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Yet Another NASA EPO Website With No Clear Purpose (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
April 28, 2012
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Keith’s note: After being inert for a while NASA SpaceSmart.com is back and its official NASA Twitter account @SpaceSmart has suddenly become active again. Included are odd grammatically flawed tweets such as “[JOHN] I don’t think NASA-inspired inventions space propulsion technology.” and “[JOHN] I want a manned Mars mission should grow.”. I have asked Beth Beck what the purpose of this SpaceSmart thing is before (continue below) but she simply refuses to reply to any requests to explain what she is doing on the agency’s behalf. As such I doubt she will be any more forthcoming this time.

“Beth Beck and Agela Triano worked together to create NASA SpaceSmart, an activity-based communication tool to measure shifts in public opinion about space. Beth is NASA’s Space Operations Outreach Manager and Angela is a Marketing Solutions Account Executive at GES. Learn ways to engage and interact with your audience as you communicate your brand message, while tracking what topics “move the needle” in how they view your brand. SpaceSmart is one of many projects Beth created as an opportunity to make this world a better place while demonstrating the relevance between life on Earth and the extreme environment of space.”
Keith’s 18 Oct 2011 note: SpaceSmart has a Twitter account at @SpaceSmart but it hasn’t tweeted since 7 Feb 2011. Not very current – or “SpaceSmart”. This project also has a website nasaspacesmart.com whose domain is registered to PurcellMultimedia in Lewisville, Texas. This website points to Facebook page that does not seem to exist. There is no mention of this effort at NASA.gov. Why hasn’t HEOMD EPO Lead Beth Beth told anyone about this? If you pay $10 you can hear her talk about it here.
This SpaceSmart thing seems to be accomplishing nothing – so what is it that Beth Beck is going to talk about on behalf of the agency? The Twitter page says “I’m SpaceBot. NASA is still developing the world I live in. You can join me there soon. Stay tuned.” The last time Beth embarked on an automated website we got NASA Buzzroom and all of the inappropriate content it automatically published at NASA.gov. Isn’t NASA supposed to be coordinating all of these EPO and public engagement activities?
Keith’s 19 Oct 2011 update: I came across these confusing presentations from 2010 and 2011 that describe what NASA SpaceSmart is supposed to do – whenever it actually starts doing whatever it is supposed to do. Lots of numbers and charts but no description of what this little droid mascot “SpaceBot” represents or what Space Smart actually does or will do. Global Experience Specialists, Inc. (GES) is apparently the NASA contractor on this. Two Twitter accounts are listed as being sources for more information. @joannascorsone does not seem to Twitter very much and @trianotwntxs protects their Tweets and only has 25 followers. This doesn’t strike me as a team that does a whole lot of social media interaction – at least not on Twitter.
The nasaspacesmart.com website openly says “Space Smart™” If you do a quick trademark search you will see that there are 50 applications to trademark “Space Smart” or close variants thereof. 17 applications are still live. So … does this NASA activity actually own the trademark that it is claiming — or has their application been denied? Did NASA apply for this trademark?
Keith’s 19 Oct 2011 update: There is another Twitter account associated with this effort @spacesmartbot. Alas, it is not very smart. It only tweeted 22 times – the last time being 24 June 2010. Then it shut down (I guess). Curiously, that last tweet says “[] I don’t think exploration isn’t in the country’s best interest.” Hmm. Bad robot grammar.
Oh well. More stuff to FOIA.

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

11 responses to “Yet Another NASA EPO Website With No Clear Purpose (Update)”

  1. Christopher Miles says:
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    I can has Cheezeburger in Space?

  2. Brutus Argendeli says:
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    tweeted back to SpaceSmart “[NASA] Can I has complete sentences.”

    But seriously, where is their twitter feed coming from?  It reads like two chat-bots trying to out brown-nose each other.

  3. Christopher Miles says:
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    OK, I followed the twitter feed. Now I can has headache.

    Reading the slides linked above, it’s clear that the Contractors’ case was:

     “Hey NASA, you don’t get Millennials- at best you seem to sort of get Gen Y…. So lets tweet possible future scientists, astronauts, and space policy makers some silly spaced out aphorisms over and over in the hope that rote tweeting will do something we, as live humans cannot.”

    Humph. 

    Anyone hear the young kids cheering in the background as the shuttle(s) did their beauty passes in DC and NYC? Someone please find and recruit a few of them. Make them NASA ambassadors. A few per city or state. Give them a pass at reaching their own age group. Will they only reach a few sciency/ spacey/geeky millennials? Sure. But we only need a few! 

    The future Elon Musk or Franklin Chang-Diaz is out there somewhere- and he ain’t wastin’ his time tweetin’ to no robot.

    • Hallie Wright says:
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      “he ain’t wastin’ his time tweetin’ to no robot.”

      Like you do when you tweet. Who ya think is receiving your tweets when you punch them in? You think there’s an elderly lady sitting at a switchboard writing it down? Nope. It’s a robot. A robot that is programmed to distribute your words to other people. Pretty smart, that robot. Yes, your tweets are mediated by an electromechanical device that has been programmed to function. A robot. Get used to it.

      Hey, and I’ll bet an astronaut couldn’t come close to doing what that robot does!

      By this token, robots are vastly superior to astronauts as heroes for the youth of America. Seriously. Just ask a kid if she’d give up her cell phone to talk to an astronaut. That smart phone — that robot, is her hero. Yes, the future Elon Musk or Franklin Chang-Diaz is out there right now commanding his robot.

      • Christopher Miles says:
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        You’re missing the point I was making. Phones, tweets, browsers, are each a medium. I care about the original message and the messenger. To borrow your metaphor- kids are currently tweeting VIA a robot not WITH one.
        I want some effective, engaging (and yes, perhaps real dialog) that parallels some of the other efforts NASA outreach does for young people.
        This current incarnation needs a few more years in the lab. Never mind the Touring test- Space Smart can’t pass a tourist test.

        And I still can has headache.

        Looking forward to new posts, comments and threads written by humans to be read by humans, no matter what manner of robot delivers or disseminates them.

        • Hallie Wright says:
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          Ah, correct. I did miss your point. Thisisn’t a humans-versus-robots screed. Your point was that NASA can’t engage people by automatically flinging words at them. I agree completely.

  4. damallette says:
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    Note to Keith:  Thanks for putting me in touch with an old friend.  Ken Purcell of Purcell Multimedia in Lewisville, Texas is one of my of my former students and lead programmer for simulations at ARCO Technology Transfer Group back in the 90’s.  He indicates the SpaceSmart thing is a sim game for young folks to learn about space and he seems both passionate about space and education as well.  Haven’t looked at it myself yet, but I know Ken is an upstanding fellow and look forward to learning more.  I don’t do Facebook or tweeting so can’t comment on anything there. 

    Fascinating I should reconnect like that through your site…

    • kcowing says:
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      No one from his company – or NASA – has told me anything – so its FOIA request time tomorrow.

      • damallette says:
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        Go get’em, boss.  Unless he’s been taken over by aliens, I rather suspect you will find Ken the kind of person we need in support of manned exploration.  I certainly saw nothing in the email he sent in response to my shout out to suggest he’d gone over to the dark side or was any less the honest man I recall. 

        However, as I said, I haven’t yet drunk the Facebook or Twitter Kool-Aid (though I fear my friends are spiking my drinks) so I couldnt’ see the stuff you are seeing. 

        Looking forward to your findings, as always.

  5. kcowing says:
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    I sent this note to Beth Beck and NASA PAO today. I doubt she will respond – she never does.

    Beth: I have the following questions with regard to your NASA SpaceSmart social media activity:

    1. What is the purpose of this NASA SpaceSmart  activity? Who is (are) the intended audience(s)?

    2. What metrics have been generated that track NASA SpaceSmart  usage? (please provide the metrics)

    3. Who is the responsible NASA official for NASA SpaceSmart?

    4. Who is (are) the contractors(s) who support NASA SpaceSmart? How were they selected? (competitive or sole source)

    5. How much has NASA SpaceSmart cost to date and how much will it cost in the future (what is its budget)?

    6. Who operates the Twitter account @SpaceSmart and the website nasaspacesmart.com?

    7. How is NASA SpaceSmart coordinated with NASA Public Affairs, the NASA Chief Technologist’s Office, and the NASA Chief Information Officer?

    Previous requests with regard to your official NASA social media activities have gone unanswered. As such, I request a short, simple response from NASA by COB today (1 May 2012) that there will be a detailed response to my questions at a later date. Absent that short, simple response, I will consider a non-response to be “no” and I will submit these questions (and others) as a formal FOIA request.

    Keith Cowing
    Editor
    NASAWatch.com/SpaceRef.com

    • kcowing says:
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      I just got this reply from Beth Beck:

      I’m happy to provide an overview. Please forgive typos. I’m one-finger typing.

      SpaceSmart is a set of exhibit kiosks experiences to measure the shift in public opinion during an exhibit experience based on short kiosk-based activities designed to educate the user about NASA discoveries and technologies. The users are asked baseline questions (based on Public Affairs/StratComm studies) and asked the questions again following the interactive experience. We measure the before and after change.

      We created SpaceSmart years ago when the StratComm office was in place. We worked with four the mission directorates and the StratComm team to create a measurement instrument to move public opinion, based on data from the communications surveys that demonstrated significant changes in public opinion resulting from exposure to NASA technologies. The StratComm audience focus was 18-24 year olds, under the agency communications strategy. We used their guidance, then expanded the reach to the more general public. We used existing content, provided by fellow mission directorates, in a reformatted way to continue to collect survey data that had been approved by OMB. SpaceSmart was created by the former Space Ops office and is now Human Exploration and Operations office. The intent was originally for the Agency-level Exhibits office to use SpaceSmart at every event to continue to collect metrics to complement the original communications strategy.

      All content was reviewed by the mission directorates and the StratComm office. All paperwork was filed and approved by NASA’s CIO for SpaceSmart. NASA’s Chief Technology Office didn’t exist, but the measurement questions were reviewed and approved by OMB and the former StratComm. The technology data originally came from the Spin-Off team, and had been organized by ESMD folks into the “Space in Your Life” exhibit material.

      We only used SpaceSmart once at AARP. Then the OMB approval for NASA public opinion surveys expired. The agency spent the next 15 months filing for a new process. We received approval to use SpaceSmart again when the HEO merger happened. All the SpaceSmart kiosks have been transferred to MSFC to be managed by the former ESMD team as part of our merged exhibit program.

      We used SpaceSmart again for the first time at the festival this weekend. The @SpaceSmart twitter account is set up to tweet from one of the kiosks. It will only tweet out when we’re at events. We set up this account when social media was brand new. Whether or not it makes sense to continue to link the kiosks and the Twitter feed is up for debate. We don’t control when the participants choose to compose for their tweets. SpaceSmart will have gaps of activity, unless we assign it to someone to live tweet in the gaps, which is a possibility. SpaceSmart is still a prototype system since we had to put it on hold for so long.

      The website was only a holding page set up in accordance with our privacy folks who didn’t want us to ask users to sign in with their social media passwords in the kiosk. Technology allows us to bypass this today. Again, we set this up years ago when social media was new. SpaceSmart needs tweaking, which we will do in order of priority as we assess our exhibit properties. With the merger, much of our exhibit properties need updating. One step at a time.

      Below is a SlideShare link of the SpaceSmart presentation we’ve given at the International Space University, the Exhibitor Show, the NASA communication team annual meeting run by public affairs, and the AdWeek event. The metrics from the AARP event are at the backend of the slideshare presentation below. They are available for anyone to see. We haven’t compiled data from this weekend’s festival yet.

      http://www.slideshare.net/b

      Keith, I believe the contract and budget-related issues are covered under FOIA regulations, unless things have changed since last time. Would you like me to forward them for a formal process?

      In addition, I would be happy to sit down with you, at your convenience, and walk through our portfolio. We’re still working through merger issues as we combine our Exploration and Space Ops stories. This is a dynamic time, as you know. Let me know when you are available.

      Beth