“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
When I was growing up, asking a classroom full of kids that question almost always included the answer “I want to be an astronaut!” Space was cool. Space was something new, innovative and entrepreneurial. Inspiration was clearly NASA’s main value proposition.
Compare that with today.
Recently the NASA Langley Center Leadership Council created a mid-term strategic objective of ‘Making NASA Cool’. They actually set several objectives along this same vein, looking into the merits Participatory Exploration, STEM education and Telling the NASA Story. Teams have been formed to make recommendations to center leadership on what the center, and what the agency can do to work towards these goals.
So far the ‘Making NASA cool’ initiative has hosted a whiteboard session, posted a blog on OpenLaRC seeking recommendations, and created wiki for ideas on how to communicate the cool things that NASA does on a daily basis to the public. Some of the recommendations are included in the attached presentation, though it is only a start. Comments are welcomed and the feedback will help to craft an action plan of how to move forward.
In June of 2007, NASA’s Office of Space Operations and Innovative Partnership Program, NASA’s CoLab and the National Space Society hosted the Participatory Exploration Summit at Ames Research Center. The summit, among many other things, was really one of the first major catalysts for thinking seriously about how the agency could us the internet, information technologies, and gaming sectors to provide new and exciting ways to connect, engage, inspire, and educate the public about space exploration. If you have a chance, check out the proceedings from the summit – there are quite a few ideas packed into the proceedings document prepared by Delia that may really play into the future success of NASA’s exploration efforts.
One of the things we discussed (okay, dreamed about) at that meeting was astronauts twittering from space (see page 1 from the proceedings). Well, I’m happy to report that @NASA has really embraced and leveraged social media to offer a new perspective on spaceflight! This afternoon, Mike Massimino (@astro_mike) became the first astronaut to tweet from space with the following words “From orbit: Launch was awesome!! I am feeling great, working hard, & enjoying the magnificent views, the adventure of a lifetime has begun!” This is a really big step for our space agency! I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to hear about the rest of the Hubble mission first hand from an Astronaut who is there. As Mike said, this mission will truly be awesome.
Following on my post from a couple of weeks ago, and in the spirit of eating your own dogfood, I would like to share some ideas about open innovation at NASA. Please note that the below list is not exhaustive, and that they are just ideas, although some are much further along than others. Additionally, these ideas are not all mine, although they are coming from my (spacecraft + software) bias. Not only do all the projects below promote transparency in practice (both internally and externally), but it also creates a culture of action and has many positive intended consequences. However, that is for a different conversation. Below is a list of ideas that have stuck over the last few years that are both small developments (free) and large initiatives ($900M+).
Internal
• Interactive x500
• Side Project App
• Open Innovation Fund
• Co-working / Coffee Shop Environment
• QuickSat
• Participatory Exploration as a Level 1 requirement
• Reward Cost Underuns
External
• Prizes
• NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) Continuous Release Authority
• NASA Application Programming Interface (API)
• NASA Advanced Research Projects Agency (NARPA )/ ARPA-N / NIAC++
• Red Planet Capital
• X Class Missions + Launch initiative
• COTS-Alphabet
Further below is a paragraph describing each idea. I welcome and encourage your comments!
President Obama on his second day in office issued a Presidential Memorandum on openness in government. This is a bold vision of creating a more effective, open government. The approach outlined in the memo is guided by the core values of transparency, participation and collaboration.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and the Global Development Commons convened a panel on Tuesday in Washington DC about Open Innovation in Government. Fortunately, the Global Development Commons streamed it live via www.ustream.com and you can see it archived here.
As a result of the participatory exploration paper posted below, we received an invitation to provide input for requirements for the NASA website RFP that will be out soon. After speaking with the appropriate individuals up at HQs, it looks like we can assume the categories the RFP will address will include the following:
1. Hosting
2. Bandwidth
3. Content management
4. Database and Apps Development
5. Search
It was refreshing to read the previous post on OpenNASA that released a list of specific Participatory Exploration (PE) policy recommendations for NASA. The authors of the recommendations have witnessed first hand the problems with how NASA is managed, reacts, and is perceived by internal and external constituents. The hard lessons that my friends learned through the NASA CoLab experiment more than qualifies them as competent at offering specific solutions to some discrete and genuine problems within NASA.
Unfortunately, the PE Recommendations document does lend itself to some old criticisms as it carries over weaknesses of CoLab’s prior efforts to fix NASA. The suggestions only treat symptoms of an Agency wide disease, but they do not not offer a systemic cure. There needs to be cogent, material, and real offerings on how to change the minds and behaviors of NASA’s workforce from the top down. Instead of being told how to fix some of yesterday’s problems, NASA employees should be nurtured so the ideas of Participatory Exploration and Collaboration develop organically across the Agency.
Participatory Exploration Policy Recommendations for National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Participatory exploration was first introduced in 2007 at the NASA Participatory Exploration Summit at Ames Research Center and was prioritized into the NASA Authorization Act of 2008 (H.R. 6063), highlighting its necessity to NASA’s continued public relevance in the 21st century. We have written a paper for NASA senior management that discusses the role of “participatory exploration” as a way of “aggregating and leveraging people’s contributions in ways that are useful to other people” which can be applied to NASA programs and projects to engage the American public in the exploration experience and to identify opportunities for the direct involvement of the public, the private sector, nongovernmental organizations, and international partners. The paper includes specific recommendations which we have summarized below. We’ve posted the paper on openNASA for your consideration and encourage you to share your thoughts on Participatory Exploration as well. Please share your thoughts via the comments below or on if you have specific ideas or recommendations, via the ideas forum.
Heard of Twitter yet? Ever thought of Twitter in terms of a “communications strategy?” If not, this presentation may be for you. It discusses twitter as a strategy for customer relations, crisis management, reputation management, event activation, promotion, issue advocacy and internal communication. It also discusses some twitter best practices and offers some links to popular twitter tools such as TweetDeck, TwitPic and TwitterGrader. The general strategy is built around “Follow > Create > Engage.”
