NASA has been working toward increasing public understanding of what it does and why it is relevant to the public. NASA has created a message which intends to bring this understanding home and succinctly encapsulate everything that it does. While I am a large advocate for creating a guiding coalition, creating vision, communicating the vision, encourage action and celebrating short-term wins for internal change (see Kotter’s Harvard Business Review Article, “Leading Change: Why Transformation Efforts Fail“), externally, I believe NASA should focus on output.

I recall seeing historic television clips of Apollo astronauts in parades rolling through the streets in convertibles. These were heroes accomplishing extraordinary tasks. While I was not involved in this program, it seems to have been a celebration of feats performed and needed no script. The voice of the Apollo program was not the NASA spokesperson, it was Walter Cronkite. NASA focused on achieving its mandate and let everyone else do the talking.

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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!

To contribute, please join the brainstorming.

The Broken Windows theory states that the behavior of actors within a particular situation is a function of its external environment. The theory was explored in an article in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly where the authors write:

“Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it’s unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside.

Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or breaking into cars.”

These examples articulate the power of context within one’s external environment and the sliding scale of socially acceptable behavior. But it isn’t just social behavior, it is behavior in general. Systems thinking states: Read the rest of this entry »

I attended BarCampBlock in Palo Alto yesterday, which could have been the largest BarCamp to date with over 800 people in attendance.

“BarCamp is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants. The name BarCamp was inspired as a complement to FooCamp.”

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