Conference Only seven days remain until the opening of SSTI's 9th Annual Conference in Atlanta. More than 330 of the nation's top thinkers and practitioners for the TBED community will convene at the InterContinental Hotel seeking guidance from their peers.

On Monday, Oct. 31, the Southern Growth Policies Board, the Southern Technology Council, Georgia Institute of Technology, the Council on Competitiveness and the Georgia Research Alliance will host a one-day Southern Technology Innovation Summit at the Georgia Tech Hotel and Conference Center in Atlanta.

Due to SSTI's annual conference being held in Atlanta next week, the next issues of the Digest and Funding Supplement are slated for Nov. 7, 2005.

Designed to ease the transaction burden on university technology transfer offices and encourage more open and efficient access to research, the Kauffman Foundation recently unveiled iBridge, a web-based platform under the Kauffman Innovation Network.

Drawing expertise from 53 speakers and panelists from 19 states, SSTI's 9th annual conference - to be held Oct. 19-21 in Atlanta - promises to provide its attendees unparalleled opportunity to learn about the latest and best thinking to encourage state and regional growth through tech-based economic development. Want proof?

Between 1996 and 2004, an average 0.36 percent of the U.S. population created a new business each month, representing approximately 500,000 new businesses per month, according to the Kauffman Index of Entrepreneurial Activity.

Not too surprising. Put the premier professional development opportunity for the tech-based economic development community in a great city and you'll draw hundreds of participants from at least 45 states and several other countries. Offer conference attendees five-star accommodations at prices well below market and we've ended up with the largest room block yet for an SSTI annual conference.

Limited Seating Remaining in Three Preconference Sessions

For more information on the positions below, visit SSTI's online Job Corner at http://www.ssti.org/posting.htm.

The early bird registration and hotel room block for Investing in a Brighter Future: Building Tech-based Economies, SSTI's Ninth Annual Conference, ends on Tuesday, September 20.  To register for the conference, which is October 20 and 21, you can visit the conference website at http://www.ssti.org/conference05.htm and select the registration form.

Whether you use Outlook, Palm, Day-Timer, Filofax, or Post-Its to keep track of the items on your "To Do" list, make sure these two items on your lists to be wrapped up by next Tuesday, Sept. 20:

John Gardner has been named the first vice president for research and economic development for the University of Missouri system.

Georgia Tech announced that Dr. Jeffrey Skolnick will join its faculty this spring as the Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology.

Only 13 days left to register early for SSTI's 9th Annual Conference!

Save $100 by Registering Before Sept. 20, 2005.

Many of the readers are new to the Digest since last year's conference, so we're getting questions about how SSTI's upcoming 9th annual conference, to be held in Atlanta on Oct. 19-21, differs from other events.

The easiest way to answer that is to let the conference speak for itself — through the comments we received from past participants:

When it comes to managing a portfolio of programs, do you know what really works to ensure they will have the most impact for building a tech-based economy? "Maximizing Impact: Evaluating Science and Technology Programs," one of four full-day pre-conference workshops to be held at SSTI's 9th Annual conference on Oct. 19-21, 2005, strives to answer the question.

RiverVest Venture Partners, a life science venture capital firm headquartered in St. Louis, announced it will be opening an office at the BioEnterprise facility in Cleveland. The office will be managed by Karen Spilizewski, who is joining RiverVest on a part-time basis as a vice president on Jan. 1.