Space . . . The Final Frontier

Last week I had the honor and pleasure of presenting at the imagine09 conference of the American Astronautical Society. Breaking from tradition, the AAS followed the lead of TED this year and invited many speakers from across the US and across industries to present topics about which they are passionate. Some of these topics were space related but many were not and the goal was to foster dialog among the AAS membership about how these topics could be used within the context of the space industry. Cool!

One of the organizers is a member of the Rice Engineering Alumni group, of which I used to be president. Over coffee a few months ago, he somehow got the impression that I was passionate about using information technology to address the global energy challenge. I'm not sure how he got that impression . . . ;-) He invited me to join the slate of speakers and I agreed almost before he finished asking!

The guidelines I was given as a speaker were the TED commandments:

1. Thou shalt not simply trot out thy usual shtick.

2. Thou shalt dream a great dream, or show forth a wondrous new thing, or share something thou hast never shared before.

3. Thou shalt reveal thy curiosity and thy passion.

4. Thou shalt tell a story.

5. Thou shalt freely comment on the utterances of other speakers for the sake of blessed connection and exquisite controversy.

6. Thou shalt not flaunt thine ego. Be thou vulnerable. Speak of thy failure as well as thy success.

7. Thou shalt not sell from the stage: neither thy company, thy goods, thy writings, nor thy desperate need for funding, lest thou be cast aside into outer darkness.

8. Thou shalt remember all the while: laughter is good.

9. Thou shalt not read thy speech.

10. Thou shalt not steal the time of them that follow thee.

Accordingly, I put together a 20-minute talk about information-adaptive human behavior--using technology to "nudge" human behavior by providing the right information at the right time in the right way to the right people. After all, this is exactly what we're doing at Enistic to "nudge" office employees to better energy use behaviors. Instead of putting together a dry lecture about the behavioral science theory, I presented the material as part of the story of my own entrepreneurial journey; the presentation can be found at my slideshare page.

The conference itself took place over two days last week at NASA's Johnson Space Center. As someone who has always been fascinated with and inspired by the space industry, I was thrilled to participate. Given some of the other speakers (Bob Rogers, Richard Garriott, Wayne Hale, T. Boone Pickens III, for example), I was also honored to participate.

The talks were very engaging. For example, Wayne Hale presented a history lesson about China's world-leading shipping and exploration 600 years ago. Abruptly they shifted from exploration to isolationism and stagnated for centuries. This fostered a great deal of dialog about what we could learn from such lessons and how they might be applied to our own exploration policy.

In fact, all of the talks fostered dialog. After a speaker presented, he/she was whisked off to a breakout room. Audience members then had the option to go engage with that speaker for more detailed discussion or stick around in the main auditorium for the next presentation. Tough decisions! When it came time for me to present, I myself was torn as I really wanted to follow the previous speaker (executive director of the X PRIZE Foundation) for dialog!

I'm glad I stuck around and gave my presentation, though. It was well received and many people (including some of the other speakers) joined me in the breakout room to discuss energy savings, human behavior, technology, and how to apply all of these to the space industry. I don't think we solved any great problems during the breakout session but I do hope that the discussion seeded thoughts, ideas, and follow-up discussions that will continue to bear fruit for some time to come.

At the end of the conference I was exhausted from all of the energy, ideas, and discussion with new contacts. Great job, AAS, and I expect great things from the space industry! I'll post a link to the video of my presentation once it's available online.

Sound Body, Sound Mind

This was a busy, but exciting week at Enistic Inc! We secured our first client--an office building owner here in Houston--and now we're ready to raise some money to get started. This will be my first time leading a capital raise as my previous companies were either bootstrapped or had other officers in charge of investment. Houston has a robust community of angel investors in front of whom we will pitch in January. However, if we can raise some quick cash ($90k) from FFF, it will help us expedite American electrical certification and rollout with our first clients. Therefore I'll be in fundraising mode for the immediate future--look out!

We know we're onto something here and this was validated by a recent conversation I had with my contacts at Google. We're talking with them about being the first business solution that uses Google PowerMeter and they confirmed that, even in their own offices, myriad high-power monitors are left on all the time with useless screen savers. This is Google, arguably one of the most forward thinking (regarding IT power consumption) companies in the world and even they would benefit tremendously from our product. We've got to succeed with this company--it would be irresponsible not to!

I've also been asked to speak at the American Astronautical Society's imagine 09 conference this December. Many of the other speakers are quite high profile so I consider it a real honor to be included among them. As many of you will know, I have grown up in the shadow of the space industry and I have always been extremely compelled by it. For a long time, in fact, I planned to pursue a career in astrophysics before I fell in love with computer science in high school. So this presentation is of special significance to me: an opportunity to share something about which I am very passionate (inducing human behavioral change by supplying well timed information) with a community I love. There isn't much time to put together the presentation, but I'm sure hard work will produce something good.

As always I believe strongly in a balanced lifestyle. Hard work must be balanced out by adequate rest and physical activity to produce optimal performance. As many of you know, I'm a very, very data-driven manager and I manage my own life the same way. This includes measuring my body composition every morning and calculating my daily energy intake and expenditure every evening. As a result I have a massive spreadsheet of every day's net weight gain/loss for the last 8 years.

One problem, though, is that most of these calculations are based on estimates: calorie intake based on historical averages +/- any special daily consideration, estimated resting calorie expenditure based on body composition and activity level, estimated exercise calorie expenditure based on GPS/heart rate monitor, etc. This motivated me to try out a relatively new tool for calorie tracking: the GoWear Fit. You wear it on your arm all day and, based on the movement it detects and your skin temperature, it calculates an [allegedly] much more accurate estimate of your caloric expenditure each day.

I've only been using it for a week but so far I like it. There is definitely a marked difference between the days that I spend in front of a computer and those during which I am active with meetings. This helps me know when to take my evening cardio up a notch to compensate for a sedentary workday. One side benefit too is that it calculates how well you've slept if you wear it at night.

My strength training tools have also been upgraded. I used to print out my workout before I headed to the gym, write down my actual accomplishments as they occurred, and then enter them on my spreadsheet once I returned home. Now I have uploaded my spreadsheet to Google Docs so I can access it from anywhere over the Web. This gives me the ability to enter workout data directly into my phone while I'm at the gym, saving paper and time.

More than just measuring my fitness, though, I actually have to eat right and exercise to change those measurements in a positive direction. As part of my move back, I have added some new areas to my exercise regime. One is the Nintendo Wii. The Wii's sports and fitness programs get me moving around a lot in a fun way that motivates me to keep going. So far I've been doing Wii Fit. We also have Wii Fitness Coach, which I'll start on once Fit becomes tired. Wii Sports can also induce a sweat, as can DDR.

Katie and I have also been swimming Saturday mornings before our weekly trips to the farmer's market. I like swimming because it is low-impact, uses muscles that I didn't even know I had, and is a great cardio workout. However, swimming doesn't like me! I still sink like a rock and it's not uncommon for me to take at least one big gulp of pool water each day! Oh well, no pain no gain!

And speaking of pain, both Rice and the Redskins came back from their bye weeks with losses. Sigh.

We Choose To Go To The Moon!

Last night my extended family and I attended the annual John Glenn lecture at the Smithsonian Institution's National Air & Space Museum. This year was a special occasion as the lecture was jointly given by the original Apollo 11 crew and was a real treat. Each of the astronauts is almost 80 now but they all are as sharp as ever. Their talks were entertaining, informative, and inspiring.

July 20, 1969 we (Americans, humans, living organisms) first set foot on an extraterrestrial body. Wow. Perhaps I am jaded by my life around the perimeter of the space industry, but 40 years later I still find our quest for the Moon to be incredibly inspiring.

If you haven't watched US President John F. Kennedy's "to the Moon" speech, I encourage you to take 9 minutes to do so. Again, perhaps I am jaded because it was delivered in Rice Stadium, a place where I shed a lot of blood, sweat, and tears during my time as a Rice football player, but it still gives me chills every time I watch it. Some of my favorite quotes from this short speech:

"But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them."

"All great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties."

"Man and his quest for knowledge and progress is determined and cannot be deterred."

"But 'Why,' some say, 'the Moon? Why choose this as our goal?' And they may well ask, 'Why climb the highest mountain? Why, 35 years ago, fly the Atlantic? Why does Rice play Texas? We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon! We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things not because they are easy, but because they are hard. Because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills. Because that challenge is one we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win--and the others too."

I find this to be the essence of leadership. Kennedy mobilized an entire nation in pursuit of a common, peaceful goal. He empowered our best scientists and engineers to over perform and he supported them with the resources necessary to realize a seemingly impossible dream. Less than eight years after this speech was given, hundreds of thousands of Americans (and some key Germans!) had come together to develop the myriad diverse systems to launch humans into space from Earth, escape Earth's gravitational pull, arrive precisely at the Moon, maintain orbit around the Moon, jettison a vehicle to land on the Moon, sustain human life both inside and outside the vehicle, launch humans into space from the Moon, rendezvous with an orbiting space craft, escape the Moon's gravitational pull, re-enter Earth's atmosphere, and land safely in the ocean. Wow. It is a true testament to what humans are capable of when they are motivated and unified around a common goal. Wow.

As many of you know, I believe that humans--not just Americans, but all humans--must unify around a new common goal: addressing the global energy challenge. The myriad diverse systems necessary for us to revolutionize energy production, transmission, storage, and consumption will require an even more Herculean effort than did the quest for the Moon. However, looking back at what we did 40 years ago, I am filled with confidence that we can do it--and the resolve that we must!