How Online Organizing Lessons from ’04 and ’08 Can Help NASA in ’09

Recently I was asked to reflect on how the lessons of online organizing by those of us who worked in the 2004 Presidential campaign have impacted not only the 2008 Presidential campaign (in which Dean ’04 and Clark ’04 veterans teamed up to create Blue State Digital, the technology backbone of Obama’s online operation), but also the Federal Government, over the past four years.

Many 2004 campaign veterans have been working in the realm of making government more open in order to enable watchdog oversight of it. I have been working more in the realm of trying to make government more efficient and effective through technologies and organizing techniques that promote openness. I’m personally mostly focused on the cultural and policy side of things– trying to get people inside NASA used to being more open and sharing by default rather than only when explicitly forced to. There is also a great deal of work being done by reformers in the CIO’s offices and elsewhere on the communications technology side of NASA’s operations. They’re working on open APIs, open-source licenses, etc. I’ve told a bit of this story, in the context of NASA, in several presentations over the past year. Here below I’ve attempted to break down the problems, implications and solutions I see in a more structured format, again using examples we have encountered at NASA.

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Sharing Our World

The young professionals’ panel at the 2008 International Civil Service Commission conference was a truly remarkable event.  Nick, Garret, and I met with our UN counterparts at United Nations Plaza 2, one of their main office buildings, to go over final preparations and introduce everyone face-to-face for the first time.

We then crossed the street to enter the UN Headquarters grounds.  It’s hard for me to put in words even now the sense of honor and amazement I felt at being an invited guest there.  After we passed through security and were given our access passes, the group made its way to the Secretariat building for the conference session.

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Tipping NASA

I have always been fascinated with what makes a situation, person, or event succeed or fail. The psychology of it fascinates me. I studied psychology as an undergrad and in graduate school, but it wasn’t until I read The Tipping Point by Malcome Gladwell that I really became hooked on social psychology and specifically the power that people have to make an impact or be change agents.

Gladwell starts his book with a description of the successful come back of Hush Puppies. Yes, it is true Hush Puppies weren’t always popular and the brushed suede shoe line was down to 30,000 pairs per year in 1994. Then people started showing up in the trendy clubs and bars in Manhattan and it was on. People bought up the shoes from anywhere they could. Issac Mizrahi (before he was so famous and designed for Target) was wearing them, another designer wanted them for spring fashion shoot, someone created Hush Puppy boutique, as so on and so on. By the end of 1995, they had sold 430,000 pairs. Word of mouth drove the demand and ultimately the supply. Amazing!

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OpenNASA Opening Doors

I knew that I was joining a special group of people when I became a contributing author here because of the passion everyone has shown for making NASA the kind of organization we all know it can be.  I consider myself fortunate to be in the company of such a group.

I have learned a heck of a lot in a relatively short period of time about the various perspectives that people bring to the table from all over the space exploration community.  I expected and hoped that would happen, though.  What I didn’t expect was that participating in this electronic forum would lead to even wider, once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

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Importance of Dissenting Opinions

Following Justin’s post today about the JSC Vision Forum, I wanted to bring up a point based off a question that was asked at the forum:

The JSC Vision Forum concluded with a debrief on the activities that had transpired that evening.  During that time, a young lady asked a very important question regarding dissenting opinions and how they tend not to travel as far as the popular opinion.  I answered her question in a quick and simple fashion but for the sake of time, I did not voice all facets of this topic.

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Thoughts From the JSC Vision Forum

I had the opportunity to participate in the first JSC Vision forum this evening. It opened with a brief introduction to the 20-Year Vision for Johnson Space Center, how it was derived, and the five big ideas for implementation. We then split off into breakout groups to discuss the Vision as a whole and the implementation concepts. Lots of people went straight for the implementation groups, so I decided to split off with the smaller group that was analyzing the Vision itself.

I was easily the youngest person in my breakout group. Including the moderators, the only civil servant was the guy taking the notes (which will be distilled and passed on to JSC management in an anonymous format). There were six of us, plus two moderators and our notetaker. I’d say the big theme that kept coming up was that we need to figure out a way to communicate with and get buy-in from people who aren’t necessarily sold on high-level collaboration and integration… and that we desperately need “public input” to help make what we do at JSC relevant to people’s lives.

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Innovation, Not Serendipity

I read an article by Malcolm Gladwell in the New Yorker today about Nathan Myhrvold, former director of research at Microsoft, and his “Intellectual Ventures” endeavor. Their whole idea is to be a company that comes up with good ideas, patent them, and license to interested companies that have the technical expertise. As I was reading about what Intellectual Ventures has gotten itself into, I couldn’t help but think that this is precisely the sort of thing we’re looking to foster here at NASA with the innovation and collaboration initiatives.

Intellectual Ventures sponsors huge brainstorming sessions where the key people in the company bring in subject matter experts who can help them figure out which ideas will work and which won’t. Importantly, though, they understand that the vast majority of their ideas probably won’t go anywhere, but that’s okay because it will help them learn and eventually get them to an idea that will work.
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Sharing Our Innovations

A lot of thought and discussion has occurred lately concerning how to improve our internal communications in NASA. Here at JSC, this discussion has culminated with the release of the 20 Year Vision proposal. I am both honored and fortunate to have met with some of the people who made it happen and look forward to working with them on the implementation of those ideas.

With that in mind, I think that some of my professional experiences elsewhere can be brought to bear on this topic. In between undergrad and grad school, I worked in the intelligence community (IC) for a few years as a missile analyst. If you think the NASA community is results-oriented, the IC takes it to a whole new level.

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Strategy, Really!

Keith mentioned in a previous comment that HQ reads these posts. If it is true I think that is great, that they care so much as to try to listen to us. But I do ask that they stop reading our postings like anthropologists and start reading it like empathetic leaders. Like any good leader they should not be moved at every whim of those they lead, but they should also not ignore those that follow.

I think that those of us in Gen Y (at least I am) are upset because NASA is supposed to represent high-tech, but the industry that is supposed to be ahead of everyone else is sadly about 8-10 years behind industry. Sure there are projects that are amazing in and of themselves, but the resources going into them don’t compare with the results obtained.

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The Future of NASA Centers

Yesterday, I had a very interesting and thought-provoking discussion about the future of JSC and how we’re going to get there.  (I’m trying to be careful about name-dropping, so as to keep the focus here on the ideas more so than personalities.)  One of the subjects we broached was how JSC is famous for its mission operations work, but that a lot of the good engineering work we’re doing here is going unnoticed by the public-at-large.  I’ll actually be meeting with someone tomorrow who is heading up the Engineering Directorate’s efforts to share their innovations both internally and externally.  However, that effort is inexorably tied to the larger question of what our focus should be as an organization.  That central question that has preoccupied my thoughts lately.

Successful organizations tend to be those that focus on a particular area and do that extremely well, as I was reminded yesterday.  In our case here at JSC, that would clearly be mission operations and support.  If that is going to be our focus, then we might need to be prepared to offload projects in the same vein as the now-defunct X-38 to other NASA centers and stay centered on our area of excellence.  When asked where I see JSC being in 20 years, I said that I would like to see JSC essentially serving as the staging area for lunar outpost and Mars sortie missions and support.  That doesn’t leave a whole lot of room for “the other stuff,” especially in an era where we must be prepared to expect static budgets.  However, I also believe that we must remember that operations are not an end unto themselves.  As the Global Exploration Architecture clearly shows, we must have achievable, relevant scientific goals to be working towards.  Our operations must be the means to accomplishing specific ends in science and exploration.

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