The last two days, I have been attending a conference out here in San Diego – the Licensing Executives Society (LES) annual meeting. One of my clients from Dallas is heavily involved in digital research and for the last three years, we have decided that it makes sense for me to attend the annual convention. Two years ago, it was held in San Fransisco, last year in Chicago, this year in San Diego and I just found out that the 2012 event will be in Toronto.
I can’t even begin to tell you all the stuff that goes on here. I am impressed with the organization and the number of people who attend this annual pilgrimage. The main focus of the group is to provide education and networking opportunities for people and companies who focus their business in the acquisition and licensing of different technologies. To be sure, there are huge numbers of attorneys and others who have made millions, or tens of millions, of dollars as a result of leveraging technology in some form or another. There are sub-groups of people in high tech, life sciences, biotech, telecommunications and a host of other specialities.
Many of those in attendance here are researchers, intellectual property lawyers and university technology transfer groups; and there is a noticeable absence of sales people and slick talkers. For those of you who know me personally, you must realize that this leaves me at a little bit of a disadvantage. After all, I enjoy using an iPhone, and an Apple computer, but other than that, I really can’t tell you too much about technology. And those clients who, throughout the years, rely on my judgment to assist them with the growth of their businesses know that I am not a subject matter expert when it comes to evaluating the worth of patents, or what the next hot technology will be, or how to leverage narrow silos of information about conducting business in China, Africa, or Central America, for that matter.
Now in my defense, I have other redeeming qualities in the corporate community, but I always find my attendance at the LES conference a real educational opportunity. Today I learned about nanotechnology and how companies such as Pfizer evaluate which new potential projects they are interested in.
Yesterday, I heard about the future of mobile communications and how the next generation of smart phones may drop the name “phone” from their description because most people surf the internet, text and use apps far more than they make calls. I also learned that people will use their “phone” number as their primary form of identification, instead of a social security number, and that several of the huge telecommunications companies have banded together to provide services that will allow us to charge purchases by using our phones rather than credit or debit cards. It is their intent to put the credit card companies out of business.
I heard about gene splicing; and how Nortel, a telecommunications company that filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, just sold their patents for $4.5 BILLION dollars. That seemed huge to me – and then the head of Nortel said that they had spent more than $40 BILLION developing the technology that led to their 8000 patents. I am always amazed at the things that I learn at these events. I swear that I am the dumbest guy in the room…
And yet, behind the science and all the progress the world has made in developing drugs for lengthening our life spans, or providing tools to make our lives easier, or ways to keep us in touch with one another around the world in fractions of a second, none of this would have been possible without one very important thing – the presence of God.
God is the only being that has been here from the beginning. Now before you get in a theological debate with me about Christ and the Holy Spirit, I believe they were also present at the beginning of the creation of the world – or kosmos, in the Greek. But since the Trinity is three in one, I hope that you catch my meaning here. GOD, the Trinity, was the agent through which all of this other stuff came to pass. When you study all this, it is a miracle that God created the entire world and everything in it. And it all works. The laws of the universe may have been discovered by people such as Sir Isaac Newton, or Einstein, but they were invented by God.
And all the cool things that I have learned these past two days couldn’t come to pass without a God who is concerned with all the details – a perfect creation for His chosen people. One thing that I have learned is that we don’t even begin to understand what creation and God’s eventual plan for us even remotely looks like.
Which brings me to the verse of the day, Psalm 89:11, “The heavens are yours, and yours also the earth; you founded the world and all that is in it.” See the magnitude of that? The majesty of God? We are told that God not only founded the world, but ALL that is in it. That means everything that we have already discovered, and all that is yet to be revealed – in God’s perfect timing, no less.
My encouragement tonight is to let you know that God’s love for us is incredible. Only a supremely loving and powerful God would have taken the time to create the world and everything in it. For our benefit. And just because we haven’t yet discovered it all yet doesn’t mean that it isn’t there for us – eventually; when God allows us to see yet another part of His creation.
My prayer is that you will continue to pray for God to reveal Himself to us through His creation. After the several days that I have had, I am even in greater awe of God than I was before. Sometimes I take God for granted – these last several days have been difficult, but a real blessing, because in the midst of the all the research and scientific papers, I was reminded that I am important to God and and that He is bigger than I can even begin to imagine…. Praise God!