time the AM will be held in Las Vegas.  This is the first time the meeting will begin on a Sunday, and end on a Wednesday.  This is the first time the event will be held in effectively a resort-type location (Caesars Palace) in a city venue.  The potential for a spectacular conference clearly exists.  However, there are many programmatic ‘firsts’ we are bringing to the AM in Las Vegas as well.

If I described all the programmatic changes here, this post would end up a small novel.  I will just touch upon then briefly here, and will attempt to blog on a new program addition fortnightly until the meeting arrives or somebody takes away my blog access. 

The AUTM Annual Meeting has always been a premier professional development and networking event.  We have preserved this stature, and at the same time substantially elevated its relevance as a partnering and business development meeting.  A quick review of the new program format bears this out.  We have added an Industry Roundtable plenary session composed of senior industry leaders, a Fireside Chat with a top industry executive, a venture capital summit, and a start-up business plan competition.  We have created a new Industry/Academia Partnering Forum and associated Networking Receptionto solidify those personal contacts.  We are licensing in new partnering software from the original designers of the software used at BIO to better enhance our networking activities.  We even have a new networking Bounty program whereby all academic attendees that have held at least a dozen partnering meetings are eligible for a raffle for great prizes. 

I haven’t touched on the non-partnership initiatives – we’ll touch on these in another post.  All I’ll say right now is that, I may not win, but I fully expect to reach the final table at the inaugural AUTM Texas Hold’em Tournament.