A professional development workshop will be held on August 8, 2008, from 3-6 pm at the Academy of Management Annual Meeting in Anaheim, Calilfornia.  New ways are being developed both nationally and internationally to promote researcher access to business microdata -- particularly researchers who are geographically dispersed. This professional development workshop is intended to introduce attendees to a new modality, the NORC Data Enclave.

The enclave is also designed to promote user/producer interaction through wikis, blogs and discussion groups, as well as encourage the development of a broader infrastructure by sharing additions to the dataset. The enclave approach, which started in July 2007, already provides access to micro data from NIST and USDA/ERS, and expects soon to have data from other statistical agencies. Because of this we also want to engage attendees, as part of the research community, to provide input into some components of the enclave, such as:

• What are appropriate metrics of success?
• What are the best incentives to put into place to achieve success?
• What is the appropriate organizational structure – centralized or decentralized?

The workshop will start with an overview from Alicia Robb, the Principal Investigator on the Kauffman Firm Survey, and Julia Lane, the Principal Investigator on the NORC Data Enclave.  We will then break out into working groups to both become familiar with the enclave structure and to answer the three key questions.  The workshop will conclude with reporting back and discussion.

The workshop is sponsored by the following institutions:

Gold Sponsors

Chapman University

College of Business, University of Louisville

College of Charleston

EM Lyon

Imperial College London

Jönköping International Business School

Kauffman Foundation

Queensland University of Technology

University of Southern California

Silver Sponsors

Arthur M. Blank Center for Entrepreneurship, Babson

Jerry S. Rawls College of Business

Schulich School of Business, York University

Bronze Sponsor

Entrepreneurship & Emerging Enterprises, Syracuse