NSRC: Engaging the Interested Public

[UPDATED to include talk audio and slides.]

I gave a presentation this morning to the Next-generation Suborbital Researchers Conference (NSRC) on "Social Networking Planetary Science," where my thesis is that small projects who want to do public outreach will achieve the greatest success by attempting to reach not the general public but instead what we call the "interested public," by which I mean the sort of people who read this blog!

The talk was targeted at scientists and engineers, but several of you readers have asked to see and hear it anyway, so here goes. Here are the slides (PPT, about 5 MB), and here is audio of the talk (WAV format, 45 MB; here's a Zipped version, 35 MB), recorded using my iPhone, so the quality is so-so. There is a long pause after my conclusions where David Grinspoon was asking a question, then I pick up with my reply, after which there's one more question and one more reply.

In the talk I mention a number of examples, so here are links to those examples:

• UnnmannedSpaceflight.com
• NASASpaceflight.com
• New Horizons PI's Perspectives
• ESA Mars Express Phobos encounters blog
• My Twitter feed
• About the Mars Express VMC
• About VMC on other missions
• Gordan Ugarkovic's VMC2RGB software
• Doug Ellison's Mars Pathfinder site flyover
• Mars3D's Gale crater flyover
• MESSENGER planning timeline as Web article
• Cassini's tour as Web article

I want to thank the conference organizers, especially David Grinspoon and Erika Wagner, for inviting me to give the talk and making it possible for me to do so remotely. As the caregiver for two kids under four I hardly ever get to travel professionally. It's not ideal to present to a conference remotely -- I would far rather enjoy the face-to-face interactions afforded by attending in person -- but it is better to be present virtually than not to be present at all.