Gen Y and NASA – Update: Blocking Access To Tools

NASA’s Gen Y Speaks Out, Wired

“At the recent NASA Next Generation Exploration Conference at NASA Ames, two young NASA employees, Nick Skytland and Garret Fitzpatrick gave a powerful presentation called “The Gen Y Perspective”– a set of charts they had delivered to their center management the week before that made it all the way up to the Administrator’s desk. Now they were presenting it at a conference of their peers, with special guest moon walker Buzz Aldrin listening.”

NASA Generation Y Briefing 2.4 MB PDF

Next Generation Exploration Conference Convenes at NASA’s Ames

Editor’s update: While some portions of NASA are paying close attention to how the real world is using the Internet, including the 9th floor at NASA Headquarters, other parts of the agency are hiding their heads in the sand. One notable example: JSC and DFRC are blocking access to Twitter. Twitter is one of the fastest growing “microblogging” services in the world and is exceptionally popular with Gen Y. A growing number of NASA personnel use Twitter on a daily basis as tool in their job. I have an account and find it exceptionally useful. There is also a NASA Watch feed on Twitter as well. If you want to see the amazingly global aspect of Twitter check out Twittervision as the Earth moves and messages from all over the world appear in near real time.

However, if Twitter is such a treat that JSC, GRC, and DFRC see fit to ban it, why isn’t the entire agency blocking it? What do the CIOs at JSC, GRC, and DFRC know that the rest of the agency does not?

Rather, as I suspect is actually the case, what is it that JSC, GRC, and DFRC’s CIO’s do not understand?

Editor’s update: Curiously, NASA has its own official Twitter feed. Why put something like this online and then block your own employees from seeing it? Typical NASA.

Editor’s note: Kristen Painting and Aaron Barrera were also authors on this presentation.

Editor’s note: Someone I worked with at NASA in the early 1990’s sent me this comment: “The Gen Y Perspective Briefing reminds me of the old joke:
Q. What’s the difference between NASA and Jurassic Park?
A. One’s an amusement park, filled with dinosaurs; the other one’s a movie.”