SEDS Forums

Hi Fellow SEDS Alums,

Many of you are already members of a free site that I run called SpaceAlumni.com. I started this site to help alums from programs like the SEDS to better interact with each other and with the rest of the community--to be another valuable tool in our portfolios. It's also meant to be a bridge to help SEDS alums find ways to remain involved in the community after they graduate and leave their SEDS Chapters behind. Since we first launched, the site has grown into something more, something that connects people all across the world and offers a number of features, ranging from interesting and unique takes important space news events to an interview series that lets our members interact with the leaders of the international space community.

Thanks to the strong response we've received from the community, we've redesigned the site to be more powerful and more user-friendly. Best of all, we're still able to offer these services totally free thanks to the part-time, unpaid efforts of a team of just 4. I hope you'll check SpaceAlumni.com out again, or visit us for the first time.

I'll paste a longer announcement about the new features and design of the site below. I hope that you will find the time to check it out, and please don't hesitate to contact me directly with any feedback!

Best,
William Pomerantz GSFC '02

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Last week, SpaceAlumni.com underwent a major site redesign. Looking back on ten months of successful service for our 550+ members, we thought it was time to take all of the helpful suggestions we’ve received and turn our site into something that is easier to use, more efficient, and better suited to communicate the things we all want to say. Hopefully, our redesign has done just that.

As our new site design makes clear, SpaceAlumni.com is not just another Space News site. The niche for reporting and breaking-news journalism has been filled quite admirably by many other websites, and trying to match them would be foolish and wasteful on our part. What we offer instead is a unique way of directly interacting with the space community, and with the individuals and events that make the news:

* Our unique Live Interview series allows you to interact directly with leading scientists, entrepreneurs, policymakers, and the rest of the most influential space professionals throughout the globe, including leading scientists, entrepreneurs, and policymakers. SpaceAlumni.com is proud to announce that our next two Live Interviews will be with Dr. Brad Edwards, the world's leading expert on the Space Elevator, and with Dr. Adigun Ade Abiodun, the current Chairman of the United Nations' Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (UN-COPUOS). Visit the site today to submit your questions for either of our upcoming Interviews, or to suggest future interviewees! Soon, our archived Live Interviews will be available for download in a convenient PDF format.

* Our News & Notes section provides weekly updates featuring top-level summaries of the past week's space news. Written with a sense of humor and links to more detailed articles, our News & Notes columns are a must-read for those people who just don't have the time to read the full news every day. Let us do the work for you! Registered SpaceAlumni.com users can now sign up to receive these updates delivered directly to their email inboxes.

* Our Community section is growing and adapting to provide you more of the services you want. Already you can use our strong network to connect with old friends or to identify potential collaborators. Our Connections feature allows you to request introductions from mutual acquaintances, or to introduce yourself to people that you would like to meet. Soon, you will also be able to use the community section of SpaceAlumni.com to post photographs and files that you feel may be of interest to the broader space community.

* In the near future, SpaceAlumni.com will be accepting applications for regular columnists who can provide unique insight into one facet or another of the space community. While we don't want to compete with existing news services, we hope to provide a different perspective via these members of the community. Our columnists will give you insight into what it is like to be on the ground, working some of the most interesting jobs in the business.

* Our SpaceJobs section continues to feature quality jobs with good leads. We don't aim to match the numbers of some other jobs sites; instead, our jobs listings offer inside connections that can help your Curriculum Vitae rise to the top of the stack.

* Our SpaceAlumni Spotlight highlights a different SpaceAlumni.com user every month, helping you meet the people who will be shaping the space world for years to come. Please contact us at inspire@spacealumni.com to nominate a member.

* SpaceAlumni.com also offers a number of standard and useful features, such as a Forum, a Chatroom, a Shoutbox, and many more. Additionally, our sister site, SpaceCalendar.org, brings the values and strengths of the open source community to event monitoring and advertising. Visit SpaceCalendar.org to keep yourself informed of all of the important events coming up in the space world, from conference registration dates to launch windows to open lectures. If you are planning an event, feel free to submit the event details to the website to attract our growing audience of potential attendees!

As always, all of these features are brought to you free of charge by the volunteer team of SpaceAlumni.com. If you are interested in a fulfilling and rewarding role as one of our volunteers, please don't hesitate to contact us at inspire@spacealumni.com.
We hope that our site will serve as a tool to make the global space community more effective and more efficient. If you agree, please visit us today, and help us spread the good word!

Kind regards,

Nicholas Skytland and William Pomerantz
Co-founders, SpaceAlumni.com
on behalf of our entire Volunteer Team

Hi SEDS students and fellow alums,

FYI, SpaceAlumni.com just launched a new site! It's better looking and more powerful, and offers a lot of the functionality you might find on sites like MySpace, Facebook, and LinkedIn--with a space focus. It also has some news and an interview series that allows users to directly interact with space luminaries from around the world.

We're also running a raffle for a limited time--anyone who signs up for the site or updates their user profile before the new year is automatically entered to win a shirt from (in my opinion) the hottest space apparel company out there, Sky Fire Lab.

The full press release is below... check out the site!

Hey Will,

The new SpaceAlumni is awesome! I had tried to log on a while back when it was down and was very disappointed - I'm glad that it's back up and better than ever. Nice work!

Jess Senning

Hi Jess,

Thanks a million! Words of encouragement like yours are what keeps the site up and running. I hope you are finding the site useful and entertaining, and if you have suggestions for how to make it better--or if you want to join the team--just let me know! The more the merrier...

-W