The Amateur's Guide to Event Management

Part II: Brainstorming and Event Proposals

The bigger the event, the more people you'll need to run the show. And, quite frankly, the larger the event, the more ideas you'll need to make it work. In addition, the larger the event, the more likely it is that you'll need to codify the event plan into a formal written proposal. This part of the guide will provide you with some structure to your bright ideas.

Brainstorming
There are several ways you can brainstorm or generate event ideas, and they can run the gamut from the speakers you want to invite to what "theme" you want to what sort of table decorations you want on the dining room tables. The best format I've seen for brainstorming is a time-limited session with 6-10 participants, a facilitator, and a dry erase board or easel.

Why no more than 10 people? To keep the group orderly and within the control of a single facilitator.

Why time-limited? Because after 10-15 minutes, people get drained, even in "spontaneous mode."

Now the facilitator can just be a scribe, but it helps if s/he provides a little structure as well. For instance, the facilitator can make certain that the participants cover all the basics of the event (say, in the case of ISDC): location, speakers, registration policies, program book contents, entertainment, meal selections, special events-within-events, etc.

The ground rules for a brainstorming session, for those of you who haven't enjoyed the channeled creativity that fills corporate America, are pretty straightforward, but worth remembering:

• One person speaks at a time
• No idea is dismissed as "stupid" during the 10-15 minute storm session
• Don't take the time to question the realism of anyone's ideas during the storm session
• Participants should try to come up with as many ideas as they can
• The facilitator will write down every idea
• There isn't a price tag or "reality check" on ideas
• Once the storming session is over, THEN reality can set in--but the point of the brainstorming session is to have fun with the process

Brainstorming provides an early opportunity for your team members to "buy in" (another corporate-speak phrase that means "get their own ideas in") to the event. You won't use ALL the ideas, but you can use enough that your teammates can recognize and fight for their part of the show.

After the initial "storm," you can start applying your reality check. You go back over the hastily scribbled ideas and consider what's realistic and what's not (and if not, why not). Your event is born from this wild exchange of ideas.

Proposal Writing
The National Space Society requires bidding groups (usually NSS chapters in specific cities) to submit a written proposal. They do not provide a format. That leaves the content up to you--or does it? However, if you're serious about winning, it helps to do some research on what most business proposals include. My career before living in Huntsville was in writing proposals for government contractors, so I at least had a model. It might not always be the easiest form to follow, but it at least had the virtue (for me) of being familiar. So what goes into a proposal? Here's a broad outline:

• Technical Section (where you describe what you plan to do, where, with what facilities, events, bells, and whistles)
• Management Section (where you describe who is going to do the work/run the show, and what experience they have running or working on events like this)
• Past Performance (where you describe comparable events that your group or team members have run, how much they costs, what were their results, etc.)
• Budget (where you lay out, in the most realistic fashion you can, how much you think your event will cost and where you think the money will come from to pay for or exceed expenses)

Technical Section
This is where you lay out the what and where of your event. It should be the longest part of your proposal. Your customer/funding agency already knows who is attending. Your job is convincing them that they will want to do what you want where you want. In the case of ISDC, you can start with a description of the city in question: why come to Huntsville, Alabama? What has your city got to offer attendees besides your fearless team? You also might want to start talking early about the content of your program--what special events do you plan to include? What speakers or attractions in your area will make your event stand out? What's in it for your audience?

From there you need to talk about the specific venue of your proposed event. How many locations are large enough to host the event you plan to hold? What are your top two or three choices? (NSS, like the government, likes a couple of choices.) Why? What features does your favorite have? You need to paint your readers a picture of what their experience will be like. Make it a good one--and yes, include pictures in your proposals!

Management Section
"Why should I hire you?" You've heard that question in interviews, and that's often what makes the difference between being hired and being bewildered. This is where you need to think not just about your resume or previous job descriptions, but your results. Okay, so you've run the local charity ball--was it a success? Did it make money? Did people have a good time? Did the media say nice things? And what about your team? Have they had similar successes? Do they have experience in, or passion for, the jobs they've agreed to do?

Another important thing: organization. The 20th century might've created quite a few management ideas, but division of labor isn't an entirely bad thing, nor is a chain of command or specific depiction of your decision-making process. These things keep events and people focused on specific tasks, and you can clarify exactly who is doing what. Events like conventions all have specific things that must be done, regardless of the content (rocket science, cheerleading, what have you):

• Operations (e.g., hotel, meals)
• Recruiting, scheduling, assigning, and supervising conference volunteers
• Audio/visual
• Information technology support
• Entertainment
• Exhibits

Ideally, you've got people willing to take the lead (one on each). And you needn't recruit professionals. In fact, odds are good that if you're reading this blog, you don't have access to pros. However, you want to show that your team members--a paragraph per "officer" should be fine--can do the job you say they'll do.

A Note on Proposal Writing: In my case, I was a professional proposal writer, so I led the proposal as well. However, you might be more of a verbal person rather than a writer. Take the time to find the strongest writer you can find. You want to put your best foot forward.

Past Performance

This is where you or your team itemizes its success stories--events you've run, what they were, when they happened, how much money they made, what results they produced. You can do this in table form, narrative form, whatever. Your team should be able to show that you can do the job you're signing up to do as a group.

Budget

I'll discuss this in more detail later, but your budget should have some basis in reality. That means reviewing the price structure at your preferred location(s), multiplying by the number of rooms, days, or people, and laying out the numbers. Don't forget to add taxes and service charges!

The other half of the budget--income--is trickier because you've got to take a few leaps of faith. How much sponsorship money do you think you can bring in? How many people do you think will attend? How high of a registration price will your attendees pay? What do other groups charge for similar events? If you want to be thorough, you also might try a "worst case," "most likely case," and "best case" attendance figure.

Events begin with ideas. Those ideas come from--and must be excuted by--you and your team. You start with a dream, or series of dreams, in the form a brainstorming session. Then you start doing the hard research and laying out the first fully articulated version of your vision in a proposal. The dreams are exhilarating, and your enthusiasm should carry over into your proposal. But the proposal does more than set down your event on paper: it lays down claims that your event can be successful and proofs that your team can achieve it.

Hang onto your hat; the hard part is just beginning.

Miscellaneous Stuff from the ISDC

Okay, even though I attended none of the meals and few of the programs (my fault, not ISDC's), I still brought home the usual pile of intriguing stuff. For instance, if you go to one of these events, have a business card on hand--they are the primary means of information exchange. Here are the ones I collected over the course of two days:

• Mark Bontrager, Tony Gannon, Percy Luney, and Bernie McShea from Space Florida.
• Cariann Higginbotham from SpaceVidcast.com. Cariann and her husband Ben run a Mr.-and-Mrs. webcast focusing on space news out of Minneapolis, Minnesota. They are just too cute for words. They're kind of like a morning radio or TV show, but the chemistry/cute is real because of the husband-wife relationship. Cariann is just as friendly and upbeat in person as she is on the web. I hope SpaceVidcast gets broader play out there. They're fun.
• Barbara Hero, Founder and Director of the International Lambdoma Research Institute (she was selling a "Pythagorean Lambdoma Harmonic Keyboard (PLHK)." The PLHK is a diamond-shaped keyboard that emits various electronic tones depending on which key you press as a means of music therapy and relaxation. It helps if you've been a fan of Pink Floyd or Yanni before purchasing.
• David Buck, founder of Spaceship Earth Academy, a space-themed day-care/pre-school that's about to become a chain. I've talked with David at nearly every ISDC I've attended. He's a decent guy. Kinda looks like General Armstrong Custer. Not that there's anything wrong with that; just sayin'.
• Tony Webb, founder of eSpaceTickets.com. I met Tony in Dallas in 2007, when he was trying to sell lottery tickets for people to win trips to space. Still not sure how he's doing that or how on-the-level that is, but he's still keeping on.
• Brooke Owens, Space Industry Analyst on International Policy at the FAA's office of Commercial Space Transportation. I said nice things about Brooke's comments during the workforce discussion. Given her go-get-'em attitude and experiences at the X Prize Foundation, I wonder if she'll find government too constraining. Guess we'll see. (She expressed no displeasure with her work, I hasten to add--that would just be my theory.)
• Ken Davidian, Program Lead from the FAA OCST's Space Systems Development Division. Ken is a Facebook friend, but he and I chatted for awhile in a friendly enough fashion about OCST's work. Ken was a NASA guy until recently.
• Marianne Dyson, who's a science writer and consultant for National Geographic, a writer of space-related children's books, and a long-time friend from the National Space Society. Marianne was happy to see me, but expressed concern that I was spending too much time on Facebook and in front of the computer. I'm shocked, shocked...

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Getting back to the "stuff," or the swag as my buddy Doc calls it, here's an inventory of the welcome packet for each registered attendee, which came in an ATK-sponsored ISDC logo laptop bag (what my pal Tess would call a "man purse"). The bag will probably go to one of the kids in the family, but the rest of the stuff was fun. It included:

• The Conference program. That might've been useful to read, but the single-page schedule was the most important and useful item in the front pocket--and the only thing I looked at during the conference. Bad Bart! BAD!!
• The latest copy of Ad Astra Magazine. And yes, you can even find a book review of David Hitt's Homesteading Space by Your Humble Narrator on page 56.
• The May 25 issue of Space News.
• A Space Florida luggage tag. Now that's useful!
• An invitation to the Space Frontier Foundation's NewSpace 2009 conference at Ames Research Center July 17-20.
• A CD with archive editions of the Moon Miner's Manifesto, the newsletter of the Artemis Society. This, too, would be useful.
• A National Space Society membership brochure--useful for joining, renewing your membership, or recruiting someone to the Society.
• A NASA bumper sticker.
• A "Fly Me to the Moon" Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle bumper sticker. (Where's the Ares sticker?)
• An advertisement for the International Symposium on Solar Energy from Space, which is located in Toronto, Canada, September 8-10 and sponsored by Space Canada.
• A Space Florida fact sheet.

Not a bad haul, all things considered. I might even manage to read some of it before the next big thing hits my Kindle. No, really...

Young People and the Space Business

Believe it or not, I managed to take in a little of the actual content at the ISDC this year. Not a whole lot, mind you, but enough to cover at least one topic: the next generation of rocket scientists, astronauts, engineers, etc. I got a flavor for this in three environments:

• A panel on future workforce issues ("workforce refresh")
• A panel on hands-on education for aspiring space-minded students
• The NASA/National Space Society Space Settlement Contest

Workforce Refresh Panel
The workforce refresh panel was hosted by my buddy Loretta Whitesides, founder of Yuri's Night, blogger, and follower of inter-generational issues (like me). The participants included:

• Stacy Phillips from the Office of Human Capital at Kennedy Space Center
• Clay Yonce from Organizational Development at KSC
• Cassie Kloberdanz, Communications Associate at SpaceX
• Brooke Owens from the FAA's Office of Space Transportation
• Bob Richards, one of the founders of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS)

Loretta began by sharing some all-too-familiar statistics and charts showing the "monogenerational organization" that NASA has become. The average age of workers at NASA is 47 (I thought it was 49, go figure), and there are not a lot of folks older or younger than that. Part of that was due to historical staffing decisions: a lot of Apollo-era people were offered buy-outs in the late '80s while the agency itself experienced a hiring freeze in the early '90s--a situation that persists because the agency has been constrained in its civil service staffing for years now. The average age of new hires is 37, and the average age of the workforce is growing by 1.1 years every year. As one person put it, NASA is "aging faster than time."

Stacy Phillips spoke first. She reminded the audience of former administrator Mike Griffin's pledge to move NASA's workforce to 50 percent "fresh outs" (as in "people fresh out of college"). That sounds nice and makes sense, but given the "echo boom" of Generation Y, that's a little deceptive because 50% of the workforce IS fresh-outs anyway. So all Griffin wanted to do was bring the agency more in line with the national averages.

Phillips discussed the fact that NASA has a mentoring program. There was a call from NASA Headquarters for each center to have some sort of mentoring problem...without mandating a particular program. The mentoring process has concerned me for some time, as I watch management struggle to figure out how to mentor and young people entering NASA try to figure out what they want out of a mentor. Mentoring is not easy, and not everyone can do it well. KSC has a "matching tool" to connect mentors and "mentees" in a Match.com sort of web environment, which I believe has met with mixed results. Some folks within the agency, Phillips said, have suggested that NASA adopt a Google type of environment, where 70% of work time is devoted to direct product tasks, 20% goes to indirect support of products, and 10% goes toward innovation. There was no real idea, though, of how to implement such an environment at KSC or elsewhere.

Clay Yonce focused on activities to prevent departures of Gen Y workers. NASA has been trying to give "early career professionals" face time with senior management through a program called "Launching Leaders." Yonce described it as "social networking outside the computer," where under-30s can meet subject matter experts. He also discussed partnering with United Way and other non-profit organizations as a way to expand the program. He explained that there was a serious lack of hands-on experience among new civil servants (more on that a bit later).

Cassie Kloberdanz, who's been a friend since 2007, started off by explaining that workforce retention was not unique to NASA. She had two mentoring experiences at NASA, one at KSC, one at Marshall, with the MSFC experience being much more positive and rewarding than the KSC experience. At MSFC, she got to touch the hardware and was given responsibility. At KSC, new employee orientation was not emphasized and she wasn't given much responsibility or feedback. This caused her to leave the agency and return to school (she was doing a co-op with the National Space Society when we met in '07). She was very passionate about giving new employees responsibility, holding them accountable, and letting them "sink or swim."

Brooke Owens started out wanting to be a pilot, but 9/11 contracted the job market. She turned toward space, attending the International Space University (ISU). She eventually ended up at the X Prize Foundation, where she was tasked with leading a team that had to build half a dozen composite models of Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Like Cassie, she emphasized the need for new employees being allowed to take risks, work hard, and do attractive/interesting work. She had the quote of the day for me: "If you think it's the scariest job in your life, that's probably the job you should take." I admired her go-get-'em spirit.

Bob Richards gave a narrative of the formation of SEDS, the ISU, and other groups in the time before the internet and "social networking" sites. He had a good line: "Retention is such a low bar."

I asked Brooke what educational experiences she'd had that gave her the confidence to take on something like the SpaceShipOne project. She emphasized her small-town background, where she wasn't really given a choice about working hard or "ditching class."

Cassie mentioned that the average age at SpaceX was around 35, with the technicians being somewhat older and the engineers and front-office folks being younger. She explained that "You don't get fired at SpaceX for making a mistake; you get fired for making the same mistake twice," a comment she'd made to me before the program.

Phillips mentioned that KSC offers training to mentors, which addressed my earlier concerns. I'd be interested to see what that consists of, but I'm a contractor so it wouldn't affect me anyway.

Someone else mentioned the Phaeton program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is an internally funded project for new hires.

Phillips had to field a question about bureaucracy and the inability of NASA to fire "bad employees." She shook her had and said she understood the concern: "There are good supervisors and there are not-good supervisors...we're going to start holding supervisors accountable."

Hands-On Education
This panel was sharply curtailed because the lunch preceding it ran long (like someone is going to interrupt Buzz Aldrin?), but it was still enlightening.

Tony Gannon, Director of Education, Space Florida
Space Florida has three primary activities: business development, education and workforce development, and space operations (rocket launches) at Cape Canaveral. Gannon was there to talk about the Space Florida Academy, which provides balloon-launched projects for college-level students. They're given a week to develop a payload and launch it: "The balloon goes up at 9 a.m. on Friday, whether the payload is ready or not." Students are also put into an "inquiry-based" learning environment, where questions are met with "Don't ask me, go find out for yourself." The sink-or-swim method. Works for me!

Gannon also shared with the audience that Lockheed Martin "could employ every graduate in engineering right now." That's a little scary.

Ruben Nuñez, Earthrise Space, Inc.
Here's what Earthrise Space's Facebook page has to say about what they do:

Earthrise Space, Inc. is a not for profit organization that was
founded by a group of students and professionals in Central Florida with the
common goal of advancing private and commercial space exploration. Our current
focus, the Omega Envoy project, will help realize these goals through successful
competition in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. We believe that any team with enough
dedication and sufficient engineering expertise can make incremental
technological advancements that will expand the horizons of human space
exploration.

Through outreach to all academic and professional levels, coupled
with synergistic business relationships, we hope to maintain Florida’s position
as the global leader in the space industry. Perhaps more important, however, is
the effect it will have on the public conscience. This contest will drastically
change the way the community sees space, and redefine what is “possible”.
Regardless of whom wins, the victor of the X PRIZE will have proven that you do
not need government administration, exotic technology, or industry backing to
unlock the final frontier—it is open to all people on Earth, all backgrounds,
nationalities, and all ways of life. Thanks to modern advances in digital media
and communications, everyone can take part in “the next giant step.” All that
space requires of those who explore its depths is their courage—and for those
who dare shall be rewarded with unlimited opportunity.

In practical terms, they are providing students with hands-on experience via project-based education, akin to Space Florida's work. I liked his challenge: "If you don't do it, who's going to do it?"

Josh Neuberg, Conrad Foundation
The Conrad Foundation, named for late Apollo 12 astronaut Pete Conrad, provides prize-based, entrepreneurial education. I liked Neuberg's emphasis, which began with a brief zing on traditional book learning and championed instead "entrepreneurial education" to break down barriers between science (engineering) and business.

Michael Mealling, Masten Space Systems
I've known Mike since the 2006 X Prize Cup. He was brought into this discussion because Masten hires two college co-op students per year and because he wrote a blog about what students need to do to get into aerospace. His emphasis when hiring "fresh-outs" has been on the student's extra-curricular activities. He doesn't just ask, "What have you built?" but "What have you built without a teaching telling you to?" Masten does not want workers educated and experienced in "traditional aerospace" because it takes too long to "untrain" them (quoth Yoda: "You must unlearn what you have learned").

The introductions took up a good deal of the hour. When the Q&A session opened, the first person to speak was Gillian Evans, a math and physics teacher from Canada. The frustration in her voice was obvious. She appreciated what everyone on the panel was saying, but stated that the American system is based on GPAs and standardized tests. Today's teachers have "no incentive for inquiry-based learning."

Mealling partially agreed, but said that there are "holes" in the curriculum to allow teachers time to teach space-based, hands-on learning. Ms. Evans was adamant: "That only works with teachers who want to do it."

Another high school teacher, this one from the Florida Space Coast, said that it wasn't a teaching issue first, it was a political issue, arguing that private industry needs to lobby for loosening the test-based education model (No Child Left Behind).

Evans chimed in with "We don't need SATs. Get rid of them." There was then a brief discussion about how U.S. universities were supposed to accept students without some basis for comparison.

Gannon added that, "You don't just read science, you've got to go out and do it."

And at that point, I had to go over and make my pitch to the Conference Committee. But you get the idea. For science and engineering, as in most endeavors, students learn better by doing than just studying.

NASA/NSS Space Settlement Contest
I have no notes in my journal from this hour, and because I'm an idiot, I don't have pictures to share. Instead, I must share my impressions and all-too-fallible memories. Bear with me, the point is not to provide specifics here, anyway, but to offer some unvarnished analysis and opinion writing.

I talked to seven teams: three from India, two from Romania, one from Canada, one from the U.S.

Now the official winner was Eric Yam who was from Canada. Like many of the kids, he talked very quickly, but his concept was impressive. One of the constraints of the contest was for the students to use existing/known technologies as much as possible, and to avoid "unobtanium." The fundamental units of young Mr. Yam's massive geosynchronous structure were inflatable habitat modules based on Bigelow Aerospace's inflatable space station. The "ribs" of the structure are long tubes based on existing commercial aircraft airframes.

The two teams from Romania were mostly girls. They spoke more slowly than the boys, possibly because they were less comfortable with their English, but they had answers for all of my English-major-level questions. The benefits of their projects, as near as I can remember, were the use of expandable toroid designs. One design, in its final form, could house 500,000 people!

The one American kid I saw was just arriving as I was sniffing around. He was a pretty quiet, very tall young man from Georgia. He wasn't so much a "team" as an independent genius. His structure reminded me of The Machine from the movie Contact. However, there were a couple of unique features that caught my attention. For example, the outer sections of the ring/torus were seeded with bacteria that is highly radiation-resistant, but also can be used to process wastes. The core of the station was also interesting, in that it had a very unique appearance--almost organic. The student grinned a little and said, "That's because it's grown." And by "grown," he means organically developed from space-based materials at a nanoscopic level. For this student (Jacob, I believe, is his name), the Singularity really is near.

And while I was pleased to talk to the sole American I could find, the Indian teams just blew me away. One station included vertical takeoff or landing (VTOL) aircraft, magnetic-levitation trains, magnetic shoe soles, zero-gravity toilets, electrical generators, and gosh-knows-what-else. And all of the designs were new to me, some beautiful, all ingenious.

Another Indian team had a design that was plain marvelous. They began by explaining that the purpose of this station would be to exploit the resources of Mars. For those unfamiliar with the concept, most of these stations include some sort of spinning to provide artificial gravity via centripital force (for an example of this, fill a bucket partway with water and then start twirling it in a horizontal or vertical circle--the water stays in the bucket, it doesn't fall out). Most of the students' designs used a torus (donut) shape, where occupants' heads are pointing inward toward the center of spin and their feet point downward toward the stars. This group used a "double dumbbell" design, where there are two sets of platforms pointing inward toward each other and spinning around a common center. In this case, the platforms (inner and outer) look like symmetrical, radially-sectioned lily pads complete with organic-looking tubes that connect each radial section to the central core. Beautiful. And even the interiors of these platforms were different from anything I've seen in the West. Rather than housing and farmland laid out in a Cartesian grid, if you flew overhead, the land would almost look like some sort of modern art--a combination of strange symbols and paisley. Farmland, housing, medical facilities, and other land uses have no distinct pattern to them. Like the station, they are nearly organic. I loved it, and I wish these kids from Punjab would've spoken more slowly, as I missed some of what they said. But it was all very, very cool.

So the message I took away from the Space Settlement Design contest was that I had cause for hope in the future. I've expressed more than a few concerns about the state of education in the U.S. and the world at large. What are we teaching our kids? What are they learning? Will the things they learn be useful for helping us build a better future? The teams of Indian kids and the lone American also gave me pause. All of these kids worked with teacher-mentors to ensure they were getting things right; and yet the American kid worked alone. Are they learning these things in class, or are they self-directed learners? (I suspect the latter.) Is interest in space settlement that far gone in this country? Meanwhile, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) wants to send men into orbit by 2015 and to the Moon by 2020--the Constellation timeline, oddly enough--and they just might do it. Regardless, all of these kids were dreaming BIG and thinking positively about the future, and it was refreshing to see that.

As a nation, the United States has many challenges ahead--not just in the next four years, but in the next century. A uniform government education system might work, if that system was dedicated to achievement and learning, not just meeting test scores and keeping union members happy. But if we don't end up with a government-controls-all system (which I fervently hope will be the case), then we owe it to our students to provide them the most freedom--bounded by informed wisdom--to learn what they need to learn to make the future better. As one of my fellow ISDC participants put it, it's a little disconcerting that space settlement design might be the next thing we outsourced. I wish those kids from Punjab well, but I hope for the sake of my own country that that will not be the case.

Potpourri XLVII

Articles here and here on Ares I-X...

Here's a list of things that have to go right to get human beings to and from the Moon safely. All of them must take place at extreme velocities, temperatures, or environments and require our greatest efforts to correctly. How is it that people cannot be inspired by the space program? How is it possible for a nation to make space exploration boring?

From a friend of Hu: a company that ships wine to Alabama legally. Better read the fine print first.

Here's the official White House press release on the nominations of Charles Bolden and Lori Garver.
THE WHITE HOUSE
Office of the Press Secretary
_______________________________________________________________________________________FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
May 23, 2009
President Obama Announces More Key Administration Posts

WASHINGTON, DC – Today, President Barack Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals for key administration posts: General Charles Bolden, Administrator of NASA and Lori Garver, Deputy Administrator of NASA.

President Obama said, “These talented individuals will help put NASA on course to boldly push the boundaries of science, aeronautics and exploration in the 21st century and ensure the long-term vibrancy of America’s space program.”

President Obama announced his intent to nominate the following individuals today:

Gen. Charles Bolden, Nominee for Administrator of NASA
Charles Bolden retired from the United States Marine Corps in 2003 as the Commanding General of the Third Marine Aircraft Wing after serving more than 34 years, and is currently CEO of JackandPanther LLC, a privately-held military and aerospace consulting firm. Gen. Bolden began his service in U.S. Marine Corps in 1968. He flew more than 100 sorties in Vietnam from 1972-73. In 1980, he was selected as an astronaut by NASA, flying two space shuttle missions as pilot and two missions as commander. Following the Challenger accident in 1986, Gen. Bolden was named the Chief of the Safety Division at the Johnson Space Center with responsibilities for overseeing the safety efforts in the return-to-flight efforts. He was appointed Assistant Deputy Administrator of NASA headquarters in 1992. He was Senior Vice President at TechTrans International, Inc. from 2003 until 2005. Gen. Bolden holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the U.S. Naval Academy, Annapolis and a M.S. in Systems Management from the University of Southern California.

Lori Garver, Nominee for Deputy Administrator of NASA
Lori Garver is the President of Capital Space, LLC, and has served as Senior Advisor for Space at the Avascent Group, a strategy and management consulting firm, based in Washington, D.C. She was the lead civil space policy advisor for Obama for America, and she helped lead the Agency Review Team for NASA during the Transition. She has intimate familiarity with the agency and knows well the challenges it faces. From 1998 to 2001, Ms. Garver served as NASA’s Associate Administrator of the Office of Policy and Plans. Reporting to the NASA Administrator, she oversaw the analysis, development, and integration of NASA policies and long-range plans, the NASA Strategic Management System, and the NASA Advisory Council. Ms. Garver also served as a primary spokesperson for NASA. Prior to this appointment, she served as a Senior Policy Analyst for the Office of Policy and Plans, and Special Assistant to the Administrator. Ms. Garver earned an M.S. in Science, Technology, and Public Policy from the George Washington University and a B.A. in Political Science and Economics from Colorado College.

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A Space Review editorial compares NASA to the automobile industry.

This one from the corporate office: the Baltimore Sun is reporting that you're going to need to pony up with your middle name when it comes time to fly. I actually inquired how much it would cost to legally change my name from Bartholomew to Bart because I sign my checks Bart but my mother and the State of Alabama call me Bartholomew (and the former only when she's angry with me). Why? Because the TSA was getting p!$$y with me about my driver's license not matching my credit cards. Parents beware: I won't be the only one to contemplate this change to save myself the aggravation at the airport. Another lesson in the law of Unintended Consequences from our government: make the law more intrusive and yoiu can even cause people to change their names.

This one from Nickomundo: Anderson Cooper believes the current generation is going to be shafted by the recession. Jeez, spare me. Every generation is screwed by a recession, usually temporarily, as the ability to make more choices and obtain more opportunities is reduced by slowed economic activity. Recession means your mom buys from the discount rack or sews your clothes when you rip them. Recession means you don't go to the Chuck-E-Cheese once a week or don't get high-end snacks with your lunch. Or that you don't buy your lunch. Or vacation gets put off a year. You're sad, you're disappointed. A couple of more fortunate, more shallow peers might laugh at your cheap, off-the-rack clothes. You're hurt. You move on.

Is NASA "over the hill" if the average age there is 49? All depends. People keep telling me that "40 is the new 30." Which means what for Gen Y? It means you'll be waiting another 10 years before you get promoted. (Just a little snark/humor to offer insight into how your elders might be thinking.)

Leonard David, whose brain I'd like to borrow for a week, has a blog on a new approach to searching for Earthlike planets.

The International Space Development Conference officially gets under way tomorrow. The Space Investment Symposium (SIS), which has become attached to ISDC since 2006, happened today. That's an event where they put wannabe space entrepreneurs and venture capitalists into a room and try to educate the space people on the right way to write a business plan to get investment money from the VCs. I first wrote about the SIS in 2007 and have been trying to keep up with it when I can. Lately I haven't been able to afford the leave time--or the ticket price. I don't complain about that--I got in gratis as a journalist in '06 and '07.

I see the SIS as a positive sign in the space advocacy movement because it shows that space businesses are becoming routine, part of the regular investment and business environment, like utilities or drug companies. However, I've heard complaints that this emphasis on business also raises ticket prices for space-related events and eliminates that "grass roots" touch/feel to the activity. I look at it this way, speaking purely for myself and from a strictly appearance-based point of view: more suits means more people taking space seriously. It's the difference between space advocates showing up in t-shirts or Star Trek outfits to lobby Congress and those same advocates showing up with suits, professional attire, and briefcases. Which one would you take more seriously? Apperances matter. And if that means that the space movement loses the "common touch" but gains credibility among the non-space-minded public, then I'm willing to make the sacrifice. If you want to wear t-shirts and Star Trek outfits, there's probably a science fiction convention out there waiting for you. If you want to make a serious effort to get civilization into space, leave the t-shirts at home and get ready to do business.

Potpourri XII

Let's see what sort of weirdness is lurking around the Internet today...I'm all a-quiver (or a-Twitter, as it were).


Oh, yeah: today is the anniversary of the wedding of my friends Tim & Gwen: 12 years, imagine that! They decided to get married at 4:04 on 4/4, just to mess with people's heads. I wonder what the numerologists would say about that. Happy anniversary, guys!

Fedora tip to Hu for this one: some ingenious folks in New Jersey set up an elaborate UFO hoax just to mess with people's heads. I'm amused.

Another reminder: the International Space Development Conference (ISDC) is coming May 28-31. The last time the event was in Orlando, they recruited me into the space business after I was convinced that I was stuck in the tourism business forever. How might it change your life? Attend the event and find out for yourself!

Nick Skytland posted this item regarding NASA's aim to hire up to 50% of civil servants as "fresh-outs" (meaning kids fresh out of college. Keith Cowing is doing his usual hatchet job of the idea. If you look at things logically, though, Gen Y is or soon will be 50% of the national workforce anyway, so this just makes sense. However, the average age of employees at NASA is 49 (with me being on the young side of the average, imagine that!).

The question continues to be asked: how does NASA make itself over into a place where the next generation of the best and brightest will want to work? I provided my thoughts here awhile back. There will no doubt need to be changes top to bottom, but the more practical questions about change, IMHO, need to focus on ideas that:

• Keep us exploring space and advancing technology
• Make sense from a cost, budget, and schedule perspective
• Will not compromise U.S. technological secrets
• Are acceptable to older, crankier generations like the Boomers and my cohort of Gen Xers

As proof that the first critic is the next volunteer, I made the mistake about griping about the format of one of the meetings I attend. Now I've got to find a "team building" activity that is high in content, low on foolishness. Ideas welcome.

Consider this quotation from Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451...

"They run us so ragged by the end of the day we can't do anything but go to bed or head for a Fun Park to bully people around, break windowpanes in the Window Smasher Place or wreck cars in the Car Wrecker Place with the big steel ball."

Then check out this place: http://www.smashshack.com/. Ray gets it right again.

Scads of pictures of the Orion crew module test article undergoing water recovery testing at Carderock Test Facility in Maryland.

The following extended quotation from H. G. Wells' Things to Come was included in a recent email I received from Apogee Books:

***

(The writer is speaking about Democracy.)
The people, it was imagined, watched, listened, spoke and wisdom ensued. The Common People became therefore a mystical sympathetic being, essentially a God, whose altar was the hustings and whose oracle the ballot box. A little slow and lumpish was this God of the Age but, though his mills ground slowly, men were assured that they ground with ultimate exactitude. And meanwhile business could be carried on. You could fool some of the people all the time and all the people some of the time, said Abraham Lincoln, but you could not fool all the people all the time. Yet for such crucial purposes as bringing about a war or exploiting an economic situation, this was manifestly a quite disastrous degree of foolability.

And the situation naturally evolved a Press of the very highest fooling capacity. This belatedly inevitable Divinity (the electorate) proved now to be altogether too slow-witted for the urgent political and economic riddles, the massive resistance in every national legislature to any but the most narrow egotism in foreign policy, the inability of the world as a whole to establish any unanimity of action in face of swift economic collapse, revealed the final bankruptcy of Parliamentary Democracy.

The inability of the world's nominal rulers to shake off their lifelong habit of speaking to, or at, a vaguely conceived crowd of prejudiced voters and their invincible repugnance from clear statement, frustrated every effort towards realism. They recoiled from any suggestion of definitive or novel action on the plea that their function was purely representative. Behind them all, the reader feels the sprawling uneasy presence of that poor invertebrate mass deity of theirs, the Voter, easily roused to panic and frantic action against novel, bold or radical measures, very amenable to patriotic claptrap, very easily scared and maddened into war, and just as easily baffled to distrust and impotence by delays, side issues and attacks on the personalities of the decisive people he might otherwise have trusted. An entirely irresponsible Press, mercenary or partisan, played upon his baser emotions, which were so easy to play upon, and made no appeal whatever to his intelligence or his conscience.

The Voter, the Mass, which was neither educated nor led, the Voter without any sincere organisations of leadership anywhere, is the basal explanation of the impotence of those culminating conferences. The World Economic Conference in London was by far the more significant. Armament and disarmament are symptoms and superficial, but economic life is fundamental. This London gathering has been made the subject of a thousand studies by our social psychologists. Many of its contradictions still perplex us profoundly. The men who assembled had just as good brains as anyone today, and, as an exhaustive analysis of the various projects advanced at the Conference proves, they had a substantial understanding of the needs of the world situation, yet collectively, and because of their haunting paralysing sense of the Mass and Press behind them and of their incalculable impulses and resentments, they achieved an effect of fatuity far beyond the pompous blunderings of (The Treaty of) Versailles. Primarily the London Conference was a belated effort to repair the vast omissions of that earlier gathering, to supplement the well-meaning political patchwork of (Woodrow) Wilson by some readjustment of the monetary and economic dislocations he had been too limited to foresee or too weak to avoid. Wraith-like conceptions of some vague monetary League of Nations and some Tariff Council and Assembly, drifted through the mists of the opening meeting. And History, with its disposition to inexact repetition, made one of the principal figures of this second world assembly also a President of the United States, belonging also to the Democratic Party and according to the ritual of that Party invoking the name of Jefferson, as the Communists invoked the name of Marx or the Moslim Mahomet. (F)or some months at least before and after his election as American President and the holding of the London Conference there was again a whispering hope in the world that a real 'Man' had arisen, who would see simply and clearly, who would speak plainly to all mankind and liberate the world from the dire obsessions and inepti¬tudes under which it suffered and to which it seemed magically enslaved. But the one thing he failed to do was to speak plainly.

Everywhere as the Conference drew near men were enquiring about this possible new leader for them. 'Is this at last the Messiah we seek, or shall we look for another?' Every bookshop in Europe proffered his newly published book of utterances to gauge what manner of mind they had to deal with. It proved rather disconcerting reading for their anxious minds. Plainly the man was firm, honest and amiable, as the frontispiece portrait with its clear frank eyes and large resolute face showed, but the text of the book was a politician's text, saturated indeed with good will, seasoned with much vague modernity, but vague and wanting in intellectual grip. 'He's good,' they said, 'but is this good enough?'

Nevertheless hope fought a stout fight. There was no other personality visible who even promised to exorcise the spell that lay upon the economic life of the race. It was (The President's) Conference or nothing. And in spite of that disappointing book there remained some sound reasons for hope. In particular the President, it was asserted, had a 'Brain Trust'. A number of indisputably able and modern-minded men were his associates, men whose later work played a significant part in that reconstruction of legal and political method which was America's particular contribution to Modern State ideas. This 'last hope of mankind', it was credibly reported, called these intimates by their Christian names... He was said to have the modesty and greatness to defer to their studied and matured opinions. Observers, still hopeful, felt that if he listened to these advisers things might not go so badly after all. He was at any rate one point better than the European politicians and heads of States who listened only to bankers and big- business men.

But was he listening? Did he grasp the threefold nature of the problem in hand? He understood, it seemed, the need for monetary inflation to reduce the burden of debt and over-capitalisation; he was apparently alive to the need for a progressive expansion of public employment; and so far he was sound. Unless, which is not quite clear, he wavered between 'public' and 'publicly assisted', which was quite another matter. But was he sound upon the necessity that these measures should be world-wide or practically world-wide?

He made some unexpected changes of attitude in these respects. Were these changes inconstancies or were they tactical manoeuvres veiling a profoundly consistent and resolute purpose? Was it wise to be tactical when all the world was in need of plain speech and simple directive ideas? His treatment took on a disconcertingly various quality. He listened, it seemed, to his advisers; but was he not also listening to everybody? He was flirting with bi-metallism. No medicine, it seemed, was to be spared.

The Conference opened with a stout determination to be brilliant and eventful; the hotels were full, the streets be-flagged, the programme of entertainments were admirable, and even the English weather seemed to make an effort. The opening addresses by the (British Monarch) and the Prime Minister make very curious reading. They express an acute recognition of the crucial condition of human affairs. They state in so many words that the failure of the Conference will precipitate world disaster. They insist upon the necessity for world co-operation, for monetary simplification and a resumption of employment; and in all that we admit they had the truth of the matter. But they make not the faintest intimation of how these desirable ends are to be obtained. They made gestures that are incomprehensible to us unless they had an inkling of the primary elements of the situation. And then immediately they turned away to other things. That mixture of resolve and failure to attack is what perplexes us most. If they saw the main essentials of the situation they certainly did not see them as a connected whole; they did not see any line of world action before them.

(T)he chief of the United States delegation, was equally large and fine. The grave and splendid words - shot with piety in the best American tradition- that he inscribed upon the roll of history were as follows: 'Selfishness must be banished. If-which God forbid! -any nation should wreck this Conference, with the notion that its local interests might profit, that nation would merit the execration of mankind.'

But after this much of lucidity, the Conference fell away to minor issues. Apparently it could not keep at so high a level of reality. The pressure of the Mass and the Press behind each delegate began to tell upon him. The national representatives began to insist with increasing explicitness that national interests must not be sacrificed to the general good, and in a little time it became doubtful if there could be such a thing as the general good. The World Economic Conference became by imperceptible transitions a World Economic Conflict just as the League of Nations had become a diplomatic bargain mart. All the fine preluding of the first seances withered to fruitlessness, because the mind of the world had still to realise the immense moral and educational effort demanded by those triple conditions that were dawning upon its apprehension, and because it was still unwilling to accept the immense political pooling they indicated. The amount of self - abnegation involved was an insurmountable psychological barrier in the way of the representatives present. It would have meant a sacrifice of the very conditions that had made them. How could men appointed as national representatives accept a pooling of national interests? They were indeed fully prepared to revolutionise the world situation and change gathering misery to hope, plenty and order, but only on the impossible condition that they were not to change themselves and that nothing essential to their importance changed. The leading ideas of the Conference were cloudily true, but the disintegrative forces of personal, party and national egotism were too strong for them.

Taken from "The Shape of Things to Come" by H.G. Wells (1933) Writing about Franklin D. Roosevelt. Nothing in this email should be construed by our loyal readers to mean that I (or anyone else at Apogee Books) endorse or sanction any of the preceding opinions. A very small amount of abridgement has been undertaken.

***

Another Space Education Moment

I first heard about Teachers in Space at the 2006 International Space Development Conference. They're essentially a nonprofit run by the Space Frontier Foundation that will set aside slots for teachers to travel into space on one of the any-day-now suborbital space tourism outfits. The concept sounded pretty cool. As the "Vision" part of their web site describes it:

Imagine thousands of astronaut teachers, in schools all across the country, sharing their spaceflight knowledge and experiences with millions of students. This vision could become a reality within the next ten years.

What I've liked about the space tourism movement/industry is the way it democratizes spaceflight. After all, what is more likely or easier: joining the Air Force, becoming a pilot, and picking up three or more college degrees, all for the hope of going into space while competing with 500 other super-competent people, or just getting rich enough to buy a ticket? There are many routes to becoming rich in America, and a surprising number of them don't require a college education. And if you manage to put $40,000-a-year teachers into a space tourism rocket and let them come back and talk to their students about their experiences--well, heck, you've "infected" a whole new generation of space geeks! And these kids will have a different expectation of spaceflight than those of us raised under the Aura of the Astronauts.

Don't misunderstand me--I greatly admire our astronauts. I see someone like Story Musgrave or any of the Shuttle astronauts who come to Marshall, and I read their resumes and feel like an absolute slacker. They really ARE our best and brightest. But if future Americans are going to have the opportunity merely to go into space as paying passengers, they don't NEED to be our best and brightest, merely damnfool enough to plunk down the coin to go. And that would include me. The only future that would allow an English major like me to get into space would be one where I can go as a passenger, not as some sort of pilot, scientist, or technician. So I think Teachers in Space is a good idea. Maybe I ought to become a teacher. I might have a better chance than the getting-rich route!

Ad Astra and good night.

Should Disney Get a Retired Space Shuttle?

Recently, NASAWatch posted a question on what should be done with the three remaining space shuttles still flying (Discovery, Atlantis, Endeavour) after they retire. Since I spent a lot of my pre-space career at Disney, I thought I'd ask my Disney friends what they thought of the notion that Walt Disney World "get" one of the shuttles. Their responses were interesting:

• "a) I thought Disney was already doing this with Mission: Space.
  b) It's difficult to get people interested in Space by displaying and teaching about obsolete space craft.
  c) Perhaps a display combining the limitations of the shuttle with the possibilities availed to us through a new program?"
• "Makes sense to me! Disney certainly WOULD do a fantastic job displaying etc., certainly would fit in well at EPCOT, and with already having millions of people going to Disney every year anyway ... sounds like a project that's PERFECT for you :)"
• "I think it is a good idea. With so many children visiting the park, perhaps it will be an excellent tool to develop interest. As long as they don't paint anything on the Orbiter, it sounds like a good exhibit."
• "We could build a whole new theme park around it. We could obviously get more people interested in space, I think."
• "Absolutely. That has EPCOT written all over it. You could put it next to Mission Space."

No argument from most of these folks, anyway. This bears some consideration. They all sense an underlying truth: Disney generates fun and excitement; the space program, as it is currently configured, does not. Why?

*

When I came into the space business, it was after 12 years at Disney and 3 years in the defense business development (proposal writing) worlds. I'd also had some experience as a space advocate. My approach to space, then, has been as a marketer. Disney, for all of its internal quirks--notice I don't work there anymore--is a marketing organization second to none. And when I attended my first International Space Development Conference, I noted the serious need for marketing professionalism within the space advocacy community.

Now there are some government regulations that prohibit NASA from marketing, unless it's hiring/recruiting. And, being a government agency, some of its denizens are rather disdainful of the need for marketing at all. "We do education and outreach," I've been told. The "m" word, it seems, is verboten. But really now: what is NASA TV if it isn't marketing? Well, actually, it probably is education, because as a marketing tool, it's not doing well. I think more people watch The Bedouin Channel.

What is marketing, then? Here's a description of marketing that I used in my thesis to contrast it with technical communications:

In general, marketing communications is aimed at decision-makers and influencers, while technical communications addresses people who use the product. In other words, marketers try to get a customer to purchase a product, while technical communicators explain how a product works once it has already been purchased.

A later presentation I did, based on this thesis, also proposed the notion that technical advocacy (e.g. space advocacy) is really a combination of technical communications, marketing, and politics. You need the audience to understand the material, get enthused about it, and get them motivated to advocate and vote in certain ways that are advantageous to your position. Marketing a trip to Disney World is a lot different from marketing a government program (assuming you were allowed to do so), but the concept and need is the same. And, I must add, there is more to advocate for than just NASA. I want the private sector "out there" too, and that requires a different strategy from selling a government program.

Still, both the space cause and a theme park must still get and hold the attention of their respective audience(s). Despite the uniqueness of the space enterprise, exploration and settlement do not "sell themselves," any more than the American West did. Horace Greeley's "Go West, young man, and grow with the country!" might have been one of the best marketing lines ever used to sell the frontier.

I got off my original track here; I apologize. I meant to answer "Why does Disney generate excitement while NASA doesn't?" and got off on a tangent about what technical marketing is. My apologies. The answer to the original question is simple: Disney does exciting things and portrays them in such a way that other people look forward to experiencing them. NASA does some exciting, nay, intriguing things, and some of those are accompanied by smoke, fire, and earth-rattling, which is always cool. But turn on NASA TV, subject yourself to a few hours of watching astronauts do zero-gravity tai-chi around the International Space Station, and you need No-Doze and a caffeineated beverage to restart your system.

Both Disney and NASA are very protective of their public image, and yet Disney manages to have a fun public image. Again: why? Part of it, I think, is that NASA has lost its sense of humor. They are so used to doing Important, Impressive Things, that they forget about the gosh-wow factor. They frown upon frivolous activities, like space tourism or putting a hotel into orbit.

They've also grown a little too cautious about advertising the dangerous aspects of space. In Apollo, three astronauts died before one Saturn rocket had put a man into space--and NASA kept going. Since Challenger and Columbia, there has been an abundance of caution and -- perhaps reasonably -- an emphasis on safety first. But damn it, that danger gets people's attention! It's suspenseful for me every time the Shuttle goes up now, maybe because of long-ignored physical danger and maybe because we're only now awakening to the fact that there won't be too many more of them.

The world frickin' stood still when Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed on the Moon. A billion people listened or watched at a time when we had only about two billion people alive on the planet. That's a shared moment of wonder few have ever managed to repeat. I mean, because...damn, that was impressive. The first time a human being had set foot on another world. I can still get a shiver up my spine when I hear, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." I was two weeks from being born, and it still impresses me.

That's the trick, then: NASA needs to start doing great things again: firsts that are new and difficult in their own right. And the good news is, they are aiming to do great things again: building rockets to go to the Moon, building a permanent outpost there, and hoping to go beyond. That's half the Disney equation: do something exciting. All of that will require more money and sustained commitment, but that's our job as involved taxpayers, not just the government's. And then there's the other half: get other people interested in participating. There's still some work to be done there.

Looks like I have my work cut out for me.