jay | winds of change at work...

On Tuesday, I received a last minute invitation (thanks to Pascal) to join a "young Ames brainstorming session" organized with Pete Worden, our new director. I was stretching "young" a bit, even if I'm well under the median staff age here (49). Still, I have a reputation as not tied to the status quo and willing to be outspoken in slicing up local sacred cows, which often gets me in trouble but was valued here. I also used the chance to slip Worden an invitation to our project demo next month.

Worden has brought in a half-dozen "Wordenites" from outside NASA... industry, Air Force, DARPA, and entrepreneurs. One guy founded classmates.com and is in charge of building joint pursuits together with Google ("they said that cost is no object, as long as it is cool stuff"). I suggested that we take an unused building in the NASA Research Park and make it a "playground" with instruments and facilities for designing and building small satellites and UAVs, then encourage Ames staff to spend a couple of days a month hanging out there, as well as inviting others to come by and "play". There were also arguments for setting up a Craigslist-like board for trading equipment and staff, putting e-forms in a wiki and having a center-wide IM provider. Worden himself came in halfway through the discussion... at one point, said jokingly "my job is to find you guys funding, and to shoot any bureaucrats that stand in your way." He held a center-wide BBQ today, with free beer (keep in mind that this is the same place that cancelled providing water coolers last year as a cost-cutting move).

Needless to say, morale locally has improved over the last month...