PROFESSOR: Thank you all very much for making it
through the snow this morning.
And I hope people's feet are a little bit
drier than they were yesterday.
Some people were very sensible and just came in today.
Thank you for making the trek.
Just a reminder-- there were many, many people that
asked to attend this event that we told them
they couldn't attend.
As a conference committee, we had
set a threshold of 100 people as being
the maximum number of people that we could actually
realistically try to build something with.
And unlike yesterday-- which was very much sort of a data dump
where we had the technology session on networks and tags
and RF, and then some deep dives into some industry adoption
in health care, automotive, in aerospace, in coal chain,
in anti-counterfeit--
today is a much more open and collaborative structure
to the sessions, in the context that we'd very much
like to come out of this session with some ideas, some areas
of possible research collaboration.
And so if we can go back to the basic objectives
of our gathering, which was to identify
areas for research collaboration,
to identify the core underlying technology areas.
And I think yesterday, we saw locations,
all the many specialties that are involved
or could be involved in RFID.
But if we could use the format of today
to think about each of you--
I mean, there are people here running
very large research groups.
There are people here running very large companies.
So we're looking to see if we can align on what
the key research areas are.
And so that's sort of our focus today.
A little something on where we're taking this next--
so the conference committee elected
to schedule a follow-on meeting in conjunction
with "RFID LIVE."
Marc Roberti from "RFID Journal" has rented the space
and has offered to make it available to the group
for a follow-on meeting, so that we have a target
date three months from now to actually
have projects formulated.
And at the AUTO-ID Labs, we've been
working on a collaborative website
that we will share with you a little later on today,
just taking the six sessions that were established already--
so health care, automotive, et cetera.
And we have session leaders from the conference committee
to go ahead and lead those.
And for any of you who are not currently involved,
who would like to be involved, who
would like to lead research or sponsor research,
we'd absolutely like to facilitate that collaboration.
And then the second thing is that Bill Hargrave has
very kindly offered, and the conference committee
very graciously accepted, to be the co-chair of the next event.
So this will be the RFID academic convocation number
two, to be held at RFID LIVE.
And I do think that one of the expectations for that meeting
is that we won't be restricted to just
the few select academic major programs,
but that we open this up now.
Because there's just been a tremendous amount of interest
in collaborating together.
Bill, did you want to say something?
BILL HARGRAVE: Yeah, I'd just like to take off on that.
And one of the things that I hope you got out of yesterday,
and then as we continue on today,
is that we really are seeing a breadth of ideas and topics
that are presented here.
And with the hope, and that was our intent,
was to have everybody with a take away from here.
And it might not be that you take something
away from every presentation, but just
from the breadth of things out there,
it's amazing what's being done.
And that was really what we were trying to accomplish.
And I just have to thank Steve and the rest of the committee,
because I think that's been accomplished.
And we'll see that here today.
The next one at RFID Journal LIVE
is that pre-day convocation.
We want to have that opportunity, then,
to start drilling down into some of these areas.
So we're going to have fewer presentations and longer
presentations, that give us an opportunity
to get into some of these areas in more detail.
So that's the plan for the next one.
And be looking for some stuff.
And as Steve said, we restricted this one.
We're going to open the next one up.
It will be a competitive process of submitting papers and having
those things reviewed and selected.
And it won't be just restricted to academia.
If businesses or technology providers
are working on research, that want
to have an opportunity to present that,
those will be welcome as well.
PROFESSOR: Right.
And I think the only other thing to say
about that is, subject to the success of that event, then
we would very much anticipate carrying this to our colleagues
in Europe and our colleagues in Asia.
And so we want to make sure that this
is an inclusive, global research collaboration that we're
starting.
And again, any ideas you have, any things that you'd
like to do, please let us know.
So on that note, the way today is structured,
we have the morning dedicated to supply chain and packaging.
We'll have a box lunch drop by here in the foyer at noon.
And so we'll begin right back in with a session
on beyond the supply chain.
And then we have a panel of senior executives
who have agreed to help us work to identify how we can best
collaborate here.
To conclude the session, we'll end at 3:00
so that people can get on planes and go on to their next thing.
So a lot to do in a very short amount of time.
Thank you very much all for your participation.
Bill and the supply chain.