Venture Mentoring Services

Venture Mentoring Services conference call 2/22/08

Notes and action

Consortia interviews

Dawn suggested we conduct a series of interviews with several consortia to determine their business models

• Identify a list of consortia to examine
  • DSpace (MIT libraries)
  • Things that Think (MIT Media Lab)
  • Digital Life (MIT Media Lab)
  • Center for Digital Business (MIT Sloan)

• Compile a list of interview questions for consortia directors
  • What is the structure of the consortium?
  • Where does your funding come from?
  • What are your obligations to members?

Sustainability models

• Build a list of 3 possible sustainability models each with a possible budget or budget requirements.
  • Consortium
  • Grant-funded
  • Donations + Advertising

Advisory board

• What do we want from our board?
• What might they expect in return for serving on our board?
• People who have expressed interest in working with us as board members:
  • Dorit Zuk: AAAS fellow and former editor of Molecular Cell
  • Bob Prior: Executive editor for life sciences, MIT Press

Projects

Short-, Medium-, and long-term projects we hope to accomplish with OWW

1. • Take some number of iGem 2008 projects from start (lab notebooks kept on OWW) to finish (publication of top 10 projects in a recognized medium)

Information sharing

Make decisions about what OWW business and financial information will be made visible to the community...

• We already know that all information that is of a scientific nature will be made public.
• What business information, by law, must a nonprofit make public?
• What information should be made public on a need-to-know basis?
• What information should not be made public (employee salaries, for example?)

Timelines and Milestones

• What questions do we need to answer and by when?

Lorrie to take a stab at making a master schedule. (Dawn used the phrase, "Gant chart" which gave me a chill...)

Next VMS meeting on March 14.