Useful Little Things

I met with Dr Umphress yesterday to discuss our upcoming meeting with Auburn’s Office of Technology Transfer. We discussed the following:

• Naming of the local branches of the research center.
• Naming of the umbrella organization.
• Use of the Auburn University name.
• Intellectual property rights.
• Building an identity for the research center.

First off, it is common practice for departments to set up “research labs.” Therefore, we’ll be calling the local branches of the research center “labs.” For example, Dr. Umphress will be heading up Auburn Universities’ Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering microISV Research Lab.

As for the umbrella organization, it turns out that the term “center” has special meaning regarding budgeting. So, henceforth, we’ll be calling the umbrella organization an “alliance.” I had hoped to use the word “empire,” but unfortunately microISV Research Empire was taken… (just kidding).

Now that we’ve settled on a widely accepted naming convention for the labs, we can safely refer to them while using the universities name, like the in the example above.  Once I graduate and move to a tenure-track position with Some University, I’ll be able to refer to my research center as “Some Universities’ College of Computing microISV Research Lab.” Cool, huh?

As for the intellectual property rights, I want to see an agreement reached whereby all research labs have access to each others’ work and data. The bottom line is that we will generate a better product for the microISV community if we all play nice and share. If the members of the alliance do not build a tightly-integrated network of information and ideas, we will lose a great deal of potential.  Of course, all this must go through Auburn’s OTT for approval.  Right now, the intellectual property policies are being updated, so we’ll need to make sure we have our agreements formalized.

Lastly, we discussed building the research alliance’s identity. Neither of us are certain if the alliance (umbrella organization) needs a legal identity yet. It will consist of nothing more than just a few web pages. Initially, all work will be done under the Auburn University Department of Computer Science and Software Engineering microISV Research Lab (gotta shorten that down somehow).  In fact, most of the actual operations will occur within one lab or another.  Only activities that involve all the labs, such as a collaborative book publishing, would fall under the alliance’s “identity.” Therefore, we’ll defer this for now.

In summary, the last roadblock to moving ahead with the microISV research has been reached and will soon be overcome.