Great Idea – Poor Execution

Editor’s note: Unless you happen to visit NASA’s home page you would not know about “Looking for NASA’s Greatest Fan“. I don’t see any mention on Wired’s website. Nor is it mentioned on NASA’s Breaking News page. No press release seems to have been issued – either by NASA or Wired.

This is rather odd given that this contest – which seems to have appeared out of nowhere – has a rather short turn around: “It’s not enough for the videos to be good; they also have to be submitted quickly. The contest opens at 8 a.m. ET on Monday, Sept. 18, 2006, and closes at midnight on Friday, Sept. 22, 2006. Only the first 1500 entries will be accepted.” This contest should have been announced – widely – at least a month ago.

Why go out of your way to limit visibility for such a contest, then put a short timeline together – and do so for something that takes some time to put together i.e. a video. Plus, this page is listed as being for “K-4 Educators.” Unless there are a lot of skilled grammar school videographers who follow NASA, it would seem that this is a project for teachers. But wait, the NASA posting says “but then later in the body of the article is states “Entrants must be between the ages of 13 and 24.” So why post this in a K-4 section? The idea is interesting, but the execution is lacking. (Once again) someone at PAO did not put their thinking cap on for this.

Editor’s update: Incorrect assumption on my part. This isn’t a PAO activity. It was developed by Outreach in Space Operations. PAO actually recommended some changes in a way to get broader public interest but clearly those suggestions were not implemented. Again, let me be clear: this is a really great idea. And I hope NASA does more things like this. I just wish NASA could package these great ideas with great implementation plans.