Someone asked me to explain to new members at the Annual Meeting's Freshman Orientation what the benefits are of AUTM membership. Thought I would share my answer with you via this blog. My answer comes through a story an old Navaho medicine man told me years ago when I was a cowboy working on the Haskill Ranch in Three Forks, MT. I meet him at a Pow Wow me and my friends went to.
'Many years ago, Coyote, that old trickster from the desert, was sitting watching the Sun run its path though the sky. “Where is he always going,” he wondered. “Always the same path every day. Must be something out there in the West that he is always visiting it.”
The next day he was still wondering about it so he thought he just track Sun as he went west on his journey. He followed him through the desert, up into the mountains, and along a river than ran down a canyon and out into the plains till it hit the ocean. “Guess that won’t work,” Coyote thought when he say the ocean. “That’s too far to swim. Maybe I’ll go back east and surprise him when old Mr. Sun wakes up. I’ll grab him while he is still low enough to catch. Then he will have to tell me.” So Coyote lay down, being a tired puppy, and went to sleep.
When he woke up Sun was already too high on his path for Coyote to jump up and grab him. “Dang,” he said out loud. He started wandering along the beach as he cogitated about what to do next. Suddenly he saw something. Something shinny. Something silver and shinney.
Well Coyote being Coyote, he was not about to pass up something valuable so he went over to see what was silvery shinny. He looked at it. Walked around it. Smelled it. Finally pushed it with his paw. But he could not figure out what it was good for.
Just then an elk came over the horizon, grazing on the sweet grass along the river. “Elk! Elk!” Coyote called. “Come over here. Take a look at this. What is it good for?”
Now Elk, being a decent fellow, did just that. He leaned down and looked. Then he leaned in closer and sniffed. “Whoa! That stinks. I have no idea what you would do with something that stinky.” Coyote sniffed again. Didn’t smell so bad to him. But then he still had no idea what it was and what it was good for.
Fortunately Grasshopper was sitting on a rock nearby. “Grasshopper,” Coyote called, “come over here please and tell me what this is good for.” Grasshopper too was a decent fellow so he hoppity hopped over till he was next to the silvery shinny. Of course, Grasshopper is a tiny fellow so he was looking up at it. “Wow…. I just don’t know …. sure is big .... whatever it’s good for,” he sang by rubbing his wings together.
Well by now Coyote was really confused. Still he wanted to know what you could do with this silvery shinny. So he looked around and there, over in a berry patch, was Bear. “Bear! Bear!” he called. “Please help me. Take a look at this thing.”
Bear ambled over. Looked the the silvery shinny. Looked at Coyote. Looked back at the silvery shinny. “You’re not from around here are you my canine cousin,” he queried. “Nope,” replied Coyote, “I’m from the desert.” “Good,” nodded Bear, and he ate the silvery shinny.
Now the moral of this story is sometimes you find something and you just cannot figure out what it is good for. Some folks may dismiss it. Tell you it stinks. But if you network a bit, you may just find it is the biggest thing in a Bear market.'
AUTM is like that. As a member, the #1 benefit you get (and there are a lot others) is the ability to log in and use the membership list to find someone to talk with. We all do technology transfer and we all know what goes around comes around. So next time you are stumped and need some perspective or someone to brainstorm with, use the AUTM membership list and you’ll find someone to help you figure things out. It helps to do a bit of searching first to figure out which universities or institutions or companies have worked with technologies like yours. That increases your efficiency when using the membership list. But it’s not necessary.
Once you belong to AUTM, there is always someone there to help you. For the next two years, that someone is me. As VP Membership, my job is to make sure you are so happy that you are telling your friends and colleagues, they should be members of AUTM too. So call me. I’ll help you network and access our other great benefits too.
Thanks,
Phyl