Dan Lacaze: A Suit in SXSW – day five

Dan Lacaze, a Group Account Director at BMF Sydney, is attending SXSW in Austin, Texas and is writing a daily diary exclusively for Campaign Brief.

Day 5: the Pioneers

I sat in a NASA session today and an astro-physiscist used the words “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away” as he showed us some inter-galatic images from the Hubble telescope.

The crowd of geeks were in heaven.

John Grunsfeld, NASA astronaut and NASA Associate Administrator for Science was also very entertaining. He has been to space three times, and he talked us through his mission to repair and upgrade components on the Hubble, an $8b piece of tech that orbits earth. The drama of his space walk, footage of his tomfoolery in zero gravity and the perspective he has gained from time in space were awarded with a standing ovation from the crowd.

NASA are an incredible pioneering organisation. Despite their intellectual capacity, they believe that most smart people in the world don’t work for them.

They therefore created ‘NASA Solve‘, a crowd sourcing initiative to find ideas from the public to further their goals. They have $70m to award to people who crack their challenges. For example the Asteroid Grand Challenge, an initiative to better identify asteroids that may prove dangerous to earth, generated 700 ideas from over 1,000 people with 31 winners. It has improved NASA’s ability to detect rogue asteroids by 15%.

Another design initiative, to improve the quality and dexterity of the gloves the astronauts wear, awarded a prize to the man who designs the wings for the Victoria Secret models.

Such is the pioneering spirit of the yanks.

They have genuinely proven that the crowd can help with rocket-science.