Thank you Delia for summarizing the outcome of the sustainability panel at the 3rd Annual AIAA Space Exploration Conference. I would have loved to have been there in person but I was attending the Project Management Challenge (PMC) 2008 in Daytona, Florida. Thanks to Twitter, I felt like I was at both
It’s been very interesting to watch the Generation Y message make it’s way through the NASA world, up and down the lines of management everywhere. Most exciting is receiving emails from leaders around the agency and watching the NASA organization flatten (a little) before our eyes! I personally never imagined at the beginning of all this that a) NASA would listen, and b) that NASA would be so passionate about improving, growing and changing. I guess looking back, it only makes sense - NASA is filled with thousands of employees who are extremely brilliant, want to participate and who are here to change the world through exploration - no matter what generation.
Something happened today that I just really want to share, and I don’t know of a better place to share it…
We have a high school intern doing some analysis. I haven’t been working with him directly until yesterday, when I came across some new testing that I didn’t have time to do myself. I’m rushing through trying to teach him how to do something because I need to leave for a meeting, trying to make sure that I’m dumping whatever knowledge I have that he’ll need to do the work while I’m in the meeting.
Today I had the opportunity to represent younger generations at the AIAA’s 3rd Space Exploration Conference, on the Generation Y panel. Simply put, I’m in awe of the reaction.
Directly after the panel, and into the evening at conference social gatherings, numerous people came up to e and other Gen Y panel members to say that the panel really affected them and that what we had to say was very relevant. To be clear, some certainly had constructive criticism to offer (more below), but the reaction overall was extremely positive. People were actually thankful to be given the perspective of a younger generation, and were inspired by the ideas we discussed. Our 90 minute panel generated apparently 36 questions, which I later found out was the narrowed down number of questions given to the moderator; this was by far the most questions for any panel yet. People also loved the non-traditional use of powerpoint– and mentioned that they were inspired to try something different next time around! Go JSC team!! I revamped the NASA CoLab talk in the spirit of the Gen Y Perspectives powerpoint, and am glad I did so (change can happen :D).
In this post, I want to ask a question that I hope many will want to chime in on. But first of all, thanks Karen for the comment on the previous post. Know any good cartoonists looking for a column to bring to life?
In your comment, you wrote: “we and the powers-to-be need to call NASA into action”… I couldn’t agree more that what NASA needs is the ability to empower its people to take some ownership of the agency, to challenge the accepted norms and the traditions of a big bureaucracy- not because we or any one person necessarily has a better way of doing it- but merely for the sake of stirring things up, asking the tough questions, and connecting people together under a common purpose. Read the rest of this entry »
I had arrived a few hours early, a victim of my desire to carpool and to save a few bucks on transportation. Somewhere between the Burger King hash browns and Starbucks hot chocolate, everything made sense.
I was beginning my trip back to the East Coast after spending the week at the Next Generation Exploration Conference at Ames Research Center. I was on the verge of finishing “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini. I was in pain, and - not to give anything away here - my heart was breaking over the story of a world gone wrong but where yet somehow, love and courage persisted amongst the ruin and the lives destroyed in terrible, excruciating ways. It was all I could do to hide my tears from my fellow airport patrons.
STS-125 will be the forth and last Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Hubble has been able to catch the attention of the general public as the space asset which brings the universe into focus and in times when every last Shuttle mission is needed to complete the Station it was decided to keep Hubble moving forward. While these decisions have been politically heated there still may be some ambivalence and ignorance with respect to the general public. So, how do we get people fired up about this mission? this question was posed to the Next Generation Exploration Conference and they came up with a brand: iHubble. So, goodbye NASA nouns of Hubble, Shuttle, and Station, and hello to verbs like iHubble!
A few months ago a few of us had a chance to participate on a “strategic communications committee” at Johnson Space Center that was convened to discuss NASA’s strategic communications strategy released in ‘07. After a few meetings on the committee, we asked if we could share our perspective with the group on why we think an entire generation isn’t connecting to NASA. A few amazing mentors at Johnson Space Center from the Advanced Planning Office empowered us to participate. Since then we’ve given the presentation numerous times to everyone from PAO and HR to Constellation and a number of other organizations throughout the agency. One of the main underlying points in the presentation is that our generation wants to be involved in space exploration. We want to be involved in the innovation. We want to be part of the discussion. We expect to participate.This week we had the opportunity to participate in the NGEC-2 Conference at Ames Research Center in California. Garret Fitzpatrick and I gave the presentation - and to our surprise, even had a chance to present it to Buzz Aldrin since he was at the conference. ARC Center Director Pete Worden - who has ignited a movement at NASA (@CoLab) - was also present and was encouraging as ever. Looking back, it was a really interesting experience to present to a man who has inspired thousands of people throughout the world through by something many of us dream of doing - walking on the moon. My expectation is that our generation will soon follow in his footsteps and participate ourselves - but it will require engaging a generation to do so…This presentation has been created so that anyone who wants to can take it and use it. Share this with your management. Share this with your parents. Share it with people who don’t understand why you like to snowboard in the afternoon, work from “offsite” on your mac, use Twitter to communicate with your friends, and expect to be involved in the “big picture” at work. Here’s a link to the presentation. Post a comment if you use it or have feedback… and look forward to a follow-up presentation currently in the works!
STS-125 will be the forth and last Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission. Hubble has been able to catch the attention of the general public as the space asset which brings the universe into focus and in times when every last Shuttle mission is needed to complete the Station it was decided to keep Hubble moving forward. While these decisions have been politically heated there still may be some ambivalence and ignorance with respect to the general public. So, how do we get people fired up about this mission? this question was posed to the
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