The speeches and various forum-related activities are probably very interesting. However, when you boil it down to its basic element, these are a series of speeches involving a large number of middle-aged white people.

Now I like middle-aged white people as much as the next person but these events feel like Washington is spending a lot of money and resources to preach to the same shrinking audience NASA has had since the Apollo program.

I have nothing against Ms. Dale. She is a fine person, although she is not the most dynamic speaker, but whatever the title or the person, a speech is a speech is a speech is a speech.

On to Second Life. Although there are millions of members, this is a highly specialized community. I will be interested to see how many non-NASA people partiticaped online. What was NASA's ROI?

Even if the event in San Jose was a success, so?

These are not about middle-aged white people, they are about Shana Dale, the next NASA administrator. Their probably only a million dollars each, and NASA has to much money anyway since all their work is reruns from the past. Seond Life is cool since it reaches rich people with nice computers while school children get nothing. This is genius!

Well I am a middle aged white person and guess what? I used to be a young person but by virtue of not dying yet I reached middle age. Hopefully I will one day be an old person.

I'd already left Second Life by the time this NASA 'opportunity' came along because it is a monumentally dull experience unless you decide to spend a wadge of your own real money to buy Second Life money.

If NASA had wanted to attract a wider virtual audience they should have followed the lead of most other popular Second Life venues & replaced the 'seats' with paid pole dancing 'opportunities'.

>>I will be interested to see how many non-NASA people partiticaped online. What was NASA's ROI?

That's one reason it's hard to convince organizations to get into all of the cool stuff Gen Y wants to do. If there's no measurable return or benefit, why should they bother? Doing it just because it's cool is a good justification for doing things when you're 20. It's not so smart when you're 40 and trying to explain to your boss why they should support X electronic effort(s).

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