From: Adrian Tymes (wingcat@pacbell.net)
Date: Fri Jun 20 2003 - 00:52:11 MDT
--- michelle kang <mksr@piercys.com> wrote:
> I would like to inform you of an event that you may
> find of great value. On
> behalf of NCnano, The Northern California
> Nanotechnology Initiative, you
> are invited to attend the first in a series of
> Nanotechnology Leadership
> Conferences focusing on commercializing emerging
> technologies intellectual
> property. The subject of this conference is:
> "Transforming Bay Area
> nanotechnology, infrastructure and entrepreneurism
> into companies, jobs and
> regional economic growth."
Some random comments from having attended the event:
The field in question is defined as the fusion of
biotech, infotech, and (very primitive Drexlerian)
nanotech proper. The fusion itself has no single word
name yet. If you know just one field, learn a second:
infotech plus nanotech equals embedded systems,
infotech plus biotech equals bioinformations and
*omics, biotech plus nanotech equals biogadgets. Put
together, one could say BIN is the modern industrial
answer to military/anti-terrorist ABC worries as the
big thing to ponder. Then again, it covers so many
things that, for most new and strange ideas, one could
probably toss it somewhere in the BIN.
They needed to allow more time for networking. Most
of
the participants seemed to get the most value from the
networking. NCnano is even trying to get a database
of
all the prospective players in this field together, so
they can play nonprofit matchmaker. Then again, I
suppose they did have to let their guest speakers
(those who paid for the gathering?) speak.
2 hours for 11 presentations is not enough. (That one
guy from NEC went on and on and on...) Especially in
the buyers' market of BIN intellectual property, when
most of the presenters seemed to be sellers
desperately
looking for buyers. (References kept being made to
"the people with money in the audience", of whom
everyone was sure there were some but not quite who or
how many. A random sample of companies represented,
by glancing at company names on name badges as I
walked
around, failed to turn up any venture capital firms I
recognized. Even so, margin of error says there may
have been a few, but it seems unlikely there were
many.
If someone wants to run the probabilities, I think I
scanned about 5% of the crowd between conversations
during the networking pre- and post-speeches.)
Amusing (to me, anyway) personal bit: almost everyone
seemed to be representing this or that company or
institution, usually involving a formal research lab.
I represented myself. Yet more than one attendee said
I was basically on equal footing with them as far as
involvement in the field: have some IP, trying but not
yet succeeding to commercialize it. Granted, they're
way beyond me in many significant areas, but one would
think they could move to the next step faster than a
single individual. Especially since, as was pointed
out, developing this stuff in one's garage is almost
impossible. (Depending on the exact thing you're
developing, anyway. For instance, there are
email-order rent-a-fabs out there, operating much like
vanity presses but without the vanity.)
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