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Scott Butner
Senior MemberPosts: 3,918 Senior Member
you know a business meeting is going to go well.....
Scott Butner
Senior MemberPosts: 3,918 Senior Member
....when the first five minutes revolve around fly fishing, the people you've both fished with, rivers you have fished recently, etc.
Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook already know this, but my former employer suprised the hell out of me by calling up and asking if I'd be willing to come back and consult for them on some clean technology commercialization efforts they've got underway. Had my first meeting today to discuss roles and responsibilities and found that the program manager and I share a love of fly fishing, and have fished with many of the same people over the years.
that, coupled with the fact that one of my first tasks will be to fly to Golden, CO for the first of several training trips, tells me that this could be a great gig.
Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook already know this, but my former employer suprised the hell out of me by calling up and asking if I'd be willing to come back and consult for them on some clean technology commercialization efforts they've got underway. Had my first meeting today to discuss roles and responsibilities and found that the program manager and I share a love of fly fishing, and have fished with many of the same people over the years.
that, coupled with the fact that one of my first tasks will be to fly to Golden, CO for the first of several training trips, tells me that this could be a great gig.
Replies
This has happened to me a number of times. People on Wall Street tend to play golf, but those who don't fish.
3 years ago, I was doing diligence on a private company looking to go public. At the same time they were evaluating us.
The CEO had this scab on his upper lip. In the middle of the meeting, in which he was doing most of the talking, it broke open and he started bleeding.
After I pointed it out, he said he was sorry, but he had been in the Bahamas and gotten too much sun.
I said, "Bonefish?"
Boom, become one of our best relationships.
This is code.
I am seriously considering driving down from Washington state and kinda wandering back along the scenic route -- mid October in the Rockies strikes me as too much of a photo op to waste it by flying down there. And my schedule will permit a leisurely (7-8 day) return trip. So a tiny bit of fishing may be in order.
lol -- their comment upon seeing my resume was something to the effect "if we'd seen this before you were laid off, you'd still be working at the Lab"
don't know why it never occurred to me to market myself to our commercialization group. Half the people there are folks I've worked with in the distant past, and come out of similar backgrounds as me (technologists who came to the lab out of a true belief in public science).
the technology I'll be helping them with is pretty cool too. Basically, it's a nanocoating that can be applied to windows that responds to environmental cues, and changes optical properties according to the environment. In one application, it will let infrared light in when it's cold outside (helping to heat the room) but blocks it when it's warm outside (helping to keep the room from heating).
In another configuration, it can redirect incident light upwards at an angle that allows it to bounce off of the ceiling, helping to create more even daylighting in a room, and reduce lighting costs.
it's pretty cool what is being done in materials science right now. But I'm going to have to take a crash course on nano tech because most of what I know about it is focused on the environmental issues surrounding the manufacturing processes, and now I'll need to have a broad knowledge of how it works.
Here's your first lesson:
This calls for some of that expense account wizardry.
yup.......
their travel policies are pretty straightforward: they'll reimburse expenses to the level of the least expensive (practical) route. So essentially, I can get reimbursed to the cost of a coach ticket from our airport to Denver, and a rental from Denver to Golden.
since we live in a non-hub market, I was hoping that it would be about $600, but I see Alaska has a few seats for $290. Not quite enough to rent a car for a week, but close enough that I might just eat the difference.
Now your stepping into my arena. The technology was developed about 3 years ago.
Problem is it's too costly and because of that, it is used very little in residential buildings but a bit more in commerical buildings.
All right egg heads. Now make me the opposite stuff. Throttle the IR emittence when cold And increase it when hot. Oh yeah and block absorptance. And make this $hit work in space. The good news I don't care how much it costs
yeah, the lab's been working on it for some time. Hence the desire to see it move on and out of the Lab.
as with many technologies, the trick will be to find those niche applications where it makes sense despite the cost, use the initial inroads to drive down production costs and improve the technology, and keep expanding the application envelope. Easier said than done, to be sure, but there are numerous examples of other lab technologies that have faced the same challenge -- more than 230 spin-off companies in the past 20 years or so, in fact.
The technology you are working on sounds really cool but I think 'Teke' figured it out circa 1979:
Ok, that was for Hextall. Anway, when you take your trip if you are going to stop at the Henry's Fork for fishing let me know and maybe I will drive up to fish with you!
Shawn
Last time I was there, I hooked but failed to land a couple of large trout. I have a score to settle.
I *used* to consider myself to be a fair-to-good fisherman. These days, the skills have atrophied to the point where I am certainly not a beginner, but lack the finesse and muscle memory of someone who deserves the "good" label.
nothing that 30 days a year on a river couldn't fix, but that ain't happening anytime real soon.
the business venture has so many similarities to some of the work I've done in the past, that the biggest challenge will be getting used to working for someone else after two years of being my own boss. I think I'll adjust just fine, though
This is timely.
I have an apple tree in my yard, and two days ago, spent about an hour throwing the apples on the ground at another tree. about 75% of my pitches were of the submarine style and Kent Tekulve's was the pitching motion I was trying to emulate.
F Quisenberry.