Grantopedia

2012 Cayuse Users Group Meeting Summary

Around 30 of Cayuse's customers sent representatives to Portland for two days of meetings on August 1 - 2. We had great discussions, peeks into the future, debate about enhancements, dialog about best practices, and terrific weather. We kicked off the event with a dinner at the Portland City Grill, featuring a view from the 30th floor, overlooking Portland and the West Hills. It was an excellent event, and we're grateful for our customers and their support.

A few numbers from the meeting:

100: Number of current Cayuse customers

$15,823,295,249: Value of federal proposals submitted by Cayuse customers in FY 2011

99.9%: First time submission success rate to Grants.gov using Cayuse 424

We posted a few pictures of the event on our Facebook page.

 

Off-the-shelf or DIY?

Electronic research administration strategies often become mired in the "features wish list" syndrome. In this scenario, large complex system development projects attempt to satisfy every requirement on insanely long lists. The resulting project is invariably expensive, requiring additions of staff, years of development, and an open-ended commitment to maintenance. Sadly, many of these projects fail to deliver even a portion of the original "wish list," despite the effort and expense.

This phenomenon is well known in both higher education and government IT, as illustrated in this artlcle on Veterans Administration CIO Roger Baker in Federal Computer Week.

Baker recalled one incident when he found a commercial package that could meet 80 percent of the stated requirements for a project, but the manager in charge insisted the solution must meet all the requirements.

"I said, well that was your requirement last time and you got zero percent of your requirements over the past 10 years," Baker said. "Would you rather have zero percent or 80 percent?"

The Cayuse approach has been so successful because we focus on a tight set of requirements that are standard across the research industry. We deliver an out-of-the-box solution that satisfies 80 - 90% of common pre-award requirements. We deploy the solution within 6 - 8 weeks. Customers of Cayuse 424 love the system.

Devising a strategy for electronic research success requires making trade-offs between "need to have" and "want to have."

Sponsored Research Steps

The Binghamton University Magazine featured an excellent overview of the sponsored research process. Their "Anatomy of a Grant" article follows an example from their campus. Concise and informative. Targeted to audiences who don't know about the administrative side of research.

(Author's note: as a Binghamton U alumni, the hard copy magazine showed up in my mailbox.)

Why we fight (for grants)

A blogger I follow has pointed to the American Society for Cell Biology‘s lecture series on cutting edge science called the iBioSeminars.

This is meaty stuff and it reminds me of the terrific work that federal grants do for our world. These are full lectures in multiple parts with each part being about 45 minutes long.

I chose my first lecture from a researcher at UCSF (because I know people there). Cynthia Kenyon’s lecture on Genes and Cells that Determine the Lifespan of C. elegans (in two parts) is a great reminder that animal studies is more than a checkbox on the Other Project Information form.

For those of you who are more portable, you can even download the lectures in a variety of formats for the iPod, and other devices.

Its why we do what we do. Enjoy!

David Frackelton