2011 in Review

You have your retrospective perspective, I have mine. It's been a busy year, and this review is more for my reference than yours. If you find the thoughts worthwhile, great.

So, one year ago...

While not part of my official day-job duties, I served as Chairman of the National Space Society’s 2011International Space Development Conference May 17-22. This event required coordinating, marketing, and planning the event, from the web site to the programming. It also involved working with the National Space Society in Washington, DC, NASA Headquarters, Marshall Space Flight Center's Office of Strategic Analysis & Communication, Huntsville Space Professionals, and other organizations and sponsors. The five-day event included a Space Investment Summit; a job fair; a gala dinner at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center; a trade show hosting over 20 companies and other organizations; bus tours of MSFC and local attractions; a luncheon for over 150 students from around the world; a charity auction to benefit the Madison County Red Cross; and over 100 speakers from across the aerospace industry and space advocacy community at the Von Braun Center and Embassy Suites Hotel. I juggled multiple responsibilities in the midst of budget and program uncertainties at NASA as well as a massive tornado outbreak a month before the conference (and one tornado during the conference itself!). The conference itself brought in 857 attendees and earned me an “Above & Beyond” Award from OSAC...all without casualties, unless one counts a temporary loss of sanity. :-)

In addition to the ISDC, I wrote agendas for half a dozen Science Cheerleader events and organized the paperwork of (now) over 100 Science Cheerleaders.

I wrote the first draft of a 59,000-word novel in November as part of National Novel Writing Month.

I survived months of job uncertainty and am currently in a stable berth in NASA's SERVIR program.

I started a second blog.

Oh yeah, and I bought a new car after the previous Bartmobile got a wee bit damaged.

***

So much for business. Am I a happier, better person now, than I was a year ago? Yes. Happier to be free of my ISDC responsibilities. Proud of what the group accomplished. And yes, happy that I can add a very large, successful event to ye olde resume. I learned a lot about myself over the course of the conference process, not all of it pretty.

The primary thing I learned is that I dislike being the guy in charge. I've learned how to better expend my social energies, as I frequently had to do my day job, then go off and do more stuff with other people after work. I learned that it is entirely possible to run a smooth operation so long as I surround myself with people who are able to do things on their own. I lead by allowing others to do their own thing with a minimum of supervision. I learned that I operate best in environments where information is shared openly, and that I get more than a little temperamental when I sense that is not the case.

And after a year of working with a large group on an intense project, my inner introvert has made himself clearly felt. I am learning to restructure my life and my pursuits to ensure that I have the space and time I need to recharge. I'm uncertain how, exactly, introverts find and keep partners in life. I find myself getting crustier about enforcing my personal quiet time and am getting set in my ways. This year marked 20 years since I graduated with my B.A. in English Literature; next year will be 20 years since I started working at Disney's Dixie Landings Resort (now Port Orleans Riverside). Time marches on, and I'm facing the realities of middle age: the need for ongoing exercise, more sensible eating, and political solicitude in the workplace. I'm not quite as brash, loud, or rude as I once was. All to the good.

But as always, I wonder where I go from here. I'm at the point where I've achieved my childhood dreams (including writing a novel!) but have yet to identify the dreams that will carry me forward for the next 40 years. Well, maybe I'll come up with some answers this year. Here's hoping. Farewell, 2011. Let's see what 2012 has to bring.

Fusion Propulsion in Our Lifetimes?

One of the benefits that keeps on giving here in Huntsville is that it's very easy for the local space-geek club to get some serious speakers to talk about topics of mutual interest. This evening's speaker was Dr. Jason Cassibry, a professor from University of Alabama-Huntsville (hereafter UAH). I understand he gave this talk at the conference I ran, but like most of the content going on at ISDC, I didn't hear it. Cassibry seems to be one of those profs you hope to get if you're a liberal arts major because he's an animated speaker who manages to make his talk interesting, if not always understandable--you do have to do SOME homework, after all. I'd also be surprised if Cassibry was older than 30. Sheesh, I'm getting old.

All that said, Cassibry's presentation title was "The Case and Development Path for Fusion Propulsion," and the case he made was a good one. But then, being an English major, I think most of these guys give convincing talks because I don't know enough science or engineering to call BS on most of what they're saying. This is why I'm a tech writer, not an engineer: all the juicy content, none of the math.

Cassibry began his talk by briefly going over "why explore?" The answers there were familiar to this space-friendly audience (planetary exploration, spinoffs, asteroid mining, outliving the Earth, taking really expensive vacations). From there he moved to his primary emphasis: developing a propulsion system that could make possible a seven-month mission to Mars (three months outbound, one month there, three months back). Why seven months? Because the longest mission aboard the International Space Station was 210 days, and that seemed to operate fine without any serious side-effects on the crew. Longer than that, and I'm guessing that the close quarters might make people get a little stir-crazy.

Next he ran through the potential propulsion candidates available with existing or reachable technology: advanced chemical systems, electric propulsion, and nuclear fission or fusion. For those of you who haven't taken high school physics in awhile, fission is where you split atomic nuclei; fusion is where you combine (fuse) several smaller nuclei into larger nuclei. Fission and fusion both produce tremendous amounts of energy--something like a thousand times greater than chemical propellants of the same mass--but they also produce ionizing radiation, which can damage human beings at the cellular level (cancer, sterilization).

According to Cassibry, using the best chemical propulsion available, you could get a 1,000-metric-ton vehicle (with 100 of those tons dedicated to useful payload) to Mars in around two years. I've heard shorter estimates, but then those were for vehicles 1/10th the size. A 1,000-tonne vehicle would require nearly ten flights by NASA's in-development Space Launch System, which would not be cheap.

Moving down the list, nuclear electric propulsion could provide power levels of around 100 watts per kilogram (W/kg) of propellant. Fusion power would kick that energy level up to 1 kilowatt per kilogram (kW/kg), while a more advanced fusion energy source would be kicking it to the tune of 10 kW/kg and be able to make the round-trip to Mars within the 7-month timeline.

What sort of fusion are we talking about? It turns out there are several combinations of lighter elements that could be fused usefully, including deuterium-tritium (two- and three-neutron isotopes of hydrogen), deuterium-deuterium, deuterium-helium-3, and deuterium-lithium-6. Cassibry dismissed tritium as having too many radioactive byproducts and pointed out that it would take something like 1,000 nuclear plants to make enough of the isotope to be useful for space travel. He similarly didn't like helium-3 because while it's a darling of the pro-space movement, the cost of building all the infrastructure on the Moon to harvest it are cost-prohibitive. Instead, he advocated for using deuterium and lithium-6; deuterium is the most common hydrogen isotope, while there are "tons" of lithium-6 available in the ground in Tennessee--and we've already used both elements to make bombs.

It was at this point in Cassibry's talk that the PowerPoint slides started rapidly ascending over my head. He talked very rapidly about a number of existing approaches to fusion, including the ITER reactor, inertial confinement fusion, and magnetized target fusion (MTF). The way this would work--and I'd heard some of this talk at Marshall during my day job--is that you'd have a ring of high-energy plasma guns all firing at a target sample of hydrogen. Another way to induce fusion could be something called "Z-pinch" fusion, which Sandia National Laboratory has been working on, and which UAH is planning to work on at the Aerophysics Lab near Redstone Arsenal. Assuming Cassibry and his teammates get the funding and equipment they want, they could have the equipment within six months and tests beginning in a year.

Cheaper and smaller in scale than any competing fusion reaction, this whole thing, from testing to flight test, could theoretically get done in ten years. Joy, bliss, and happiness for everyone, right? Yeah, BUT...

Fusion has been worked on since the 1950s, and it's always been "20 years away." Cassibry conceded that, but believes that the applied energy and approach are not as expensive at the $10-billion ITER reactor (theoretically in the $50-100 million range). He also had to ask questions from people worrying about everything from "polluting the solar system" ("a molecule in the bucket compared to what's already being put out by the sun") to "What's the worst-case scenario if this thing blows up?" (That'd be me, the concerned citizen.) To my question he responded, "That wouldn't happen, but you might lose a few capacitors or the test rig. You'd have three feet of concrete between the experiment and the outside, and the staff would all be 100 meters away." So okay, the test article won't be creating a mushroom cloud over Huntsville. People were laughing at me, but d@mmit, I didn't know, and someone had to ask the tough question, because you can be quite sure that the EPA will be asking them when they fill out their environmental impact report.

I really didn't mean to give Cassibry a hard time. Like I said, most of his talk was quite engaging, and the technology sounded promising, given proper funding and technological success. It might require a much smaller demonstration test to prove out the concept. If Cassibry's schedule is correct, he could get a 100-ton test article aboard the SLS when it's ready. So we'll just see what happens next. In the meantime, it'll be interesting to see what other exciting technology comes out of Huntsville. If you take away one big project from the rocket people here, their creativity will find outlets elsewhere. The future awaits!

Bart Leahy, Retired Conference Chair

So my three-year project is now finished. ISDC 2011, four and a half days of very hard but good work, is now over. I'm still a little fuzzy around the edges, having averaged 6 hours of sleep per night and 18 hours of work per day. Mind you, others got a lot less sleep (what IS it with IT guys that they insist on going 2-3 days without?), but it'll probably take a couple more days for my middle-aged body to recover.

But again: what great work! Consider: 857 registrants (budgeted: 400), around 20 companies and organizations in the exhibit hall, over 350 attendees at the job fair, maybe 100 total at the open-to-the-public author tracks.

My team of volunteers and NSS staffers did a fantastic job. No major hiccups, not a lot of complaints, lots of good things said. Eventually I became invisible, the operation became essentially frictionless, and attendees were free to focus on the content. And what, exactly, WAS the content? We were busy (perhaps too busy--I got a couple complaints about too many tracks, but nothing too fierce). The sessions I did see were at meals: Thursday dinner (Rick Tumlinson), Friday dinner (Robert Bigelow), and Sunday lunch (Deborah Barnhart). Rick was offering up his vision of humanity's vision in space. Bigelow was talking about his company's new inflatable space station designs. Barnhart was speaking about the future of the U.S. Space & Rocket Center.

I didn't see much of my own conference, truth be told, but then I expected that. I was running around a lot, moving stuff around, calling in audio-visual requests, and addressing minor room furniture changes. It's rather like working at Disney World (oddly enough). Any time I paused long enough to relax in a function room and watch some presentation, I'd get a phone call, so eventually I just took in my pauses with my team somewhere. It got embarrassing hearing people say I was doing a good job when I started feeling seriously useless around day three. One of the attendees offered up a useful analogy: "The most important job in the Army is the guy who stocks the toilet paper. If you're doing your job right, you're invisible and no one notices; but if you're not doing your job, all hell breaks loose."

In any case, if good leadership involves recruiting good people and staying out of the way when they're doing fine (and it does, in my world), then I'll accept the compliment. I've got a lot of self-sufficient friends, and that means they take initiative within reason before asking for help. The F.O.B.s and F.O.Y.s (Friends of Bart and Friends of Yohon) are a great bunch of people; they made my job easier and made me and Huntsville look good. SAAAAA-lute!

My favorite story from the conference has to be the luncheon on the last day. I was Master of Ceremonies, and things proceeded as normal until I was working on closing remarks. Debbie, the Media Queen, was reading off a list of people who had contributed to our silent auction (half the proceeds to go to NSS, half to go to the Red Cross of Madision County for tornado relief). Suddenly, Yohon is signalling me from stage left. He's whispering, "We've got a problem: we've got tornado sirens going off." I kept my expression unchanged or put on a Disney Smile and asked, "So, what?"

"We need to keep people here."

I nodded, returned to the microphone. "Folks, as much as I'd like to tell you I was joking, I'm afraid there are tornado sirens going off outside. We've been told to stay here."

Then Yohon ran up again and said, "No, we've got to go."

Back at the mike, I said, "Okay, folks, I was wrong. We need to follow the staff in an orderly fashion. We'll be going toward the basement. Thanks for coming to ISDC!"

And off the crowd went, moving in that aforementioned orderly fashion toward the door. Before I could retreat, an older couple oddly asked me to take their picture in front of the podium, which had the NSS and ISDC logos on it. Then off we went.

When I got downstairs, I heard, incongruously, a piano playing. Robert, one of my volunteers, had found one among the other stuff in the basement, and started playing show tunes. Very, very well. 

It was magic, of a sort. It set people at ease, and the mostly uncertain atmosphere became more like a cocktail party (one of my friends suggested opening up a bar). People were texting, taking pictures, and making movies with their various electronic devices, and the time passed convivially until the all-clear sounded and the staff told us it was safe to come out of the shelter.

If I learned anything from this conference about leadership, it was "Never let them see you stress." Sweating is fine, if you're looking busy. Look worried, and that worry spreads like gossip or illness. I wish I'd internalized that lesson earlier, but it really took until I was sure we had all our major program components in place before I was comfortable enough to re-install my "Disney software." It's the sort of software that allows a high-strung guy like me take a little time to lighten up and wonder jokingly if I've lost my marbles.

So I put on the new power suits (and the tuxedo on Friday) and did my Disney thing. It worked, so what the heck.

Eventually I'm going to write a book or a few blogs about nonprofit event management since most of what I learned was under fire. Reading "lessons learned" about the details from previous conferences does little good if you're still struggling with the basics. So expect more thoughts when I'm more fully awake.

In the meantime, I can rest easy for a few days (before I go back to supporting Science Cheerleader), happy and satisfied with a job well done. If I'm going to be a one-time ISDC Chairman (my signature block now reads "ISDC 2011 Chairman (Retired)), I might as well go out on top of my game.

Peace,

/b

Psssst!

At last count, we had 659 registered attendees at ISDC 2011. That's a pretty good number, I'm told. Walk-ins and job fair participants will likely kick that number upward quite a bit. What's quite a bit? I have my theories, but I'll wait and see.

Going to be a little busy for the next week, folks. Talk to you when it's over.

ISDC 2011: The Countdown Continues

We're now at about T-minus 9 days until the first ISDC activity starts: a tour of the United Launch Alliance plant in Decatur, Alabama. We're getting down to the brass tacks and nit-picky details that are the bane of any event planner's existence, but they're also things that need to get done. We'll get there, but I'll probably make myself crazy over the next nine days making sure that we do.

Speaking of tours, we have included tours to NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (due date for international visitors has passed, deadline for U.S. Citizens is TODAY!), the Von Braun Astronomical Society (full), and the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology (also full, or close to it).

The good news is that we have our primary speakers lined up, and we've got some impressive ones. Our keynote speaker at the Governors Dinner/Gala, Robert Bigelow, for one. His company has been building inflatable space stations, and one of our primary sponsors, Dynetics, has been building the reaction control system for the next one to go up there. We've never had Bigelow at an ISDC before, so that's something of a distinction (got to thank our friend at Dynetics, Tim Pickens, for that). We're featuring past astronauts, current NASA center directors, folks from commercial ("New") space, traditional aerospace companies, space advocacy groups, academia, and international organizations. If you're in the neighborhood and can't afford to do all four days, we do have a one-day registrations you can purchase, and you also can purchase meal tickets.

We've filled up our hotel block at Embassy Suites, but you might be able to find non-block rooms there. Holiday Inn is right across the street from Embassy, and last I heard they still had rooms. Most of the action will be happening at the Von Braun Center, though the one-day Space Investment Summit will occur at Embassy. If you're an ISDC attendee, your price for SIS drops from $125 to $50, so that's definitely worth investigating!

Among our participants are over 130 students from around the world, all of whom participated in the Space Settlement Design Contest. They'll be on hand to show off their work during poster sessions set in the exhibit area. We've got seven of the Google Lunar X PRIZE teams showing up for our Saturday plenary to talk about their projects and, hopefully, show off their hardware. NASA will have a 30' X 30' booth in the exhibit area, as will the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. We've also brought in UAHuntsville, Dynetics, ATK, Astro- und Feinwerktechnik Adlershof GmbH (please don't ask me how to pronounce that), NASA Federal Credit Union, and others. Our major sponsors include Boeing, Dynetics, UAHuntsville, Space News, and Space Canada.

In addition to the paid programming, we will have some freebie activities for the general public, including a space career fair for job seekers (participants include Dynetics and Aerojet) and a book fair, where eminent space authors will be discussing the future of space and signing/selling their books.

Exciting stuff! As it was while I was working at Walt Disney World, so it is here: my job is to make sure others are having a good time and getting the most out of their experience. I'll get to play tourist and have fun of my own later. Meanwhile, I hope to see you there. If you're interested in what the future of humans in space will look like, and learning how we can grow a spacefaring civilization "from the ground up" (our conference theme), then ISDC is the place for you, May 18-22. See you there!

An Introvert in Charge

Progress on ISDC 2011 continues. The major moving pieces are in place, or nearly so. Lots of little details still to be worked out, but the level of heck is subsiding, and I'm actually looking forward to seeing some of this stuff unfold in person, if I'm given the time.

My friends are surprised at how well I'm handling the pre-conference stress. I tell them my supply of "gives-a-damn" has gotten too low to get really spun up. And really, I had a thought today that brought a smile to my face: one month from today, ISDC 2011 will be done, over, and I can go back to being Bart Leahy, English Major and Geek. I also find the folks who ask me, "What are you going to do with yourself?" amusing. I'm ready to respond, "Dude, who CARES?!?"

Conference management is teaching me a lot about myself:

• I'm not particularly patient when people don't do what I ask or what they tell me they're going to do (who is?).
• I "hire" people based on the quality of their work, but also on their ability to get along with others. That might sound like a "no duh" to some, but I'm surprised when people expect to be recruited and aren't. Ability or seniority don't wow me as much as ability + sociability.
• I am not a micromanager, but I do want to know what's going on. Situational awareness: good. Telling everyone how to do everything: suckitude.
• I will willingly take on the uglier tasks (apologies, large-scale organization, asking for money) and pitch in where needed.
• I will ask for advice and, more often than not, take it unless I think the advice crosses some internal business rules I've set up in my head.
• I am more comfortable if I have a known organization, budget, and set of rules-of-engagement.
• I prefer precedent to automatically making up rules on the spot. Part of this is a natural conservatism, part of it is that I hate reinventing the wheel unnecessarily, and part of it is an effort to maintain consistency within a group.
• I like brief (<1 hour), activity-focused meetings. If we have nothing further on an agenda, I end the meeting because I hate wasting time.
• I don't yell very often, but when I do, I scare people because I don't do it very often, and  it's usually because I've allowed a bunch of little things to pile up. It is also entirely possible that I will yell because people have ignored me when I was being nice, polite, reserved, or deferential.
• I don't like yelling.
• I really, Really, REALLY dislike being in charge. It's not that I dislike making decisions. I'll do that. I just prefer to be in charge of my own work, not others'. That, and I prefer not being the "front guy." I'm a very happy executive officer.
• If a decision is still pending, I will try to get as much advice and input as I can; however, once a decision has been made, I lack patience with people who offer criticism when they either provided no input into the decision or did not contribute to the result. My general attitude is, "If you didn't have to do it yourself, be thankful."
• I prefer for-profit to non-profit management because the carrots and sticks are more concrete: do a good job, get rewarded; do a bad job, get fired.
• I prefer requests--particularly distasteful ones--in writing. I'm also more of a learn-by-reading than learn-by-listening person.
• I manage others the way I prefer to be managed: minimal supervision, respect for one's abilities, expectations clearly communicated unless the situation is vague. I don't have a great deal of patience with people who want a great deal of attention, feedback, direction, or encouragement. This is a problem when dealing with extroverts.
• I am perfectly happy taking on a project, doing it well, and then dropping it. The idea of staying in one place and "empire building" bores me. I am motivated by interesting work, not seeing how many people I can get reporting to me.

So there it is. While this whole thing has made me a little nuts, my manager put "event management" on my list of competencies. Oy. And while I'm doing this ISDC thing and various background organizational duties for Science Cheerleader, that doesn't mean I want to be known as an "events guy." The INFJ still wants to be left to himself in a cubicle somewhere, writing stuff. And after all this is over, I'll be quite happy to do so again.

Busy, Busy

About a month out from ISDC, and the details are getting hammered out. Looked at our speaker list lately? I finally did today, and realized we've got some very cool people coming to Huntsville next month! Hope I get to see at least some of it...

Also, the irrepressible Science Cheerleaders continue to appear in new and exciting places across the internet. Their latest appearance is on Engineering.com. Goooo science!

Status

Well, your fearless ISDC 2011 Conference Chair is still employed (and will have a new gig after the conference), so that much is right with the world...assuming there aren't any MORE budget cuts.

Putting together the last-minute items for ISDC, so come on over!

2011 International Space Development Conference in Social Media



One thing I picked up through 12 years of working at the Walt Disney World Resort is how powerful pervasive marketing can be. This means getting the attention of potential guests (customers) wherever they may be. Think about it: you have to go very far out of your way NOT to see a Disney commercial. In the 21st century, one place our most likely potential customers will be is on the internet.


Conference marketing has changed dramatically. The costs in paper mailings might be reduced by working with electrons, but the sheer breadth of the internet means that just having a web site is no longer enough. You have to have a presence in multiple areas, go where your most likely customers are, and be able to generate that most elusive of viral marketing phenomena: buzz.


From early on in our planning, we have made a conscious effort to embrace and leverage social media to market ISDC 2011. In addition to our primary website (http://isdc.nss.org/2011), we have expanded to the following arenas as well:


Twitter (short messages and updates)
http://twitter.com/ISDC
User ID: @ISDC
Hashtag: #ISDC


Facebook (longer messages and pictures)
http://www.facebook.com/NSSISDC

LinkedIn (broadcasting to a professional audience)
http://www.linkedin.com/groups/2011-International-Space-Development-Conference-3844843?mostPopular=&gid=3844843


NSS.org (for press releases and other information)
http://www.nss.org/news/releases/pr20110402.html


Cafepress.com (for merchandise sales)
http://www.cafepress.com/dd/53083292


These are merely our storefront sites. We can't overlook the valuable use of email bulletins to our NSS Chapters mailing list as well as NSS's Downlink. We also have been encouraging NSS members to "Like" or "friend" the various ISDC sites, as well as discuss the conference and link to it on their personal blogs, which builds greater visibility for our existing sites.


It doesn't hurt to have a little fun with this effort now and then. Through my connection with Darlene Cavalier, the Science Cheerleader, ISDC 2011 was able to get a welcome video from the Science Cheerleaders for our site home page. The trick, as always, is to keep people interested, and keep our content dynamic and interesting. Part of that derives from the conference's speakers and activities, part of it comes from the way we package things. If you have ideas that we haven't tried (and don't cost a whole lot), please let me know at ISDC2011.Chair at gmail.com. That's another advantage of internet-based marketing: quick collaboration and correction if things aren't working.


Print media are not going away. We have ads to post in Space News and other related publications, as well as traditional press releases, flyers, patches, stickers, and business cards for in-person contacts. But let there be no doubt: with a tech-savvy audience, we need to keep the tech-heavy internet front and center in our future efforts.


Bart Leahy is Chairman of the 2011 nternational Space Development Conference

Merchandising!

ISDC shirts, coffee cups, and other useful items are now available online through Cafepress.com!

Shop early, shop often! ;-)

Synergy!

The Science Cheerleaders now appear on the welcome page of the 2011 International Space Development Conference. Check it out!

Latest on ISDC

Your Humble Narrator was interviewed (along with friend and Business Track Chair Cliff McMurray) on The Space Show (http://www.thespaceshow.com/detail.asp?q=1533), during which he did his level best to sound coherent.

Seven weeks and counting. Tick, tick, tick.

What's Busy Like?

Okay, so I don't get to post here as often as I'd like. That's just as well because I couldn't guarantee the quality of the posts if I posted more often. Here's what busy feels like in my world:

Day Job: NASA
Ignoring for the moment that the current Continuing Resolution is due to expire a week from tomorrow, I've got one proposal in work, two more in the queue, untold others waiting in the wings, all due between now and...

Free Time Job #1: ISDC
The International Space Development Conference is zooming along. Ten weeks out, and we're about 80% of the way through filling our programming tracks. Lots of cool speakers we're waiting to confirm, and some we already have (check the web site). Or, consider some of the following:

• "Getting Things Done" Panel: Everything you always wanted to know about how space policy is made in Washington, featuring legislative, administration, and other people responsible for getting space issues and budgets signed into law.
• Building Sustainable Support for Space: Overcoming Myths and Misconceptions: Is it possible to obtain long-term support for space activities? If so--how?
• The Google Lunar X Prize: Teams from across the nation and around the world are competing for a $30 million prize to place a working lander on the Moon. Learn from the teams themselves what they are doing and how.
• Workshop - "How Do I Get My Payload on the International Space Station?": This will be an A to Z tutorial on the process and paperwork needed to get science, academic, and commercial payloads onto ISS.
• Military Space Track: What's happening in military space--on space-based surveillance to orbital debris and planetary defense? Learn from the officers making it happen.
• Space Launch System Mission Planning: The US is on a course to build a heavy-lift launch vehicle. What is its status, and what will we do with it once we build it? Listen to and offer suggestions for this next-generation centerpiece of space exploration.
• Earth and Planetary Science: Learn about the latest developments on Earth, the Sun, and other bodies in our solar system and how they could affect our future in space.
• International Cooperation: How will the ISS expand in the coming decades as we work more closely with our international partners? What more needs to be done?
• Space Based Solar Power Symposium: Learn the latest developments about SBSP--an energy technology that becomes ever-more relevant every time the price of gas increases!
• Education and Outreach: In an ever-more-competitive marketplace of ideas, what can the space community do to engage young people and the general public in humanity's greatest adventure? What works? What doesn't? What hasn't been tried yet? That's what this track is all about.
• Biotechnology and Space Biology: What do the discoveries of arsenic-based life tell us about life beyond Earth? What developments in biotechnology can help us live and work in space? Huntsville is home to the HudsonAlpha Biotechnology Institute, which will be sending speakers to ISDC to talk about the intersection between biotech and space tech.
• Living in Space: How will people live and work in low-Earth orbit? On other worlds? What constraints will shape their lives? This track covers the cultural side of the future of space.
• Book Fair and Author Discussions: Renowned space authors talk about their latest works and share their thoughts on the future of space--10 years or 100 years from now!
• Governors Dinner and Gala: It's not often that you get to dine beneath an actual Saturn V--Huntsville has two! Join us at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center as we celebrate the latest achievements in space.

At least we can't be faulted for lacking ambition. The tracks are a mix of practicality and idealism, and that's about par for the course for the space business: big dreams, hard realities. Too bad I'll be running around with my hair on fire for five days: it should be a fun conference to attend.

 

Free Time Job #2: Science Cheerleader.com

The Science Cheerleaders will be appearing at a Women@NASA event next week in Washington. I can't attend due to lack of leave and funds, dagnabbit, but the SciCheers will no doubt do their usual fine, fun job of "bustin' down the stereotypes." I've been working paperwork and writing tasks behind the scenes, as is appropriate for the Cheer Operations Ninja. Goooo Science Cheerleaders!

 

And now I must sleep. I'm at least doing what I can to keep myself balanced and healthy: smacking golf balls, quitting caffeine for Lent, and getting eightish hours of sleep per night. There are worse ways to live. And, as my manager pointed out to me recently, "You hate being undersubscribed." True, that. More adventures ahead, folks. Stay tuned.

Speaking of ISDC...

Dar gave me a little space on Science Cheerleader.com to talk about the conference. Huzzah!

We're actually making good progress on things. We've got our locations nailed down, along with conference tracks, most of the meal menus, and trade show space mapped out. I've got a good team helping keep me sane as we head into the home stretch. Now all we need are the attendees, exhibitors, and sponors all in place to make it happen.

Excitement continues!

ISDC 2011

In case you folks wonder what I've been doing with myself...

The International Space Development Conference (ISDC) is the annual gathering of the National Space Society, a non-profit educational group (501(c)(3)) dedicated to accelerating the day where human beings are living in working in thriving communities beyond the Earth. ISDC 2011 will be our 30th such event, set for May 18-22, 2011, and as usual it will feature a varied audience of space professionals, industrialists, astronauts, educators, scientists, engineers, policy analysts, NASA leaders, and—most importantly—interested private citizens.

This year’s ISDC will be hosted at the Von Braun Center in America’s “Rocket City,” Huntsville, Alabama, for the first time since 1993. A lot has changed in that time. The space business and the Huntsville community have grown and become more diverse, and the conference’s agenda reflects that growth and change. In addition to addressing NASA’s space activities—the International Space Station and the heavy-lift Space Launch System—ISDC will be hosting tracks on commercial crew and cargo efforts, space-based solar power, space defense systems, planetary sciences, business and economics, space prizes, biotechnology, space settlement technologies and sociology, politics, education, and outreach.

Our confirmed guests include NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, Virgin Galactic CEO George Whitesides, Former NASA Administrator and University of Alabama-Huntsville Eminent Scholar Mike Griffin, Historian John Logsdon, Lunar Scientist Paul Spudis, AIAA Deputy Executive Director Klaus Dannenberg, NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo Program Integration Manager Dennis Stone and Curt von Braun, nephew of Wernher von Braun who led the development of America’s Saturn V moon rocket here in Huntsville.

ISDC 2011 is the best opportunity members of the general public have to interact with the people making things happen in the space business. It draws its distinct personality from this dynamic mix of government and industry, professional and citizen advocates, traditional and new, present and future, hardware and ideas, seriousness and fun. We look forward to seeing you in May!

The Weekend...What Little I Did with It

Mission accomplished: the 2011 International Space Development Conference will be held in Huntsville, Alabama. I appreciate the moral support I got from the officers, and especially the technical writing/proposal/presentation support I got from Yohon, Melissa, and Laura. Now the REAL work begins. Proposal writing and presentation giving are the easy parts. After this, we've got some contracts to negotiate, speakers to invite, meals to arrange, and rooms to fill. No sweat. (HA!)

And after we won that little challenge, I split to go have dinner with Father Dan, Marilyn, Chris, and David, while Yohon went elsewhere...and we both missed the fact that someone was expected to speak at the dinner that night to promote ISDC 2011 (we recruited Dave--I owe him a bottle of wine at least for that) and that the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (that'd be HAL5, our chapter) won Chapter of the Year. Go figure. I'll write more about what little I did see of the conference later. I sat in on one session, and otherwise spent most of my time in the exhibit hall, meetings, or getting myself prepared for the ISDC thing. Some day I'll get to go to one of these things for non-work purposes, but that won't likely happen until after 2011...

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On a completely unrelated note, my e-niece Morgan continues to wait out her recovery from her bone marrow transplant. Hang in there, kiddo...

Morning Thoughts

First, an update on Morgan from Dar:

Morgan's doing well (albeit in pain...nothing a little morphine can't mend). Safe travels...

She's sleeping irregularly but beating people at Wii games. Hang in there, sweetie! Lots of folks watching out for ya.

Next, tip o' the fedora to Scott for finding an article on why soaking the rich does bad things to the economy. We will reap what we sow.

I will not be online much the next few days, as I'll be working on my pitch and traveling to Orlando for the International Space Development Conference. The goal: to get ISDC to Huntsville in 2011. Oh yeah, and see Father Dan and my peeps from Disney. Otherwise, I'm not an official presenter or reporter this year. I'll have more thoughts when I get back, and will most likely Twitter while I'm there, so you can check my feed for 140-character thoughts. Enjoy the quiet!

Potpourri XLVI

Lori Garver, a former Associate Administrator for NASA and also a former National Space Society Executive Director, was been selected by President Obama to be the Deputy Administrator for NASA. I consider that a good thing.

From Jon S., a link re: Lego releasing designs by Frank Lloyd Wright. Woo hoo!

From Father Dan, a YouTube video on a very cool VW factory in Dresden.

Speaking of Germany, if you'd like to get an American's perspective on living in Germany, I highly recommend checking out the podcasts of my friend Jennifer. She's a fun person I went to UCF with backindaday who is now a wife and mother over in Deutschland, and she has a very soothing voice. She'd be great on NPR (and I mean that in a good way).

My buddy (and "work wife") Erika is running in the Cotton Row run tomorrow. Guess I'd better show up.

The price for my Kindle Wall Street Journal subscription went up to $14.99 per month. That's one thing I suppose I can look forward to if I want to pay for content. Sigh. Still a darned good newspaper.

Just saw this on Facebook, and found it sufficiently interesting to add. This site offers different ways to track quantifiable data available on the web. I'll have to play with it some more before I make any comment on its usefulness or uselessness.

Quiet weekend, so I'll let it drop there. Looking forward to a reasonably quiet Monday, even though I have more work to do on HAL5's pitch for ISDC 2011. Draft done, anyway. Progress!

ISDC 2011, Already?

I've more or less signed myself on to help the Huntsville Alabama L5 Society (HAL5) put in a bid to be the host chapter for the 2011 International Space Development Conference. I was almost Operations Manager for this year's ISDC, but then I had the bad taste to go and move away from the Washington, DC, area. I needn't have run so far: ISDC followed me anyway. So much for getting a new hobby.

So what, exactly, is involved in running a space advocacy convention? Here's my preliminary "take" on the matter, scribbling rapidly in my journal this morning:

The Bid

The National Space Society doesn't just take volunteers to run a conference. They expect a little competition and some choice in the matter. So no doubt come the next ISDC there will be a competition between some unknown city and Huntsville.

This means HAL5 will need to get some of its ducks in a row. Some things we'll probably need to assemble include:

• Conference theme
• Programming tracks
• Hotel/convention space
• Sponsors
• Local (city of Huntsville) assistance
• A conference management team
• Conference logo(?)

The conference itself will be an even bigger elephant to chew (Query: "How do you eat an elephant?" Answer: "One bite at a time"). First we need a management team, consisting (at least!) of:

• Chair
• Co-Chair (Vice Chair?)
• Treasurer
• Secretary
• Legal Counsel
• Programming Chair
• Business Chair
• Operations Chair
• Public Relations Chair

Under the aforementioned, other items will be required:

Programming

• Track selection (what topics do we want to have speakers talk about at the conference?)
• Speaker selection (who do we want to invite to speak on the topics we want?)
• Track chairs (who is going to be responsible for running said tracks?)
• Room assignments (where are the various tracks going to be held?)--this is location-driven
• Schedule (this needs to be done early, IMHO, so that the Ops manager knows when events are occurring and how many volunteers s/he will need to staff the various rooms)
• There is also the Space Investment Summit (SIS), which is attached to, but not 100% a part of, ISDC. The SIS is a very clever and useful event, wherein venture capitalists, "angels," and other investors interested in putting their money into space are put into a room with would-be investees. You don't get to be a venture capitalist without a great deal of money, influence, and name recognition, which a local chapter doesn't normally have ("You're calling on behalf of HAL who?"). My guess, therefore, is that the investors in attendance are invited by--and the event is run by--NSS Headquarters. In the first year of the SIS, the would-be investees (space entrepreneurs) were also invited based on some sort of criteria. If all of that is left to NSS HQ, HAL5 will still need to provide function space as well as food and beverages for this event. Who pays? Interesting question.

Public Relations/Media/Advertising

• We'll need a decent public relations writer, that's for certain.
• We'll also need someone who knows the media and can maneuver and get attention in that world. This is a tough town to do this type of volunteering in because the government or one's employer might see you doing your day-job activities in your free time (even if you're doing it for free) as a conflict of interest. Ain't government work grand?
• ISDC 2008 managed to get a presence on C-SPAN this year, through the diligent efforts of my media-guru buddy Ian Murphy. Does HAL5 have the same sort of clout, or do we need to hire Ian again? The world wonders.
• Someone in the group suggested having a competition to design the conference logo. That, or we could hire the wife of one of our members to design it. Depends which one's less expensive, doesn't it?

Business Management

This is the "money man," so to speak. For ISDC 2005, the Business Manager dealt with things such as:

• Sponsor relations
• Conference merchandising, if any
• Obtaining giveaways--the most common conference giveaway these days is a laptop bag
• Obtaining volunteer gear (shirts)
• Negotiating and planning big-ticket items, like the obligatory conference "gala"
• Running registration, printing badges, etc.
• Setting up IT for the conference and attendees, if necessary
• Most importantly, the Business Manager is in charge of setting and sticking to the budget!

Operations

This is the area I have the most familiarity with, partially because I was more-or-less deputy to Josh Powers, who was Ops Manager for 2005 and Conference Chair for 2008. I also have some familiarity with this line of work because I worked in hotel operations and convention reservations at Walt Disney World for four years or so. I understand most of the needs here:

• Hotel liaison (getting the contract ball rolling, establishing the guest room block, determining how much convention/floor space is needed, setting up the meal menus, verifying the conference will have enough plugs for equipment, etc.)
• Convention hall liaison (if your convention space is not connected to/part of the hotel)
• Volunteer coordinator--recruiting, organizing, training, and herding those-who-volunteer to run audio/visual (A/V) equipment, registration, etc. The 2005 volunteers were trained Disney-Tradtions style, and things went off rather smoothly, thank you very much. Of course it also helps to have a group of volunteers who can think on their feet and work creatively around unique situations (which means at least a couple of volunteers over 30). We will not have Bill, Tommy, Nadine, or Giuseppina this time; but with any luck, other bright bulbs will present themselves.
• Obtaining A/V equipment, in cooperation with the Business Manager
• Establishing, laying out, and obtaining vendors to fill out exhibitor space
• Running an art show, if available
• Running a fashion show, if possible (what will fashions look like for those living offworld?)
• Conference security--this is easier if the hotel has staff on duty 24/7, but one can never be certain

Anyhow, that's a first-blush look at what we're in for. We've got about three years to get ready for this. It seems like a lot of time until reality sets in...probably about half a year into it. :-) May the force be with us.