Day One of the NASA IT Summit turned out to be an excellent experience. Perhaps even more exciting than the numerous speakers I was able to listen to were the huge amounts of people there to meet and talk with. It was great to be able to have so many conversations on how we can work to better serve both members of the NASA family and members of the public.
The morning opened with a welcome from NASA’s CIO, Linda Cureton. I’ve had the pleasure of meeting Linda a few times before, and she’s definitely one of the nicest people I’ve spoken to at the agency. You can instantly tell she’s passionate about making NASA a leader in the Federal IT community. She also gave a nice shout out to the Open Government efforts I’ve been working on, which was great to hear.
After Linda, we heard from Jim Stikeleather, Chief Innovation Officer at Dell, Mark Bregman, Chief Technology Officer at Symantec, and David Cearley, VP & Fellow at Gartner, Inc. I was particularly interested in Cearley’s speech, as he gave an impassioned look forward to the future of technology and how it should fit into our long term planning. Perhaps most controversial? “The PC Era is Over – it’s 1981 again!”. After the Summit, you can view videos of all these speakers on the NASA IT Summit webpage at: https://www.nasa.gov/offices/ocio/itsummit/index.html
Today, we’re going to be hearing from two people who I can’t even begin to hold back my excitement from. First will be Vint Cerf, Chief Internet Evangelist at Google. I heard Cerf speak at the Random Hacks of Kindness event a few months back, and I’m looking forward to seeing the “father of the internet’s” perspective on NASA’s role in the evolution of the web. After Cerf, we’ll hear from Jack Blitch, General Manager of Walt Disney Imagineering in Florida. I’ve always had two dream jobs – one of them is working for NASA (check) and the other is being a Disney Imagineer. I can’t wait to hear what he has to share on Disney’s management processes, and I hope that he can provide a little insight knowledge as to what it’s like to work at Walt Disney World.
I’m pleasantly surprised at the number of people here at the Summit (about 1100!). This also means there is lots of online coverage. Check out #NASAIT on Twitter to get live updates throughout the day. You can also watch online here. As always, feel free to share your questions or comments in the field below. I’ll be checking in regularly.