I’ve had a couple of conversations (relative to a couple of different projects) over the past week or two around how open we should really be with our day to day work.  The discussion really centered around Twitter and whether or not someone like me should write job-related stuff like “oh no, my mission’s going to crash into the moon because I screwed up the calculation” when I screw something up.

 The concern was that if the public sees such comments about how often stuff gets screwed up, that they’ll want to take all of our money away because we seem like a bunch of idiots.  The flip side is that if we’re really open and honest about how close we are to failure every day and how incredible it is that people find the errors that they do, then the general public will gain a whole new appreciation for how difficult spaceflight is and how close we are to failure all the time.

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I’ve been giving a lot of thought lately about what it means for managing organizations now that Generation Y makes up a significant part of the workforce. I’ve also been reading some articles that discuss the difficulty and frustration managers today have with the younger workforce. Hopefully this post will help managers as they try to navigate leading their leaders as well as Gen Y’ers who are entering the workforce and are looking for opportunities to do their part in changing the world.

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I would like to share a really cool effort that is taking shape at Goddard!  There’s an awesome group of folks who are passionate and energetic about our space agency and (in my words) want to help lead the world in using space exploration to pursue knowledge for the benefit of all mankind!  The initiative is called OpenGoddard, and while there was no intention in using that name to connect specifically with OpenNASA, I believe that some of the efforts of the two groups look pretty similar!

Come on over to www.opengoddard.com and check us out!  The website is in its very early stages, but I’d invite you to head over, take a look, and perhaps leave with a little inspiration!  Check the May 19th post for a little more detail about our mission!

We’re back online! Thanks for your patience everyone– please comment and post as you were…

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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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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In discussions lately with my fellow travelers at NASA, we’ve been getting down to the fundamentals of defining ourselves as an agency and determining our value. More than a few people I’ve talked to agree that we struggle with communicating that to the public because we haven’t really figured out the “why” ourselves. This is a conversation that we should be having at all levels, both internally and publicly, and OpenNASA is an ideal forum for it.

We need an answer to the question “Why?” that is stronger than esoteric notions of destiny and the role of great nations. Our answer should reflect the values and concerns of the people we share this great country with. Our answer to the question “Why?” could be how NASA is helping solve America’s present problems as we build for the future.

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Hello, my name is Celeste Merryman and I work for NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (you may have heard of it), in the Knowledge Management and Collaboration Technologies Office. I asked the organizers of Open NASA if I can blog about my current project–NASAsphere. We are piloting social networking for NASA employees and internal contractors. We started May 12th, 2008 and have a current end date of June 10th, 2008. I hope to blog periodically about how things are going.

I want to start off by setting the scene for the knowledge sharing landscape in NASA (from my perspective of course). I think it is important background information that helps with understanding how and why social networking is important to implement in NASA and that it might be the right time to do it.

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To celebrate NASA’s 50th birthday Glenn Research Center is holding a 2 day open house for the public on 5/17 and 5/18. Many facilities will be open for guided tours including the 5.2 second drop tower, the Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory, and the fabrication shop that is building the Ares I-X upper stage mass simulator. The whole event is really geared towards families and promises to be a fun day (for example the Aero-Acoustic Propulsion Laboratory is being billed as the “enter the Dome of Silence!”).

GRC did this 4 years ago on my very first week here at NASA. It was overwhelming to see the waves of people excited about NASA. I think they are expecting over 50,000 people this weekend if the wonderful Cleveland weather holds out (although the event is rain or shine). This is true open NASA in my opinion - open the doors and let the people in! It is also a breath of life for employees because you can rise above the minutia of daily work and see for a moment the wonder of what we do.

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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. Read the rest of this entry »