A couple weeks ago, I attended a NASA conference in Silicon Valley at Ames Research Center (ARC). A common theme at the conference, was how to inspire the next generation of space enthusiasts. Two young NASA employees: Nick Skytland and Garret Fitzpatrick  presented an engaging 15 minute Powerpoint on this topic. It was titled Generation Y Perspectives. 

The audience of mostly 100 fellow GenY’ers were told: “This presentation has been created so that anyone who wants to can take it and use it.

With this, I tested a theory:

• at the time (~Feb 13, 2008), I Googled "Generation Y Perspectives” and other variations to no avail
• I searched blinkx.com for video of similar content. No related results

I was quite aware that this was good content, and well communicated, but was it on the correct medium in order to be widely distributed on the Internet? 

For MPowered, I had worked with a brilliant 1-year-old start-up, called Slideshare and decided it was the best medium.

I shared the resulting shlideshow on Facebook, this tumblog, and emailed it out to some friends. As of last week, 50-odd hits. Impressive for a week, I thought. And then today, I woke up to a bucketful of emails noting that people had added this presentation to their favorites and viewed it. I was surprised to find ~1400 hits to the slideshow.

Most hits were originating from a WIRED blog post by Loretta Hidalgo Whitesides. My conclusion from this test is that it takes 3 to tango: (1) good content, (2) a good medium for distribution and (3) good publicity.

I do not subscribe to the thought this is “shallow, egotistical and depressing”, but as a space enthusiast, I do agree that this presentation only presents the problem and does not specifically address how to solve it. At the least, Nick Skytland, Garret Fitzpatrick  and their friends have got the discussion started.

Read and participate in the discussion at OpenNasa.com