The crew have arrived at the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah! They will spend today unpacking and getting training from the previous crew. We hope to get our first photos later this afternoon. The full 'simulated mission' starts on Tuesday (NZ-Time). Our Mission Support dashboard will be live shortly to let you follow along...
KiwiMars 2012 - Our existing mission to the Mars Desert Research Station in Utah is days away from commencing. The crew, a mix of 4 Kiwis and 2 Australians have all met up in Los Angeles and are currently driving towards Utah. We will be launching an online Mission Support site tomorrow, so you can get real-time updates and watch as the crew arrive, unpack and prepare for the simulation.
KiwiSpace is currently mulling the idea of organising a regular series of event nights with speakers on space topics, and we'd love to hear your thoughts.
We've been considering what formats would work best: A number of our members have attended events like Pecha Kucha
, Ignite, or watched TED or TEDx talks online. The approaches vary – some focus on short presentations with lots of speakers, others longer 'keynotes' - or a combination of the two. Then there's the venue/style – e.g. sit down in a lecture hall, a bar, or maybe over dinner.
Our goal would be to get people interested in space together regularly (bi-monthly/monthly), listen to some engaging or thought-provoking presentations, and provide plenty of time for everyone to mix and mingle and share ideas.
Following the KiwiMars mission we want to see if we can hold one (or several) of these events – probably in June.
As a 'straw man proposal' for a first event, we've been thinking the following:
- Hold at a private room in a restaurant or bar, with seating for around 40 people.
- Round tables for ~8 people – to encourage conversation, etc
- Catered food/meal and a cash bar
- 2-3 speakers – with KiwiMars being one of the first topics
- $25 tickets
We'd love to hear your feedback on what format you think is best, and most importantly would you come?
If this is at all of interest, we'd appreciate you taking 1 minute to fill in this quick form below.