Then I'd Have to Kill You
This is probably old hat for a bunch of the engineering types here, but I got asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement for the first time today. We had a meeting between some faculty and Deans from the college, and some people from a local company to discuss the possibility of forming some sort of cooperative partnership to weasel money out of the state of New York-- I mean, create new technologies, and good jobs for workers in the Schenectady area.
As I commented to one of the other academics, one of the nice things about being in an impractical field like physics is that nobody ever really expects to make money off anything I'm working on. Which means they don't much care who I talk to about it, which means that I don't generally need to be worried about what I say to people.
Of course, the papers we actually signed were sort of the baby non-disclosure agreement that they give to all visitors. The real, serious, swear-on-your-immortal-soul agreement is still being drafted. As a result, the whole thing was kind of a waste of time-- I can't say whether I could be any help to them without knowing some technical information about what they're doing, and without the real-and-for-true NDA, they wouldn't even tell us what's in their ten-year strategic "road map."
I can say that the word "synergy" was uttered far more frequently than it ever should be, but I doubt that violates any--
NO CARRIER
Posted at 9:43 PM | link | follow-ups |