With respect to your posts here….out biggest expense was the venue. SMU did give us a minor discount, not as much as you assume. UTD was great–they gave a cash donation and volunteers.

I do think each group needs to expand beyond their different visions. I am going to be working with the STC-Lone Star Chapter president for next Big Design 2010 Conference. Hopefully, we can buld off of synergies.

Thanks,
Brian

I think you and I are agreeing in a roundabout way. I believe the academic community is to achieve long-term knowledge for the sake of knowledge.

The business world is full of people with varying levels of education who are sometimes qualified and sometimes not for any given project. Methods and procedures in business do not follow consistent standards. Therefore experimentation is already not adequate enough for academic standards.

My point is you cannot treat the business world as an equal partner to academia. The two environments operate toward two completely different goals.

No one is confusing the two, I believe; if you can point to such an instance I’d be interested to examine it. But separating them? You’d have to point me to at least one documented instance of the business world separating itself, with positive results, from the academic roots of its participants before I could begin to accept the possibility that this idea has merit.

Non-academics in the business world have a completely different standard. They are accountable to their bosses and in many cases the shareholders. By "reverse engineer" I mean to observe the marketplace and attempt to produce a user experience that will help maintain and/or generate revenue.

On the other hand, academics are held to different standards and work in a completely different environment with non-compatible standards. That's my point, exactly. While business people would do really well to read studies and learn from real research, it's not a requirement. Many times business decisions are based on gut feelings, the latest business book of platitudes, or someone else's assessment of ROI.

STC must separate the need to link those two environments together. Business research and academic research are different. Business implementation doesn't require proven experimentation, only funding. Businesses make bad decisions all of the time based on nothing more than leadership's intuition.

The academic world is about research and conceptual truths. It is about proving theories and paving the way for knowledge, not profits. Both should co-exist, but the two should not be confused.

Yes, yes, and yes again; this nails it.

On the other hand, you can't reverse engineer something that doesn't yet exist; how do you design something *new*?