The Z Files: Gearing Up for an Exciting Year Ahead
The weather is getting colder, and people are starting to disappear on use-or-lose leave - it must be December! This is my final column of 2023 and I want to express my sincere gratitude to each of you for the work you do all year round.
Although we're nearing the end of the calendar year, we celebrated a happy New Year back in October with the start of the government fiscal year. So whil a number of articles this time of year look back, we can look forward. And we have some exciting things planned to celebrate the FLC's golden anniversary!
It is hard to believe that a group of dedicated tech transfer professionals – just like you – expanded what began as the Defense Laboratory Consortium to include all agencies, ultimately forming the FLC in 1974. As we move into this semicentennial year, we are honoring that history with a 50-year timeline of the major milestones that shaped tech transfer, stretching back even before the FLC. We would greatly appreciate your input in documenting this history, so if you have historic events and pictures to add, please send them to us. Or simply take a stroll through your history and learn a bit about the past of our profession. It is important to document and share this history as we continue to build on the great efforts of those who have come before us.
While you are on the website, stop by our new hospital (no illness required – and no waiting). We have just launched the new Lab Tech in Your Life (LTIYL) hospital, which joins our popular house and airport tours that we remodeled earlier this year to better showcase the presence of tech transfer in everyday life. In addition to sleeker visuals and a more seamless user experience, this new format makes it easier to incorporate your technologies and continue adding to the tours. Next year, we hope to further expand LTIYL to include other venues and connect them in a growing virtual FLC city.
Of course, our biggest event of the year is the FLC National Meeting, which will be in Dallas, Texas, from April 9 – 11. We had a great event last year in Cleveland that set an all-time in-person attendance record. That is going to be hard to top. But if you want to go big, Dallas is the place. This year, we will have a full slate of training, sessions and our Awards Ceremony. Dallas will also be front row to a total solar eclipse the day before our Training Day, so plan ahead and reserve your spot for Training Day as well as the full meeting. Registration is now open – and you can even register and delay payment (we get how government travel vouchers work).
As for our year-round events, I shared some info on our successful webinars, lab showcases, tech events and the all-new Learning Center last time. These are all coming back in 2024 as we strive to deliver high-quality programming. One of the first in-person events of the year will be a muti-sector tech transfer event in Puerto Rico. The FLC is teaming up with the SBIR Road Tour on this one to reach out to businesses on the island.