Friday, May 31, 2008 - Exploring Saint Louis
UHH Physics and Astronomy Department faculty John Hamilton and I embarked on an exploration of the city of Saint Louis today. We started out by walking over to the Jefferson National Expansion Memorial, also known as the Gateway Arch. This monument is impressive in its size and aesthetic beauty. The smooth taper of the catenary curve was overshadowed only by the engineering that went into the design of this structure. The tram design used to transport up to 40 people up/down each leg of the arch is ingenious in its negotiation of extreme angles and narrow pathway. Described as a cross between a cable car, elevator and ferris wheel, the tram was a tight fit for five adults and anyone with a hint of claustrophobia should think twice before venturing up. Once at the top, the views were spectacular, albeit through thin slits on either side of the observation deck. Back down at sea level, we walked through the park to the Metro line to catch a train to the St Louis Science Center. You can't miss the place - there are giant dinosaurs guarding the entrance. The roof is quite unique as well, hiding a large planetarium dome underneath. I was impressed with the number of hands-on exhibits that were strewn throughout the Center and its grounds, all of which were accessible without paying a fee. Of course there were specialized programming that required a modest fee, but there equal number of opportunities for youngsters to freely engage in hands-on learning. We explored the Anheuser-Busch brewing plant for a tour and taste test before grabbing dinner at an old Spaghetti Factory off the river. Great food and a great way to end a day of exploration.
Thursday, May 29, 2008 - St Louis Bound
Today I make my way for Saint Louis, Missouri for the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) annual meeting and awards banquet. I flew over to O'ahu yesterday so that I could make the 7:00 am departure of my American Airlines flight out of Honolulu. The purpose of this trip is to learn about the initiatives in place for the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. I hopped on a 767 and endured a five hour flight into LAX. While waiting in the terminal during my layover, I noticed someone familiar approaching - it was John Hamilton of University of Hawaii at Hilo Physics and Astronomy Department. It seems John was attending the ASP meeting as well and would be on the same flight as the one I was about to catch. It was good to see someone from the Big Island at the meeting and I look forward to catching up on a lot of things with John during the week in St Louis.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008 - Lost Week
Somehow I lost a week since my last entry here. Things have been abuzz of late with the wrapping of up the spring semester, grant reports, grant proposals, business travel and preparations for our third annual Hawaii Youth Robotics (HYR) summer camp. Kenyan and I have been working feverishly preparing for the robotics camp. Because of the late start on our AstroDay Festival, our schedules have been pushed back with regard to HYR. We got started on AstroDay two months out, but HYR got initiated a little more than a month out - which is more precarious since this event is driven by enrollment and registration fees. We just launched the promotions for HYR last week Monday, and the inquiries have been trickling in. Despite the late start on promotions, I have confidence that we will fill up our camps two sessions with students and teachers. As a matter of fact, starting the promotions three weeks may work out better than getting too early a start. We tried that philosophy a couple of years ago, with poor results. We came out with our initial promotions two months out, and it seemed that parents were not ready to commit to anything that early. Although it was good to get the word out, the end result was that most did not respond to the initial promotions, but our second round which took place around a month later. Having our camps filled early has its benefits though - we can order our camp tee shirts and print out our name badges well ahead of time and prepare in relative leisure. I am not a big fan of frantic, just-in-time work, but as we get more experience running these camps it will get easier to do in less time.
Wednesday, May 21, 2008 - Running Flat Out
Although it seems that 24 hours a day is a lot of time to accomplish your objects, for me there is never enough time no matter how efficiently I organize my life - there always seems to be more things on the hopper than you can get to. Of course this is nothing unique to me or my office, its just a fact of modern life that we all lead very busy lives. To ensure I get the most of my life, I start each day at 3:30, and get into the office by 4:00 to catch up on work without distractions. I run down to the beach at 5:00 for dawn patrol in the surf, and extract myself back to the office by 8:00. Then its business as usual until 4:00 or so, when I get back home for family time. If necessary, I engage in work in my home office until bedtime at 9:00 (early to bed and early to rise...). My philosophy in life is Work Hard - Play Hard. Life is too short to compromise yourself with mediocrity, minimum daily requirements, rigid schedules and status quo. I say push the limits, run flat out, full throttle with everything you've got for everything you do. Well, this strategy works real good, but only when tempered with balance, otherwise burnout ensues (and nobody wants that). Balance comes from making time for doing things that are fun, along with pursuing professional objectives. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy after all. So go out there and tackle that project, scoop that account, finish that job - but don't forget to feed your soul with fun.
Monday, May 19, 2008 - Hawaii Youth Robotics Launch
We launched the promotional campaign for our 2008 Hawaii Youth Robotics summer program today by distributing program flyers and registration forms to every school in east Hawaii and Puna. I had spent the weekend designing, laying out and printing the documents, then sorting them into packets along with a cover letter into manila envelopes addressed to public, private and charter schools. Kenyan is helping out today by delivering the packets to the schools, while I dropped a stack of packets addressed to distant schools to the DOE complex annex. In addition to the flyers, we have also sent out email notifications to parents of students who have enrolled in previous camps and who have expressed interest in attending robotics workshops. This will be our first year flying solo, without our mentors at the Center for Initiatives in Pre-College Education at the Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI). Although cutting the umbilical cord is somewhat daunting, I have every confidence in our local team of educators and students to do a great job this summer. Most have been with our program from the start, three years ago. Since then, we have all learned a lot through RPI and on our own. So we are all looking forward to having he best HYR program to date, and salute our friends back in Troy, New York.
Thursday, May 15, 2008 - Hawaii Youth Robotics Preparations
Just when you think you have time to recover from a major undertaking, another one is about to take place. It wouldn't be so bad if these two events were ones that you attend (as opposed to ones you plan and implement). We survived our seventh annual AstroDay Festival a couple of weekends ago, and before we could even take a breath, plans and preparations for our third annual Hawaii Youth Robotics summer robotics camp have already begun. If you recall, we were hopeful for supplemental funding to expand our model into a proposed Hawaii STEM Academy that would build upon the success of our Hawaii Youth Robotics program with a digital media workshop at additional sites in Kea'au and Pahoa. We have not gotten a response as to whether we would be awarded funding, so we have begun putting the pieces together for a return of the program we have been running over the course of the last two years. Oh well, there is a reason for everything that happens and I firmly believe that this was the outcome that was meant to be - we (or the community) weren't ready for HawaiI STEM Academy. We'll have to back-burner this project for now and hopefully resuscitate it next year. That will give us more time to fully develop the framework for the program. In the meantime, we are working feverishly to develop promotional material that we want to launch next week Monday. We have a web page created and published with information about the program and links to download application forms for both student and teacher participants. Although it was difficult working when my day was punctuated by external meetings at a number of different locations and times, I got a lot accomplished. I still need to create a logo and theme for this year, and should have that nailed down before the end of the weekend. Look for our Hawaii Youth Robotics workshop promotional material in your local paper, and on the internet.
Tuesday, May 13, 2008 - Festivals & Events Conference
I spent the better part of today attending a Festivals and Events conference at the Imiloa Astronomy Center. The program is co-sponsored by the Hawaii Tourism Authority and the International Festivals and Events Association (IFEA). This one-day conference one in a series and part of a professional certification program. The speakers are all intimately involved in major event planning and management, and have a wealth of information to share with attendees on many different facets of running events: fundraising and sponsorship, branding and marketing, quality assurance, liability and insurance, and much, much more. I've been humbled by the sheer scale of what these people have been working with. AstroDay Festival attracts a lot of people. But our numbers pale by comparison to the types of events these speakers had cultivated. Attendance in the tens or hundreds of thousands, revenue in excess of a half-million dollars, staff of hundreds. I took notes during the presentations on the printouts of each speaker's Powerpoint slides. In attendance were many individuals and groups involved in community programs and special events - all the quality events. I really look up to many of them and respect them because I can see their passion and commitment to improve the quality of their programs.
Monday, May 12, 2008 - Back in Hilo
Its good to be back home, and the first thing I did today was get into the ocean at sunrise for an expression session in some 2-3 foot waves at Honoli'i. The waves were kind of small and everyone was telling me, "Man you really should have been here yesterday!". Don't you just hate it when people say that? For me, 2-3 foot waves in Hawaii waters beats trying to find surf in places like Seattle. Lucky we live Hawaii, eh? After a couple of hours in the water, I get back to my office to start working on developing our summer robotics workshop, which is being scaled back from what we were hoping on doing with the Hawaii STEM Academy. Since funding is still in question and because we cannot wait to begin promotional work, we are scaling back to running our Hawaii Youth Robotics summer enrichment program in robotics for students ages 9-13 and teachers for professional development. So the rush is on to create an "experience" for our participants that begins with a unique logo and theme. We have our two local educators booked to lead the instruction of our two camps, the first of which will run from June 9-20, and a second camp from June 23-July 3. We will also get started on creating flyers and a webpage for promotional considerations, with a launch date of one week from today. So stay tuned as we gear up for our next big project: Hawaii Youth Robotics!
Saturday, May 10, 2008 - So Long to Seattle
Friday wrapped up the Astronomy from the Ground Up workshop here in Seattle, Washington. All of the facilitators and most of the participants have departed for their respective bases or homes. Because of the lack of flights from Seattle back to Honolulu, I need to stay an additional day, and have taken this opportunity to explore the city. Up from the top of the Space Needle, I managed to take a series of photos from around the observation deck and stitch them into a 360 degree panorama. Getting a view of the city of Seattle from 540 feet above the ground was novel, but the wait to get on an elevator to the top, and the wait to get on an elevator back to ground level was not. I am amazed at the number of Thai restaurants and record stores in town. I've packed my bags full of cool science books and science kits from the Pacific Science Center, and am awaiting a shuttle to pick me up for a trip to Seattle-Tacoma airport. I'm headed back to Hawaii with a stop off on Oahu overnight, then hop back to Hilo on Sunday morning. I had a great time in Seattle, but like most business trips, there just isn't enough time to explore the area before its time to head back home. I do know that I would love to come back with my family to enjoy this city at a more leasurely pace.
Wednesday, May 7, 2008 - Astronomy From the Ground Up
I'm staying at the Homewood Suites Hilton in downtown Seattle, near the waterfront. The temperatures are in the high 40's / low 50's, with cloudy skies. Don't ask about the surf. I am participating in a workshop called Astronomy From the Ground Up - an educational collaboration of the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP), The National Optical Astronomical Observatory (NOAO), and the Association of Science-Technology Centers (ATSC), funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The program has been in place for two years now, and I've been applying to attend since the beginning (and am happy to be selected this year). Astronomy From the Ground Up is a program developed to provide Informal Science Educators at science centers, nature centers, museums and other informal educational venues with new and innovative ways to communicate astronomy content to their visitors. The key elements of the program consist of workshops (both onsite and online) where informal science educators learn fun techniques to present astronomy topics and to interpret current astronomical events and discoveries. A toolkit of activities covering three major themes in astronomy, and an online community that enables participants to stay in touch with colleagues all over the United States to share their ideas, keep up with current astronomy news, learn new activities, share programming stories and express concerns. Today's activities covered comparative scale modeling of our solar system and the Earth-Moon system. Although these are activities that we have engaged in before, some of the tools that are provided make it more engaging and fun. Participants come from all over the country and much of the fun is getting to know them and their work at their respective institutions and organizations. Many are also prepping for their own Astronomy Day events back home, and I have shared ideas with many of them. Its an honor for me to be participating in this workshop with other soldiers in the astronomy outreach army.
Tuesday, May 6, 2008 - Surfing and Seattle (not necessarily at the same time)
If it's Tuesday, I must be in Seattle. I managed to get a short longboard session in at Honoli'i this morning before jumping on a plane for Seattle. The waves were 1-2 feet with occasional 3 foot sets under glassy conditions - perfect for dialing in the nose riding capabilities of my Island Classics 9'. The board has a 2+1 fin setup, but I am only using the center fin box with a 9" Wavegrinder fin, which is a complete departure in fin design but really works with this board. I'd fade left on a wave before carving a bottom turn into a kick stall, and walking up to the nose, planing down the line with toes over the nose. Fun stuff for this board, which loves to noseride when I'm on the front end of the board, and turns on a dime when I'm on the back end. So, a couple of hours later, I find myself with wet hair and baggage in tow, headed for the airport checkin. Ah, the prospect of spending several hours in an enclosed cylinder, breathing recycled air with a bunch of people I don't know (it could have been worse - I could be flying to the East Coast or further). I would have flown Hawaiian Airlines if they still served Seattle-Tacoma, but instead had to settle for a Northwestern Airlines flight. Five hours later, we land at Sea-Tac airport and by the time I check into my hotel room it is well past midnight Seattle time. A quick check of my email to respond to any that require my immediate attention, a shower and I am off to slumberland in my bed. Tomorrow, I begin a workshop at the Pacific Science Museum ...
Monday, May 5, 2008 - AstroDay Aftermath
You know that good feeling you get after accomplishing something of note capably? Sort of a feeling of self-satisfaction, where its not necessary for praise or accolades to come from others to fuel your stoke? Like when you were young and you cleaned your room without being told and just reveling in how good it looked when you were done. Well thats kind of how I feel right now, and I know that I am joined by many who participated in our seventh annual AstroDay Festival over the weekend. Creating, planning, coordinating, funding and implementing a project like AstroDay is not for everyone - as a matter of fact I think most sane people would shy away from even considering it. Of course no one ever accused me of being of sound mind, so I guess it is fitting that I do these types of things for fun and livelihood. Crazy yeah? Not really. Although it is tough work, it is also Extremely satisfying and fulfilling. I don't think I can really give an explanation that does the feeling justice. Its all good though. Some folks get their stoke on fast cars, others on money, sex, drugs or rock and roll (or maybe even all of the above). For me, I get off on seeing the community come out and support an event we develop, whether its AstroDay Festival, Hilo Youth Robotics, RoboFest or running a fundraiser to get Uncle Joe a toupee that doesn't look like a nasty animal died on his head. Okay, well maybe not the last one, but the idea remains the same: do something you feel passionate about and do it well. My dad once told me something that took me decades to figure out. He said "find yourself a job you enjoy and you'll never have to work the rest of your life". Well I feel truly blessed because I found what I like, and am getting paid to do it (dang, I'd do it for free, and had been the first year we created AstroDay). Although we had many obstacles to overcome and challenges to mitigate, we focused on the positives and kept moving forward even when it seemed that everything was pushing us backward. Nothing is easy and we don't have a carte blanche, free ride to produce AstroDay Festivals now. The obstacles we overcame, challenges we mitigated were just replaced by new obstacles and challenges. And rather than bemoan the fact that life isn't easy, we took what we had at hand and applied what we have learned to resolve those issues. It makes for an interesting and fulfilling life!
Saturday, May 3, 2008 - AstroDay!
With all of the preparations behind us, I left my cares and worries on the shore for a brief early morning surf session at Honoli'i. The waves were small but conditions were good and I had my longboard back after being drydocked for repairs for a couple of weeks. Still wet, I pull back into the IfA parking lot to see a busy crew of people loading on equipment onto the IRTF flatbed. Today is AstroDay (not that I had forgotten)! Down to my office to change and to grab some of my equipment and head to the mall. By the time I got to Prince Kuhio Plaza, most of the tables and chairs had been setup and all signage and posters hung. Prince Kuhio Plaza operations staff Tony and Virgil were on the ball getting the venue into shape for our event as they have done so over the past seven years. Glenn Manaba of the mall front office was also on the floor directing activities and getting into the fray himself. Kenyan's mom, wife and I began by starting to setup the AstroDay Institute booth, draping tablecloths, affixing table skirt banners, signage, arranging handout material, storing boxes of collateral and prizes. The event crept up on me and began promptly at 10:00 am with the students of Keaukaha Elementary School offering a chant with Principal Lehua Veincent beaming with pride in the background. After proclamation presentations by Mayor Executive Assistant Andy Levin and East Hawaii Liaison to the Governor Dylan Nonaka, the students of the Waiakea Intermediate School Ukulele band took the stage - indeed covered the stage, overflowing to the floor in front of the stage. Their performance of a classical piece with a wonderful arrangement underscored their technical proficiency and was a portent of the great performances that would take place on the stage throughout the day. Cyril Pahinui, John Keawe, George and Nancy Kahumoku and Keoki Kahumoku offered tasty samples of Hawaiian Kiho'alu (slack key) music to a throng of spectators that filled the seating in front of the stage throughout the day. The mall was bustling with excitement as many families made their way through all of the exhibits and activities. Many thanks to all of our exhibitors and vendors for raising the quality of experience for the visitors of our event with their creativity and energetic enthusiasm. Each year when I think it can get no better, they surpass my wildest imagination.
Thursday, May 1, 2008 - Down to the Wire
Today started in the ocean at dawn, with some glassy water conditions and beautiful head high waves at Honoli'i. I had a blast on my 7'5" OLS roundpin, although by the time 8:00 rolled around and the waves backed off a bit, I was missing my 9' squashtail (which would have been perfect for these conditions). I just had enough time to make my way to Pacific Radio Group for a couple of radio interviews to promote AstroDay (hope I didn't leave a puddle in the studio). Then back to the office to get last minute signs printed and map adjusted for late registrants (I can't turn anyone down). Can't sit down now, its back on the road to pick up the Excellence in Teaching award trophies, then back to the office to work on the program script. We try to script out some of the program to ensure we acknowledge all of our sponsors and prize donors, get the introductions of our performers correct and the timing of the activities down. Its a lot of work but pays off when things run smoothly on event day (theoretically anyway). Then its preparing info packets for the radio interview that Kenyan and I will be doing tomorrow, for our segments on KWXX, B97 and KPUA. Finally, I get to work on instructions for AstroDay Institute booth staff, stage staff and our transportation staff. Its better to offer too much information than not enough. Tomorrow we will be holding an event staff meeting to go over everyone's duties and responsibilities, reasons for certain policies and the meaning of this year's logo design. The idea is to educate our staff in the event, a bit about its history and purpose, and how their involvement plays an important part in the success of this program. And also of the importance in having safe fun, sharing a smile, informing the curious and inspiring our future (keiki) on Saturday.