Bill Gates testified before Congress today on the future of innovation and
The Houston Chronicle’s science writer - Eric Berger, a supporter of the Gen Y outreach efforts - recently posted to his blog the answers Dr. Griffin gave him to questions about the “Gen-Y problem.”
http://blogs.chron.com/sciguy/archives/2008/03/nasa_chief_addr_1.html
So I’ve been thinking a lot about how we can improve and promote communication at NASA, both internally and externally. Well, ok, I’m not necessarily putting hours of thought into it, but I’m at least letting the thoughts meander around a little bit.
I thought that maybe I’d do a little research - you know, find some other huge government organization that stretches across the country, one that works on horribly complex technical projects while having an amazing reputation for fostering collaboration and teamwork… oh wait, does such a thing exist?
The existing space-environment connection is not clear to a lot of people, both inside and outside of the agency. I absolutely think NASA should keep doing the “S”/ space in its name (that’s why I work at NASA!), but I also believe that its past and current work have directly aligned the agency with helping to understand and mitigate many environmental issues of today.
Some connections between NASA/ space and the environment:
• NASA launches and manages many Earth-observing satellites, which have provided data critical to understanding climate issues.
• Following on this previous point, NASA hosts the scientific talent to address many climate related issues of the day.
• NASA technologies used for spaceflight (solar panels, water recycling, many more) can have practical uses for terrestrial sustainability/ environmental/ climate problems.
• NASA’s system engineering approach has many parallels with the Earth Systems complexity of Spaceship Earth.
• The first whole, beautiful pictures of our Earth came from Apollo astronauts.
As one of the members who helped put the Gen Y presentation together, it really has been amazing seeing the responses we’ve gotten since giving this for the first time and watching it bounce around to various circles throughout NASA and outside the agency as well. Thank you to everyone for the responses, both positive and negative.
While the majority of responses have been largely very positive (as Nick’s “Small Steps” post can attest) some of the more interesting responses we’ve seen have actually been the negative ones. The picture we painted in the presentation did not necessarily place our generation in a completely positive light. Some have questioned who Gen Y thinks they are to want things to change for them. Some have pointed to the spoiled nature of a generation who has grown up expecting instant gratification and importance. Read the rest of this entry »
We talk about encouraging young people to pursue science careers. But are we actually providing good incentives for them to do that? What opportunities are there for people to advance in careers are pure scientists at NASA? Look around you– who are the people in the senior positions? The “decision makers”? They may be people with scientific training, but they’re certainly not workaday scientists. When we ask “Where are all the scientists?”, it might do us good to look around and notice they’re all being promoted out of a job, and into management.
As a so-called young person trying to build a career in science, I’ve been told numerous times I’ll be doing so at the expense of more senior positions, and more pay. When I look around me for good examples, role models, mentors, I frankly have not one senior person in my professional life at NASA who has encouraged me in pursuing a path of pure science.
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 
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 »
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