Tuesday, June 16, 2009

MITACS Business Development Meetings

As may be ascertained from the title above, I'm attending the MITACS national business development manager team meetings this week. There are some 20 of us across the country.

As I type this I realize I have yet to provide much detail on MITACS and my role with the firm. This topic will have to wait for another day.

Suffice it to say that we fund research collaborations involving industry and academic researchers. We're a not-for-profit with our input funding coming from federal and provincial government sources.

In my role I work to find collaboration opportunities, that is companies and researchers that may want to work together.

These meetings end Wednesday.

Thursday and Friday I'll be attending the McMaster Innovation Showcase (conference) at McMaster University.

I'm also spending the week preparing our ball hockey team (I coach a group of 15-year old young men) for a big playoff game on Saturday.

Back to the MITACS meetings in a moment. We're on break.

I'm quite amazed at the expertise and varied interests we have in our group. There are lots of PhDs and former researchers. But also many business people and other backgrounds.

Our hobbies and interests include horseback riding, fishing, Lego, reading, writing, gardening, farming, castle building (literally), aquarium ecosystems, and the list goes on and on. I feel quite boring and mundane in many ways, as well as humbled.

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