Away two weeks

I wish that I could claim summer holidays as an excuse for dropping offline, but the truth is that a combination of travel and work has consumed most of my free time over the past two weeks.  All of it was good, but wow, has it been busy.

In the US, I attended my nephew’s wedding in Ashland OR, held on a beautiful summer’s day at a winery overlooking the valley.  These are always fun occasions to spend time with the immediate and extended family, and to celebrate the happiness of a couple starting their new lives together.

In Seattle, we finished staining the deck and shopping for a car, touching up the plumbing and getting out with friends.  Then on to New York for a visit to an emerging medical company that we hope to work with as part of the Accelerator that I support. In this economic climate, it’s become punishingly hard for small companies to raise money and commercialize products.  This group, in a picturesque facility up the Hudson Valley, has good ideas and wonderful people.  Hopefully, we can help them succeed.

Cambridge was a whirl of meetings to capitalize on our funding with our university partners.  The London Summit, held in April to review our research results, pointed to several priority experiments that need to be completed in the coming months to solidify our understanding or the extent to which the coating provides antimicrobial protection.  The Technology Strategy Board has several grant deadlines looming, and our patent strategy is kicking into gear ahead of our press releases.  There is progress on every side of the company, but a constant need to plan, coordinate, and report on the various activities scattered across the UK.

I arrived back in the Netherlands late in the week, greeted by a drenching thunderstorm that created a cascade of water in the living room from the overflowing gutter.  My bike had been vandalized in my absence: a would-be thief had cut the lock, but left the chain and the bike behind, only pausing to remove the valve stem from one tire.  Go figure.   The Tapas restaurant downstairs is now open and doing good business; separately, we’re kicking off design work on our new anesthesia monitor with bioMRC and T4Analytics.

And Dutch classes start again shortly, I’m woefully behind after two weeks away.  But I hope a few days hard work will batch up on the backlog as well as the blog.