November 2007 Update to Advisers

[kittell]

Hi all, as mentioned on the email list (http://www.seds.org/mailman/listinfo/seds-earth), post information here for a November update to the SEDS-Earth advisers.

Deadline: Sunday 2 December 2007

What is the purpose? Explain what you are doing to experienced members of the international space community. They can help you solve problems, find partners and resources, and give you general advice based on their years of experience.

Who can participate? Representatives of the various national chapters of SEDS.

Who are the advisers?

Werner Balogh, Programme Officer, United Nations Office of Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), Austria
Rei Kawashima, Secretary General, University Space Engineering Consortium (UNISEC), Japan
Clay Mowry, President, Arianespace Inc, USA
Lyn Wigbels, Aerospace Consultant and Senior Associate, Center for Strategic and International Studies, USA


Format to use:

Your name, email address (optional), and university/school
Chapter that you represent
Update on chapter programs in November
Questions for advisers

[jneeskans]

(i'm supposed to be studying for my exams -- checking in every Saturday -- so don't be bothered if you don't hear from me for a long time)

Your name, email address (optional), and university/school:
Pradeep Nair, pradeep@seds.org, University of Mumbai
Chapter that you represent: SEDS-India
Update on chapter programs in November: We have begun the process of registering SEDS India. We have only one category under which to register under Indian law - Non-profit organisation. We have a programme started up called Indian Student Satellite Project (InStuSat for short -- the short form is actually inspired by Insat which is the name for the Indian Satellite Project). We're gonna try and build a range of satellites beginning with a cubesat - as independently as possible. People are still in their exams this month and the next, so, activties might be a lull for these two months.
Questions for advisers:
1. Students in India are very high up on theory but very low down in practise. I understand that the only answer to this question is practise. But, which are the best systems to begin practising on?

that's all I'm guessing.
Pradeep

[jneeskans]

As a general question from SEDS-Earth, we were wondering if we could be present at and cover some of the OOSA activities from a student perspective ??

pradeep

[kittell]

copy/pasted from Alison of UKSEDS...


Name: Alison Gibbings

University: 2007 Graduate, Kingston University, London

Chapter: Vice Chair, UK-SEDS


Update: Hello all. In November we hosted our Annual UKSEDS Conference in Milton Keynes, UK. Although this was quite a quiet event, due to the reduced activity of last year’s committee, all the major UK space organisations were represented. Now a new and passionate committee has been elected and we are up for a challenge! The first event for UKSEDS is the attendance at Astrofest in the New Year (http://www.astronomynow.com/astrofest/). Then joint with UK space organisations, we are supporting **The UK Space Conference** from the 26th-29th March 2008. UKSEDS invites attendance and presentation from all SEDS members and branches world-wide with a hope of creating a wealth of collaboration, communication and partnership, inspiring the next generation. These events are focused in the run-up to the Internationals Astronautical Congress that is being hosted in Glasgow, England. During this event and with help of the British Interplanetary Society, UKSEDS will support and publicise this event. This is coupled with our own UKSEDS Annual Conference and the possibility of combining it with the SEDS-International Conference.


Questions for advisers:

Any comments, suggestions and/or ideas of how working together we can make this all possible?

[jenmichael2000]

Michael Jensen, sedscanada.ca@gmail.com, McGill or Universite de Sherbrooke for my masters, not decided yet. Probably McGill.

President, SEDS Canada

Ok. Our chapter has been active in it's present incarnation for a little over two years now. Our proposal has been accepted by Bob Richards of optech inc., who is our founder and continued supporter. We have "completed" our constitution although we don't have it available online yet, and we have a bank account.

The major thing we have to report though (my bias) is the website I have been working on since september 2005. Lots of time and effort in that one. This is equiped with a database with a search function so that people and chapters can input their information, update it, and it is displayed in a structured manner, and can be searched using inumerable criteria. We intent to make this code available to seds earth, when it comes of age.

Our major challenge now (the site is coming along nicely) is to make contact with all the space related clubs and organizations across canada and get them into the system. We also want to build up a table of space experts who are willing to visit high-schools and universities to motivate and inspire the students, and to guide them in their space education efforts (educating themselves, and those around them.

Another project involves educating the public as well as educating politicians. This project was proposed by the president of the Canadian Space Socitey, Daniel Faber, and has been taken on by one of our exec members.

What I am spending most of my time doing is communicating with people such as yourselves and trying to bring as many resources together as possible to bring to bear on the challenges at hand (public outreach, internal organization, etc.) Like I said, I would like to provide the international community with the services of the website I have built, assuming that they do not already have something similar.

We would appreciate feedback on all of the projects we have going :)

However, I would appreciate feedback particularly on another project that I have just begun thinking about, and which it seems I lack critical experience to implement. Peter Diamandis came up with the idea of the X-Prize. I would like to do a similar thing in canada, as a publicity stunt for seds. I would like to make us headline news, associated with something really cool. My general idea was to get funding from somebody somewhere to sponsor a set of prizes aimed at undergraduate and high-school students, with the goal of inspiring leadership within their ranks, and getting the public excited by getting grand seeming projects going that will be relevant to them.

As an example, I am building a glider at home. I would like to offer 10 000 dollars (quasi random number) to each of up to 10-100 people who can pull off something similar, perhaps given various constraints... the idea would be that the prize winners learn how to build gliders, then they learn how to fly them, then the learn how to teach others in their communities how to do what they did. Perhaps the next step after that could be going a bit higher? building rockets? biger and faster airplanes? ...

What I have been told on this score is that if you want to start a business (building gliders, and selling them, or lessons on how to fly them), you need to determine what the market is. On the same note, if you want to establish a prize, you have to convince the people putting up the money that they will benefit somehow from having spent it.

My last question would be: What if there are people in canada working on really cool stuf, but they already have their connections, etc, and don't feel they need to be affiliated with seds canada? Obviously we want to have them establish accounts on our website so that people can learn about who they are and what they are doing. How do we convince then that this is worth doing? (yes, we are planing on asking them what will make seds canada relevant to them :) )

Ah yes, one more question: We have been offered financial support from Bob Richards, much of it on the condition that we find matching support from somebody else. It is not at all obvious how we should go about doing this. One thing that has occured to me is selling advertising on the site when we get a big enough membership base...

Secondly, there is the question of when we -do- have money in the bank, how do we spend it? You rapidly realize that most things are not cheep. It seems like there are two types of things you could spend on, travel expenses for people, very expensive, or advertising? What form of advertising? Perhaps we could use it to pay for phone services so that we can call people all over canada and bug them about making accounts on our website or going to schools and presenting to them? Perhaps we should hire a graphic designer to make us a really awesome website? Pay for the printing of psychadelic posters to put up in subways? Pay for business cards to hand out at conferences? Take the money for ourselves to cover our travel expenses for going to conferences, or to compensate us for the time we have spent building the organizaton? I have spent thousands of hours for seds already.

Looking forward to your answers,

-Mike

[jenmichael2000]

by the way, our website is canada.seds.org :)

[Lavina]

Format to use:

Your name, email address (optional), and university/school
Lavina Parwani
lavina.parwani@gmail.com
De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

Chapter that you represent
Philippine Students for the Exploration and Development of Space
(PhilSEDS)

Update on chapter programs in November
1) Forum on the Conflict between Science and Religion
2) Astronomy Session (familiarizing members with our telescopes, and looking at Comet Holmes)
3) Seminar on Small Satellites (Introduction to CubeSats)
4) Introduction to Model Rocketry (Workshop)

Questions for advisers

(cross-posted from here (http://forums.seds.org/showthread.php?t=2633))
PhilSEDS (SEDS Philippines) is still in its first year of operation, and the one thing I've found to be be of some trouble is getting people excited enough to make the effort to participate in our activities.
Yeah, stargazing and rocketry (among other things) are exciting activities in themselves, but people here are not all too open to it; they need to be inspired beyond listening to me and some of my officers talk passionately about what we do.
That said, I'm looking for any ideas that you might have to improve this.

[mclinkor]

1 Your name, email address (optional), and university/school
Ryan McLinko (Vice Chair, SEDS-USA)
mclinkor@mit.edu
MIT
2 Chapter that you represent
SEDS-USA
3 Update on chapter programs in November
1.) SEDS-USA Rocket Competition
2.) SpaceVision 2007
3.) Endowment Fund Research
4.) SEDS History Project
5.) Developing new Chapter Documentation
6.) Beginning Renovation of Website

4.) Questions for Advisors

We have noticed some recent problems with chapter membership recently in that some chapters have not submitted dues this past year since they weren't sure what they were getting out of being formal members of SEDS. We have been detailing some perks to this end, such as privileges at trips to NASA, internship connections, etc, but would be welcome to more ideas to this end.

Also, we are looking into creating an endowment fund (a large fund off out of which the principal will be used to fund SEDS-USA), so are looking into ways to find donors for this and ways to run this fund. Any advice on this front would also be appreciated.

[Ahmad]

Ahmad,
President of:
SEDS-Afghanistan

firstly let me mention that there have never been space related groups, companies ,agencies and educational courses for students so far in Afghanistan:(.

Short November Report:

After when I attended SEDSIC 2007 in Semptember, I had enough experience to lead my chapter in a better way than ever. Before this in the very beginning of the September I had organized the first-ever space event in Afghanistan,where there was a good focus on my chapter (SEDS-Afghanistan).
The purpose was to attract the attention of the interested students in the field of space sciences; as well as to initiate the activities of my chapter.
This was to make a group of students who will work for the awareness of people regarding space in the future in my country. Fortunately more than 30 university and high school students joined SEDS-Afghanistan.
When I returned from SEDSIC ,I tried to stay in touch with my group and I provided some books and magazines from my home collection for some of them just to be in touch with me, and to not leave me alone.
As a result what I did in November is to encourage and inspire the students and to attract more from different universities and schools. So I am doing the initiative activities in my country so far.

QUESTION:Any ideas which can help me get many people interested and to attract the attention of the government for financial support?

Ahmad

[kittell]

Hi all. I've closed this thread temporarily. All of the information that you have provided has been gathered into a report and given to the advisers. I'll post here again when I hear back from them in one week.

Thank you all, and I hope you find this service helpful.

[kittell]

Hi all. I have posted the responses from Rei Kawashima and Werner Balogh: http://wiki.seds.org/index.php/Image:SEDS-Earth_Update_2007_Nov.pdf