Expanding the Foundation for Grant Seeking

I wanted to pass along another url from the Workshop where we made our presentation Dec. 9. This contains a lot of information that we can use to help us in our grant seeking efforts because it gives us some ready-made arguments for what our projects can achieve in terms of being problem-solving centered. Specifically it shows us how to leverage the arguments based on how HumanML can improve consensus-seeking, collaboration-producing efforts to solve specific social problems. These are arguments in which we can also place ourselves in the role of "identifers" and "pre-qualifiers" of problems that are good candidates for a HumanML-based approach to gathering the resources needed to produce a "workable" solution in terms of communicating with the stakeholders involved. Native Dancer rings bells for this approach.

It did not occur to me to listen more closely when this introductory presentation was made because I was very busy watching the audience and reviewing how I should make minor adaptations in my delivery of the presentation based on the apparent mood, reactions and interests of the audience. The audience had introduced themselves one by one and gave their "elevator" synopses of their interests. (The term "elevator" arises from the hypothetical situation that is often given to new resumé writers to summarize their resumés as if they were given a one-on-one opportunity to speak to their ideal employer in an elevator moving from the lobby to the eighth floor or so, to give the time frame a reasonable length for people to say more than a couple of words of introduction.) So I was very busy processing this information and making mental notes about what to emphasize so as to speak directly to some of them, and so I actually missed several relevant recurring themes which resonate powerfully between what we produced collectively for this presentation and how this workshop series has developed, and, most importantly, WHAT it has accomplished. That accomplishment is widening the applicability of the SBIR/STTR program.

Basically, as I went back through this presentation it hit me that the principles behind these workshops, some of which we have contributed to previously (not as the originators but as examples of how work was being initiated that was "in tune" or aligned with the workshop series),and has actually been a part of bringing about the expansion to SBIR/STTR into the new areas we discovered recently.

So I hope you all give this a look and some thought about how we can focus on these principles as we respond to topics. BTW, while I do want to respond to some of the SBIR/STTR topics, these arguments are by no means inappropriate for NSF or NIH programs.

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