Interview: Camilla Sdo

Life is beginning to return to normal, so what could be more natural than for me to conduct an interview with a rubber chicken? No, really...

First, everyone's favorite interview question: tell us about yourself.

Me? I am Camilla Corona SDO - a rubber chicken turned mission mascot for NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO. I help with the Education and Public Outreach part of our mission! Little SDO is now in his orbit taking these incredible high resolution images of the Sun in many wavelengths. These images are 10x higher resolution than HD TV and really let us take a very close look at the Sun. I met Little SDO at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center many years ago and we established this very special friendship. I call him Little but he is actually the size of a small bus. For a year we have now gotten this amazing data and have already learned a little more about our Sun.

When I am not educating about the Sun and Space Weather, I do try to inspire kids to get more interested in science, engineering and space exploration. And since I want to go and visit Little SDO in Space, I have to go through a lot of training. I really enjoy that part and it allows me to get an inside look into human space flight. And I enjoy sharing my adventures and what I am learning in the process.

Learn about Little SDO here: http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/

Or follow him on Facebook here: www.facebook.com/NASA.Little.SDO

Who makes your clothes?

One of my goals is to create a community. Little SDO and I want to be as engaging and interactive on social media as possible. That creates a community of people who not only want to learn, but they want to become involved. And I always say, you don't have to be fluent to speak the language. There are many ways people can help and get involved. And so it turns out that I have some amazing friends on social media who make me these amazing outfits. And in the process they get involved. They not only learn about what I do, but they tell their friends and then they get interested. And why not combine art and science? Art is science and there is art in science. And I end up as the best dressed rubber chicken there is!

A rubber chicken isn't the first mascot one might think of when it comes to space weather. How did that come about?

Rubber chickens have been an important part of NASA, dating back to the Apollo days. Back then it was more of a way to let frustration out. There are stories of engineers smashing rubber chickens against the desks. What happened on SDO is that one day I walked down the halls of Goddard Space Flight Center and I saw this shiny spacecraft and it was friendship at first sight. So I was adopted as the mission mascot. Plus, I am yellow like the Sun! (which of course is not really the case since the Sun has no color).

You have quite an interesting travel schedule. What sorts of events do you attend?
I do have a very busy schedule, with not only conducting a lot of training, but I also try to attend several events to connect with the people. I enjoy events with kids because it is really wonderful to see their inspiration and see their way of thinking. And I try to inspire our youth, especially girls, to explore their interest in science, technology, engineering and math. And I try to attend most of our NASA Tweetup events, where selected individuals are invited to get a real inside look into either a Space Shuttle launch, an unmanned mission or a NASA center. These are great opportunities to meet and connect with people. The power of social media is wonderful - it gives somebody like me a voice, a way to reach out.

Several NASA missions now have critters of various sorts supporting or representing their outreach efforts. Do you see this as a trend?

I wasn't the first mission critter but I am the most active for sure. There is a trend. Just very recently Trigger got introduced with NASA's MMS mission. But not only within NASA can we now find mascots. AIAA (American Institute of Aeronautics Astronautics) has Skye Bleu, Bears On Patrol has Fuzz Aldrin. Both of them are part of my mission to the Edge of Space. Then there is my dear friend Spooner with NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program Office. And I cannot forget Luna, NASA Johnson's Space Center's mascot. And Boeing has Casey.

So there is trend and one that makes sense. See, our goal is to get people involved, interested and take the intimidation factor out. Put a "human" face to the missions, the science and people are sometimes more interested and feel more comfortable to ask questions. It's wonderful.

You, Fuzz Aldrin (a teddy bear), and Skye Bleu (a flying pig) went on an actual flight mission. What's all that about? What did you do?

Last year I was contacted by the non-profit organization BearsOnPatrol.org and asked if I was interested in joining forces to promote science education and peace. We decided to plan a mission to the Edge of Space and make it like a real NASA mission. We decided to use a balloon to get us to 100,000 feet, add some cameras, tracking devices and a scientific instrument and use this as a way to not only educate about what is needed for this, but to show how easy it is to reach the Edge of Space. The goal is to get beautiful images of the darkness of Space and see Earth's curve. Also, we want to inspire parents and teachers to do a similar projects with their kids.

After we created the mission patch and named the mission BTS-1 (Balloon Transport System - 1st Flight) the AIAA's mascot Skye Bleu joined us. And again, this is about building a community, educating about the various steps it takes to get a mission of the ground and have fun with it. And just today we had our Pre-Flight Medical exams. Just like real astronauts we went through a series of medical tests.

I am the Commander of the mission and am responsible for the overall mission success. Fuzz Aldrin is the Pilot and has gone through many mission sims in order to get us all back safe. Skye Bleu is our Mission Specialist and will be overseeing all the instruments on board our capsule. Our capsule was just named "Inspiration" - and we hope to just do that!

Does everyone get along?
This is a very diverse crew and I think Fuzz enjoys being a guy between two ladies! We all have our own talents and together we are a very strong team. Just like on a real NASA space mission, it takes getting used to each other. Team work is very important and I trust my crew completely.

Were you nervous about the flight?
I think I was more excited than nervous. There are many things that could go wrong but we must focus on the things that will go right. It is exciting to think about going up that high. It's not a first but it's a first by three mascots.

Now looking back at our BTS-1 mission, I am glad we trained well. Like all astronauts, we did do survival training. We landed much further East than expected and managed to touch down in gator invested swamp land in Louisiana. We were out there for almost 5 days, waiting for rescue. Our ground team did an excellent job in locating us and getting us back home safe.

This was one of the lessons we tried to teach. Sometimes things just go differently during a mission. A team needs to adjust quickly and come up with solutions. Sometimes it's a life and death situation. Look at Apollo 13! A grim situation was turned around by working together and coming up with solutions. That's spaceflight for you! Teamwork. What you don't predict, you cannot prevent.

You mentioned that you're particularly interested in doing science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education and in getting women interested in STEM careers. That's a mission of ScienceCheerleader.com (one of my other side jobs) as well. What do you do to encourage young women to pursue those careers? What's your primary message?
I think we should think about doing a project together. Like I said - building a community and working together we can achieve so much. Reality is that we need to have more women in STEM. Many times they are intimidated by the subjects or they don't always get the chances they deserve. But it's so important to encourage girls to pursue that career and show them that really not even the Sky is the limit.

Darlene Cavalier, the original Science Cheerleader, does interviews with pro cheerleaders, and she asks each of them if they're taken seriously because society has certain stereotypes or perceptions about cheerleaders. You're in a similar situation, as rubber chickens are traditionally seen in a comic relief role. Do you ever worry that people won't take you seriously as an advocate for STEM? How do you counteract that?
Of course there are always people who see me as just a rubber chicken. I see that as a positive challenge. Look, I have managed to train with the very last Space Shuttle crew, the STS-135 crew. I have spent time with the NASA Administrator and we talked about public outreach. I have managed to get stuck on the Space Potty thanks to Astronaut Clay Anderson. If I can achieve all of this, I should be taken seriously. And if a girl shows interest in math or science, that girl should immediately have the respect and support.

I understand you're friends with my author friend Kate Doolan, who described you as a "classy chick." What are your interactions with her like?

Bart, the social media tools have enabled me to connect and interact with a wide variety of people. I met Kate a long time ago and I see her as one of my most special friends. I love her humor and I really admire her Apollo days knowledge. While we joke around often, we both admire each other and I have learned a lot from her. I hope she can say the same.

But the beauty is that I can connect with so many wonderful people. And I get a chance to learn and listen to what they think.

Anything else you'd care to share?
Here is the truth: we have one Space Shuttle launch left to go. After that we will not be launching humans from the US for some time. But that does not mean space exploration is dead. The ISS (International Space Station) continues to host astronauts. They will continue to do science up there and we will continue to learn about our solar system and our universe. Some amazing unmanned missions are coming up, like Juno. Juno will help us learn more about Jupiter. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

MAVEN and MSL will both give us more clues about Mars and its atmosphere.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/msl/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html

Get interested, get engaged, have fun with what we do. Reality is, we don't know much and have lots of stuff to learn.

If you want to learn more about me or follow my adventures:

http://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/swx/

www.facebook.com/CamillaSDO

www.twitter.com/Camilla_SDO

http://camilla-corona-sdo.blogspot.com/

Thanks!

Book Review: Don't Be SUCH a Scientist!

Full Disclosure: I met Randy Olson during my Science Cheerleader event in Washington, DC and consider him, if not a friend, at least a friendly acquaintance with a shared appreciation for SciCheer and engaging means of talking to the public about science and technology.

Having gotten that out of the way, I'll now talk about Randy's book, Don't Be SUCH a Scientist! which I read in less than a day. It's what a book club member I knew once called "a cracking good read." But then Randy's book is directed at people trying to communicate science to the public, which more or less includes me, so of course he had my attention.



As I said, Randy produced the Science Cheerleader video from the Science & Engineering Festival, and it's a fun piece of work (now over 37,000 viewers as of this writing). Randy himself turns out to have had quite an interesting career path: an oceanographic scientist and professor, he shifted careers at age 38 to enroll in film school at USC, which is not an easy transition, as he illustrates throughout this book. In fact, he opens the book with a scene from an acting class from USC, where a rather abusive acting prof was yelling at him from always being cerebral ("You think too much! You mother f***ing think too much!"), which he notes is one of the first failings of scientists trying to communicate with the public.

The other sins he accuses scientists of include "Don't Be So Literal-Minded," "Don't Be Such a Poor Storyteller," and "Don't Be So Unlikeable," which represent the first four parts of the book. And if you consider that a spoiler alert so egregious that you feel you don't now need to read the rest of the book, brother (or sister), buy the book, pull up a chair, and prepare to be educated and entertained. What makes Randy's arguments telling and selling is that he has been on both ends of things: he has been a scientist and he is now in the business of telling stories on film. He provides concrete, wince-inducing examples of blatantly bad communication. What makes the writing less like a lecture and more like a standup routine is that a lot of the time he turns the magnifying glass on himself and points out where he has exhibited the very behaviors he is now trying to stop. Nothing teaches like experience.

As an English major among rocket scientists, I like to think that I'm immune from some of the pomposity or literal-mindedness of the science-minded, but alas, no. Spend enough time around scientists or engineers, and you will end up thinking, writing, or even speaking like them. One piece of advice in the book I'd heard before, though I cannot remember where, is when Randy talks about reaching not just the head in communications, but also the heart (emotions), gut (humor, intuition), and gonads (sex appeal). It's very easy to write good, logical arguments for space flight or this or that vehicle configuration, but sometimes a little more is required. I notice this when a piece of writing that people at work (rocket scientists, remember) think is great but my non-space friends or family members "just don't get." I've left out some of that emotional stuff that grabs a larger audience. I notice this tendency most when I generate content for our mutual friend Darlene the Science Cheerleader. I can do intellectual/logical very well, and depending on the person or subject, I can reach down and touch the heart or make people laugh. But I'm not very sharp on creating "sexy" on the page. The Science Cheerleaders do that, and I'm duly grateful. Perhaps that's why Randy and I both respond to Dar's Science Cheerleader concept--she's got a message that covers all the bases.

I didn't agree with everything Randy wrote. He dislikes the defensive, control-the-interview approach many scientists take toward the media. This happens to be the approach I learned at a media training course offered through NASA. The logic is simple, really: while scientists have a story to tell, so do members of the professional media. The scientists want their stories told and try to keep the discussion focused on those messages. Reporters don't just want a story, they want a story that will grab ratings. And if that means asking off-topic questions that get a headline-grabbing quotation from an eminent scientist or cause said eminent scientist to get angry and have a flash of temper on camera, so be it. That is a good reason of why scientists are distrustful of new media or the "gotcha" mainstream press. That said, there are ways of telling a good story and giving the interviewer an engaging interviewer without getting hauled into the Administrator's office the next day for comments made in the heat of the moment.

One of the chapter headings reads, "Choose: Accurate but Not Popular or Popular but Not Accurate." In this instance, he was discussing the differences in public reaction between a fact-based HBO documentary on global warming and Al Gore's "An Inconvenient Truth," which won both an Oscar and a Nobel Prize. The documentary disappeared from public awareness despite having noted scientific flaws and inaccuracies. The point, in Randy's mind and in that of many of the scientists who noted the faults but endorsed the film anyway, is that "the message is too important!" To which I would say, rather impolitely, BS. If the outcomes of a scientifically inaccurate piece of propaganda (the one word Randy doesn't use in his book) result in bad law or harmful policies, then a so-called documentary has crossed the line from inaccurate to fraud or blatant harm. To his credit, the very first sentence after this heading is "I will never, ever endorse the idea of striving for anything less than 100 percent accuracy in the making of any film realted to real issues in the world of science." However I'm not certain he completely resolves the matter of public "engagement" (propaganda) vs. informing the public about a scientific issue.

Don't Be Such a Scientist challenges scientific communicators with the simple fact that the facts no longer "speak for themselves," if they ever did. Film, video, or new media are good ways to engage or enrage the public, but not particularly good at educating them--a point Randy makes several times in the book. However, before the education can happen, there must come the motivation; and those motivations must come from the head, heart, gut, and groin or the education will never happen. The public will tune out, as they have for many years now.

I recommend this book for scientific communicators of all stripes, from those generating the content or doing the science to technical communicators like me, who are not scientists but nevertheless must communicate technical information to an often-uninformed public. Don't Be Such a Scientist is a good companion book for followers of ScienceCheerleader.com, ScienceforCitizens.net, and ECAST. Professional scientists need to communicate their discoveries and ideas clearly and compellingly. The public needs to be interested enough in science to get educated about it or even do it. After the engagement and education, it is possible to have informed debates about the scientific and technical issues of the day, resulting in good decisions being made. And ideally, that's the whole point of the exercise.

Potpourri CXVI

The week's pile has gotten thick again, so 'twould best if it were done, that it be done quickly...

Another good find from Tracy on outreach. This article suggests that the problem with outreach isn't with audiences connected to the internet, but with the technologically and educationally underserved. Meanwhile, people who already have access to the web or decent education are likely to already be familiar with the state of space exploration, nanotechnology, or other developments. As Darlene the Science Cheerleader puts it, "the rich get richer." The trick seems to be to reach underserved audiences through nontraditional means.

Here's a slight way to participate in your space program...you can go to this site and select the design for a patch to commemorate the final Space Shuttle launch.

None of us is as dumb as all of us: One of my graphics buddies at NASA pointed out some artwork developed by guys who gathered surveys in several different countries, asking what types of art people liked, what subject matters, what colors, etc...and then also what types of art they didn't like. This is as close as one can get to art by polling data.

From my NASA PAO feed, a notice from Glenn Research Center that there's a competition for high school students to put an experiment on a "BalloonSat."

I got on this mailing list awhile back, and occasionally it comes up with useful stuff. Here's a blog on the effective use of Twitter as a communication/outreach/sales tool. Bottom-line question any organization should answer before jumping into this social networking technology is: "What are you trying to accomplish?" If you can't answer the question coherently, you're just following trends without analysis, and that's a Bad Thing.

I saw this posted by one of my technophile English major buddies, Rudy: it's called SIKULI, and it appears to be a graphic user interface (GUI) of sorts. There's a YouTube attached that speaks ins Programmerese, which is completely unintelligible to me. If it makes sense to you, congratulations. It's supposed to make YOUR life easier. For those of us struggling to remember what we named and how we filed a document, it's a little advanced.

From Douglas Mallette: an article on using carbon nanotubes to make batteries from fabrics. Cool!

The internet is now in space--the International Space Station, that is. What's next?

From Regina, an interesting do-it-yourself experiment in tea bag rocketry (political pundits, keep your nasty comments to yourselves).

From the Down Under Defense Expert (DUDE):

• An interesting article from Der Spiegel entitled "The World Bids Farewell to Obama." It's a summary of German perspectives on the Obama administration's future reaction to the Republican taking of the late Senator Ted Kennedy's seat in Massachusetts. I wouldn't count out Mr. Obama just yet. It's not that I'm rooting for him, it's just that anyone who can take down the Clinton machine is not someone to be taken lightly.
• A Financial Times article on the United Nations waiving the first deadline for meeting carbon emissions.
• The Times of London is reporting that a U.N. official is apologizing for saying Himalayan glaciers would disappear by 2035.

The Senate of New York is increasing the amount of legislative information available to the public on the internet.

The OpenNASA folks have a blog about "how little information is available via our agency-wide employee directory." The types of information that interest the writer (Jessy Cowan-Sharp) include "who you are, what you're working on, trades or skills, and side projects." Well, good luck getting anyone over 40 or so to fill in that type of information, my friend. Sometimes it's sensitive/classified, and sometimes the over-55 crowd at NASA doesn't take all that tag cloud stuff seriously, nor do they necessarily want to share the information.

NASA data suggests that the first decade of the 21st century was the warmest on record.

I have some other stuff in my inbox, but I think I'll punt for now. Have a pleasant evening.