>> pat ryan: nick tellme about the background of the internationalspace apps challenge. where did this idea come from? >> nick skytland: so the internationalspace apps challenge grew
out of our involvement with therandom acts of kindness project. which was a collaborationwith microsoft, google, yahoo, hp and world bank. and the idea of that was wewanted to change the world
through mass collaboration,and engage people in solving real challengesthat matter to organizations. and we came up with the idea of the internationalspace apps challenge by applying that model to nasa. and the ultimate goalwas to engage citizens around the world, andhelping solve grand challenges that nasa offers. >> pat ryan: it's notanybody in particular,
or any group of people;everybody? >> nick skytland: yeah. we're not prescriptive inanyone's title or talent or whatever they have on theirresume, if they have a passion for space exploration,we want to engage them. >> pat ryan: the first of theseactivities took place last year -- >> pat ryan: -- how did it go? >> nick skytland: yeah we hadthe first one almost exactly a
year ago in april. it went really well. it exceeded our expectationsat the time. we had 25 cities around theworld, and 2,083 participants. and the 101 solutions weredeveloped in 48 hours. we thought that we were reallyonto something at the time. >> pat ryan: thatmany solutions, you say, were developed. how many of them turnedout to be something
that were very worthwhileand useful? >> nick skytland: you know, wewere actually surprised by this, a very large majority of them, like 80% of them were actuallyuseful solutions after the fact. >> pat ryan: this year you setout 50 different challenges for people to try tosolve, including some that were directly applicable tothe international space station. give us a few examples. >> nick skytland: yeah so thisyear -- just to clarify --
this year, we actually hada lot more participants in our even this year too. so we had about 9,000 peopleparticipate this year. >> pat ryan: wow. >> nick skytland: and the eventactually took place in 83 cities around the worldand 44 countries. so all 7 continents. and we had a spacestation involved with a pre-recorded message.
and so we offered 58challenges, actually totally. and there were a number ofsolutions that came out of them. one of them directly applicable to a space stationwas a challenge called "spot the station". and we had over 35 --or about 35 entries to this one challenge alone. and one of the solutions thatcame out of it was a software or hardware applicationthat both allows a user
to follow the space stationusing augmented reality in an iphone app. and then it takes that dataand augments it with hardware that lights up whenspace station is nearby. >> pat ryan: okay that's one. and so there's a few others. obviously many relatedto space exploration. we had one that i'm just reallyparticularly excited about. it was called "wish you werehere", was the challenge name.
and the idea was tohelp citizens connect with our mars missionthat's happening right now. we have a lot of data frommars exploration programs, but how can we actually makethat more tangible to the user. so what they developed wasa solution called "soul". it's the first interplanetaryweather system for your iphone. and the idea is that youcan see the weather on mars. so you can compare thatwith your weather on earth. and it's a really just ingeniousapp that's actually going to be
on the app store this week. >> pat ryan: hmm. and you can probablybetter about yourself too because you have betterweather than mars right? >> nick skytland: [chuckles]that's definitely true. that's definitely true. >> pat ryan: okay. space station, mars. >> nick skytland: and then wehad a number of other ones.
one of them really looked atthe corona activity on the sun, and allowed you to understandwhen that was at a high level or when it was at a low level because we're constantlybeing bombarded on earth with this activity. >> pat ryan: right. >> nick skytland: but oftentimes we don't have any idea of what's actually happening. and so this was something youcould just hang onto your wall
and it would light up whenthere was activity going on. >> pat ryan: now youmentioned it's -- i'm sorry, is it 83 countries? >> nick skytland: 83cities; 44 countries. >> pat ryan: 44 countriesall over the world, and we brought acouple of photographs to show you what it lookedlike when it went on. describe what we'reseeing here, the brochure? nick skytland: yeah.
so this is just abrochure that a lot of the participants were given that just described thechallenges ahead of time. the participants wouldhave a chance to look at all the challengesbefore the weekend started, and really pick the onesthey gravitated towards. and then the weekendof the event, they actually choseone to work on. >> pat ryan: and thesecond picture give you,
kind of an example inthis location anyway, of the people who are there. this is a picturefrom philadelphia, which was our global main stage. and this is the receptioning --the reception on friday night where all the participantscame together. it was part of phillytech week actually. and it was a huge event wherethere was a number of speakers, including leland melvin --
>> pat ryan: mm-hmm. >> nick skytland: --who just, we're excited about space exploration; we'retalking to the participants about the future of nasa. >> pat ryan: you mentioneda moment ago to me too that you were surprised thatquite a lot of the people that you had turn out, there were a lot morewomen than you expected. >> nick skytland: yeah we havea really interesting case this
year, that we hada very large amount of participation from women. usually in the tech industry,when you do something like this, you have a lower -- and juststemic [phonetic] in general, you have a lower populationof women that participate. in new york city, half of the175 participants were women. it's incredible. >> pat ryan: so you'vegot all these people that are turning out,and they put up some
of their own signage actually -- >> nick skytland: [chuckles]. >> pat ryan: -- that --to show you where to go -- >> nick skytland: yes. >> pat ryan: -- but this is-- these are the people -- >> nick skytland:this is fantastic. >> pat ryan: -- thatturned out, right? >> pat ryan: these areour computer geeks. >> nick skytland:yeah what's great
about this event is it'snot only developers, it's also technologists,entrepreneurs, designers, programmers. so this is a greatexample of what -- the creativity that comesout of this weekend. >> pat ryan: and we got acouple of looks inside the room of the people at work. >> nick skytland: yeahthey're hard at work -- >> pat ryan: drawingon the wall.
>> nick skytland: youknow it's interesting, we will offer themfood at lunchtime, and they won't evenwant to stop working. >> pat ryan: yeah. >> nick skytland: theyjust work [chuckles] right through the weekend. >> pat ryan: andthis one, you said, was actually oneof your favorites. >> nick skytland: yeah thisis one of my favorite photos
from events likethis from all time. because what you see hereis, the men are a minority in this picture [chuckles]. >> nick skytland: andthe women just look like they're reallyhaving a great time. >> pat ryan: this internationalspace app challenge happened this past weekend. >> nick skytland:that's correct. >> pat ryan: is there a way yetfor people to be involved in it?
>> nick skytland:yeah, we actually -- so we had 770 solutionssubmitted to -- for the judging process. which is incredible;it's overwhelming. and so we've down selectedthose to about 100. and we're going to havea people's choice award. and what we're asking peopleto do is go online and vote for your favorite solution. we're then going to downselect from those into the top,
you know, 15 or so,and we're going to have a second roundof that competition. we're going to chooseone overall winner based on popular vote. >> pat ryan: from allof the different areas? >> pat ryan: all 58different challenges. as well as, i guess,a winner in each area? >> nick skytland: yeahwe're going to have -- in addition to that one winner,
we will have 4 additionalwinners. one for best use of data. one for best use of hardware. one for galactic impact. and then one for most inspiring. >> pat ryan: and it sounds likesome or more of these are going to be available foranybody to use. the great thing about thisevent is that every solution that was submitted -- all770 of them, are submitted
under an open-source license. meaning that nasacan use the code or anybody can use the code. and a lot of them will -- you'llfind them on the app stores. android; iphone, a lot of themare web-based browser tools, and some of them are hardwarethat you can download the plans. build yourself a cubesat [phonetic] based on their plans and go for it. >> pat ryan: it --obviously this is tying
in with nasa's overall effortat education and outreach; getting more people involved. and it's not justeducation and outreach. what we tried to do wasdevelop an event here that we can educate the public about what space exploration'sall about and what we're doing and then the missions andthe programs that we have. but more than that,we are trying to aggregate usefulcontributions
to the space program. there are a lot ofpeople outside of nasa who love what we do, buthave never had an opportunity to actually participatefirst hand. they don't have a job here. they're not an astronaut;they can't fly in space. so -- but they havegreat, brilliant ideas. and so what we've done hereis provide a way for people to actually contribute.
and our goal is toactually pull a large amount of these solutions backinto the space agency. >> pat ryan: you looked like --but you had a lot of fun there, and going to have somegood results as well. >> nick skytland:yeah it's incredible. i live for these events. they are so inspiring to seepeople from around the world, ages 8 to 75 participatingin an event like this. >> pat ryan: nicki appreciate it.
random acts of kindness project,
thank you for bringingus up-to-date on it. nick skytland isthe program manager for nasa's open innovationsprogram. [ silence ]
