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SSTI 2005 Conference Update

May 16, 2005

The first conference mailer went to the post office yesterday, but we're too excited to delay announcing that the website for SSTI's 9th Annual Conference is now available to accept registrations and provide preliminary information for the tech-based economic development (TBED) community's premier professional development event of the year. The conference will be held on Oct. 19-21, 2005, at the beautiful Intercontinental Buckhead-Atlanta.

SSTI is looking forward to this year's event for two particular reasons: our local co-hosts. The Georgia Research Alliance (GRA) and the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) are two of the most widely respected TBED organizations in the world. That's no exaggeration and worth repeating -- in the world. Both organizations are celebrating anniversaries this year: GRA turns 15 and the venerable ATDC celebrates its 25th.

It is the longevity, success and vitality of these two outstanding organizations that helped SSTI develop the theme for this year's conference, Investing in a Brighter Future: Building Tech-based Economies. Both GRA and ATDC represent long-term investments based on innovative models of public-private partnership. Both have weathered and embraced change in state leadership time and time again. And both have the successful track records with proven impact results to demonstrate the risk of those investments has been worth it - many times over.

The urgent need to focus public investment on the more distant horizon has been the recurring and underlying theme for all of the national discussion on unbalanced federal R&D budget priorities, the need for a national innovation strategy, and the challenge and opportunity presented by a "flat world" (to borrow a phrase from Thomas Friedman).

SSTI's 2005 conference in Atlanta provides a unique and timely forum to advance understanding of the states' and regions' evolving roles as leaders in fostering the continued competitiveness of the U.S. economy. Some folks may continue to discuss the need to encourage innovation, fund science and research, support entrepreneurship and strengthen our workforce, but states, regions, universities, colleges, tech councils and nonprofits are actually doing it.

SSTI's 2005 annual conference, then, is for all of you actually investing in a brighter future. We look forward to joining you in Atlanta this fall. More information is available at: http://www.ssti.org/conference05.htm

Georgia