Keynote - CJ Loria – Transcription

Thank you very much, Abby. So I’m up here now to introduce our keynote WC.J. Loria. Bio Is in our program. You feel like I need to read it out loud to you. But I have been thinking about it a little bit in hashtags. #astronaut, #test pilot, #aerospace. I haven’t searched on the hashtag aerospace executive or expert. But all those things get me really excited. But what puts me over the top is that he’s excited about what we’re doing. How rad is that? So I’d like to invite you up to the stage. And thank you very much for speaking with us today. And, C.J. Loria. [ Applause ] Good morning. Let’s see if I can work the technology myself. Let’s see. Hello. Thank you for having me here today. As Kate said, my name is C.J. Loria, I was a NASA astronaut for about nine years. And since late 2008 I have been working in industry, primarily in aerospace. As Kate mentioned, I feel I would be remiss if I didn’t acknowledge and thank CU Boulder for hosting this event. And the sponsors, DigitalGlobe, Facebook, Mapbox, Microsoft and Telenav among others. Thanks to my friend and former fellow geospatial system, Josh Siskin now at DigitalGlobe. Josh, you in the room? He’s back there somewhere. Okay. And for asking me to come here and speak today. And also Kate Chapman for helping coordinate and making sure I got here on time and showed up at the right place. A few things strike me about the OpenStreetMap approach and the community. I was impressed both by the vision and leadership of Steve Coast who started this pioneering effort in 2004. And the diversity of the people involved. And the excellence of the results. And that thought shared the basis of what you would like to share today about leadership and innovation. It seems to me that too often today leadership is thought of as someone larger than life. Someone larger than most of us. Someone we see on TV or media. People with names like Steve Job and Elon Musk come to mind for me. People that are making news and headlines and affecting lives on a daytoday basis with their vision and their innovation. I’d also like to try to point out today and share with you that leadership is a personal thing. Something that occurs both large with those names and those people, but also on the daytoday personal scale. Perhaps in your life a leader was someone that you had in college. Someone at university. People whose passion, knowledge and mastery of the subject inspired you and helped put you on the path to where we are today. It also occurs to me that each of you here in the room today and those of us remotely, are leaders and innovators because of your belief and support of achievements and participation in making OpenStreetMap successful. It really struck me how OpenStreetMap touches lives and is bit by bit changing the world. There are other maps out there that include ways to access an area by foot, by car, by mass transportation. But the fact that OpenStreetMap is the first one I’m aware of that also has that level of detail for people with disabilities is really empowering and touching and affecting your lives on a personal level. Which brings me to leadership. One of the things that I found over the years and throughout my career is the power of collaborative leadership. Collaborative leadership really values and embraces critical thought and open dialogue. And diverse views and opinions. Collaboration, in my experience, works to improve and inform the major view by incorporating those dissenting views and critical thoughts brought by individuals involved in that process. And thereby it improves the overall solution. That resulting idea or solution is often markedly improved because a dissenting view was heard and valued instead of being marginalized and discarded. And an obvious benefit to me, to the ongoing group dynamics, whether it’s at university, in corporate America, collaborating on OpenStreetMap, is that trust among the group is developed. As those members feel free to brainstorm and contribute and they learn that it’s safe to inject an idea into the dynamic that might be orthogonal from where the group is coming from. A quiet leader can often facilitate and open a diverse dialogue and sponsor that freewheeling exchange of ideas that foster innovative solutions by listening and asking wise and welltimed questions. A quiet leader can improve and facilitate the dynamic. Leadership examples from my experiences. One of the ones I would like to touch on is Neil Armstrong. I’ll get to John Glenn here in a little bit. And touch on some of the fighter pilots from my days. People with nicknames such as Focker, Trouser and Shadow. Neil, you might recognize him on the right there, from his Apollo mission, spoke to my astronaut class in 1996. And if you didn’t know him, you might have walked right by him. He’s wearing a polo shirt, a nice cardigan sweater and some khaki slacks. Not too much different from his picture there on the right. After he walked on the moon, he eschewed fame in the limelight and did what was important to him. Teach. And help the lives of people who would become engineers out in the industry or teaching or engineers and the scientists that I work with at NASA. We became a University professor at Purdue University in aeronautics. And after he spoke with our class, I corresponded with him a little bit about leadership. And what remains with me today is what a gracious and humble person Neil was. To me, Neil’s leadership tenants remain timeless. Humility. Humility is a key attribute of establishing hightrust relationships. By putting at objective the task at hand or mission and team first, humble leaders can create an environment and a culture that breeds that openness and trust that I have touched on already. Also, one of his tenants was recognizing the value and contribution of others. Vigilance. Focus on challenges, not problems. Because those challenges often occur when one least expects them. And perseverance. Neil Armstrong and the other astronauts used the Apollo 1 strategy, which cost the lives of astronauts Grissom, Chaffee and White, to improve the system in Apollo that took them later to the moon. It’s that quiet leadership. The leadership of working hard, being expert in what you do. Believing in others and sharing and living that and deeds that empowers and touches lives and changes our world for the better bit by bit. Speaking about quiet, I’d like to share with you a book that I read recently. It’s by Susan Cane. Quiet: the power of introverts in a world that can’t stop talking. It was a fantastic book. I corresponded with Susan about it, talking about leadership. In the book Susan describes in contrast the American society and culture of about 100, 150 years ago where really collaborative leadership was valued. As opposed to today where it seems that the type A personality, the loudest person in the room, leadership, is what we most often see. At least in corporate America. The problem with that sort of type A personality of leadership is it often drives leadership by consensus. Leadership by consensus is characterized, at least in my experiences, often by seeking to marginalize divergent views and opinions until the people with those views and their advocates acquiesce to the larger view. And this inevitably damages trust and free brainstorming and limits the group from achieving, in my experiences, a more optimum result. As Kate mentioned, in my early days I was a fighter pilot before becoming a test pilot and going on to NASA. And I had the privilege of being with this squadron, the Black Knights in southern California flying the F18 Hornet. One of the influences in my life was Steve, call sign, Shadow. And he came pretty famous around the base because of his leadership style. He was a quiet leader. And we recognized him as a different kind of leader. He developed those around him, not by issuing orders, but by sharing suggestions and questions. Some of the specific examples elude me now, but what I recall is that he would ask questions like, you know, have you thought of this? Have you checked your assumptions? What are your other alternatives? That was the leadership and ongoing mentorship process he would walk with us. And ultimately, he would ask us, what’s your recommendation? And in so doing with that collaborative approach, he developed us as leaders, but also, we achieved the most optimum solutions. During my time with NASA I had spent about two years working for the NASA at Marshall Space Flight Center. And there I worked on a number of programs there. International Space Station, some of the space shuttle projects, and the space plane program. One of the legendary people at the Marshall Space Center is this gentleman, Dr. Wernher Von Braun. He came to the United States after World War II. She was a German rocket scientist during the war. And he was considered the father of many of the American NASA rockets such as the Red Stone rocket that put Allen Shepherd, the first American in space, and the rockets involved in the Apollo program. One of those things that my friends and my peers and colleagues at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, shared with me, was how successful he was. I have to footnote. This was before PowerPoint and email. Maybe some of those had to do with the fact that they were able to get so much done in such a short period of time. But, I mean, some of us with the blond to gray in our hair might remember at university chalk boards. And not just not just one chalk board, but at an outpost there were usually three chalk boards and the. And the professor would write on one, roll it up, and then work around the room. Dr. Von Braun and his colleagues did the same thing during the space race. They would work a challenge and they would work their way around the room on the chalk board. Until they got to the solution. And then they would stand back, they would write the conclusion and the agreement, and they would sign it in chalk. And they’d stand back and take a Polaroid of the agreement and the signatures. And that was their program and documentation. And then they would continue. I mean, it’s pretty amazing. And that’s kind of why I reference, you know, email and PowerPoint, because they achieved amazing things. Some of the leadership characteristics that Dr. Von Braun is famous for, at least among NASA, is belief. Not only his belief in his own capabilities, but his confidence in his team. And the fact that he let the team know that he believed in them. That in itself was empowering. That your peers, your supervisor and your subordinates believe in you. Expertise. Not only was he expert in designing a rocket engine, he was expert in systems engineering. Taking the systems of systems, the hydraulics and navigation and putting them together to form successful rocket designs. Which reminds me of a little story also from my days at Huntsville. Has anyone here been to Huntsville, Alabama? All right. It’s a great place. Great city. And it actually has I’m told, I haven’t verified but it has the most Ph.Ds. per capita of any city in the United States. When Von Braun was making the Saturn 5 rocket, one of the coops working with him, a young aerospace engineer you can kind of see it right here in an earlier Saturn rocket. The fins. The engineer said to Dr. Von Braun, doctor, where are there fins on the rockets? Based on the boundary layer flow and so forth, there’s no control effectiveness for the fins on the rocket. And Dr. Von Braun saying reported, I wasn’t there. The American people expect fins on the rockets, so we give them fins on the rockets. So a little digress there. And which kind of brings me to, he had perspective is a sense of humor. And his example, like this one, inspired the team even in the most challenging and stressful situations during the space race. And humility. Among the people that I know at NASA Marshall, he’s famous her his humility and unselfishness. And he set a wonderful example and kept the team focused on the task at hand and working together. On the operations side of NASA I had the privilege to work with a number of great people. This is the space shuttle mission control center, Houston. And two of the really wonderful flight directors, flight as we call them, General Wayne hale, and this gentleman here, General King. And this was one of my old jobs, CAPCOM, capsule communicator. Harken back to the capsule days. And the whole mission control center works as a team. The CAPCOM is the only individual that speaks to the crew on orbit. And she or he is there to make sure it’s the right time to talk to the crew, raise any safety issues along with the rest of the team and really bring that operational perspective to the group. The and really what people don’t realize right here, but each one of those positions at mission control is like the tip of an iceberg. Each one of those people is speaking to a control room outside of mission control whether that’s propulsion systems, GNC, guidance navigation and control, electrical power generation. And those all feed into the representative in the front room who talks the flight. Flight runs the show. Anyways, these people, Wayne and Leroy, they were fantastic leaders. They knew their job. They were collaborative. They brought out the best in their team, both in mission control and with the shuttle team on orbit. Another NASA giant is John Young. There on the right, from the MTV days. Might recognize that picture. He flew on Gemini program. Was Apollo 10 service module commander. Flew the Apollo Lunar Module on Apollo 16. He was the ninth person to walk on the moon and flew the space shuttle. John is the only person on the planet that’s piloted and committed four different styles of spacecraft. I had the pleasure of working and meeting with John at the NASA space center. He was the special technical adviser to the director of the Johnson Space Center. In that role, John was are basically the engineering safety and mission assurance consciousness of the organization. And he also exhibited that kind of collaborative leadership. Like Shadow, he would ask questions during meetings. Whether it was a space shuttle program, flight readiness review or an engineering review for the international Space Station, he would ask questions about the design and constraints that quite often made the presenter uncomfortable. One of my friends from the 16 group of astronauts, we showed up and started training in 1996. One of my classmates, Dr. Charlie Kamata, aerospace engineer from NASA, Langley, in Virginia, started keeping unofficial tally of how many times John asked a question, and how many times he was correct. The unofficial tally by Charlie was over 93%. So, John, by asking his questions, by being a collaborate leader, helped make the space shuttle program successful. He was a wonderful individual. I flew with him a number of times to meetings at the Kennedy Space Center. During one of those trips I asked him about the old days, the original days. And he shared a vignette about him and his friend, Pierre Gus Grissom. And back then, most of the training at Houston was at the Kennedy Space center. Most of the astronauts had Corvettes in those days, not so much anymore. And he said, yeah, we were out here for training and old Gus, he asked me to car pool with him to work one day. And he said, I didn’t know it, but Gus tried to set a new land speed record from the hotel to the SIM building every day. He said, that was the last time I carpooled with old Gus. And actually my flying nickname, or call sign is Gus after Gus Grissom. I asked, what was he like? And he said, old Gus? He was the best test pilot I ever saw. So John is a tremendous individual. And I can’t say enough good things about him and about his leadership. Today I’m a senior program manager with this organization, the laboratory out of Cambridge, Massachusetts. It’s a fantastic organization. I’m proud to be a part of it. I’m a senior program manager and we’re building the Byzantine, faulttolerant, highperformance single board computers that will be the flight computers for NASA’s Dream Chaser spacecraft and the software that’s going to make the vehicle fly. The dream chaser is being built in Colorado by the people at Sierra Nevada Corporation, SNC, space division, in Louisville, Colorado. The Dream Chaser getting ahead of myself. The Dream Chaser’s innovative body that is capable of providing logistics up and down the International Space Station. It uses all nontoxic propellants. Because of the lithium body, it has a light G flight profile, making it the only craft that can bring back delicate biological materials from the LSS. And in case you didn’t grow up around MIT like I did, my parents were on faculty, Dr. Draper is considered the father of inertial navigation systems ultimately used in the Apollo missions. He was a hardworking and innovative individual. He was characterized by focus, total involvement and energy and selfconfidence. Dr. Draper is famous for knowing just about everyone’s first name at Draper Lab. Attention to detail. And this was key to his successful development of developing the rate gyro which made that autonomous navigation possible. And Dr. Draper’s quality of hard work, innovation, quality engineering continue today at Draper Lab. Which brings me to innovation. Before I share with you about innovation, I think it’s important for us to talk about diversity. And maybe in a way that some of you haven’t thought about before. It seems surprising to me that many smart people fail to see and appreciate and understand the importance of diversity and the dramatic benefits it has to innovation in a growing and learning organization. The benefits include increased creativity, a diversity of ideas and viewpoints can lead to creative breakthroughs. A company organization made up of employees from diverse ethnic backgrounds, generations, genders, races and religions brings a more creative energy and diversity of thought than one finds in a more homogenous organization. That leads to richer brainstorming. That diversity of opinions, ideas and input can lead to more productive discussions. And I contrast that with an environment where everyone’s opinions mirror each other. And that has a high probability of producing stagnant results. And in the end, the achievement is better decisionmaking. Diverse perspectives lead to better decisions for your company, your employees and your customers. Two quick examples. Now it’s time for this slide. And this is a view of the service module from Apollo 13. Who has seen the movie “Apollo 13”? I have met some of the astronauts and some of the team that worked this mission. The flight directors, engineers, technicians and managers, they saw it. They needed they had to have a diversity of thought and inputs in order to successfully bring these astronauts home. That saved the lives of Jim Lovell, Jack Swigert and Fred Haise. Those people on the NASA team innovated. They used their collaborative decisionmaking to address the challenges and were wonderfully successful. Now for something not too successful. This is Challenger. January 1986. There are a number of engineers involved in the program that tried to raise the issue that this was below the design temperature limits for the system of systems. In particular, the Orings on the solid rocket boosters. Solid rocket boosters at that time were built by Morton Thiokol and assembled in four parts. And in between each segment was two Orings. And that kept the hot, burning gases from the solid rocket boosters from escaping. Unfortunately, in this example, they didn’t use collaborative decisionmaking. They drove leadership by consensus. Those inputs, try and tell flight NASA to delay the launch, were not put forward. Okay. Fast forward, something in my background. The orbital space plane program. An innovation, it’s surprising how a good idea always seems to percolate to the top and come forward. The orbital space plane, or OSP, was to provide emergency crew return and emergency logistics such as food, water and supplies to the International Space Station. Ultimately NASA stopped program. And later created a program where I was the first engineer at NASA headquarters, and then into the space launch system, or SLS with the heavy expendable rockets and Orion crew module that’s being produced today by NASA. So if you look at some of these designs, like on the top left, lifting body. We built that and I helped design that. We tested aboard NASA’s zero G spacecraft that flies parabolas. Our nickname for the zero G aircraft was the vomit comet. It was great work. A lot of innovation. So remember that top left this is what’s being built today in Colorado. This is Sierra Nevada’s Dream Chaser spacecraft. It was originally a crude version. They weren’t selected by NASA. SNC believed in their design. They invested in it. They kept it alive. And it recently won NASA’s commercial resupply services II contract. And this is what we’re building the flight computers and flight software for. It’s being built right down the road in Louisville, Colorado. The lifting body. It features in the back there, the gray an unpressurized logistics volume. It has some logistics on the outside. Solarpowered. The aero surfaces are moved by and it and having a drop test or a flight test at NASA Armstrong in California this month. It’s really an incredible design. And it’s something that it’s a privilege to be a part of. So that I guess that’s my example of innovation and how good ideas come forward. The importance of leadership, the importance of team. And a collaborative approach in diversity. Those things are of incredible value. And when I was researching OpenStreetMap and what’s been done, that’s what struck me. And that’s why I chose to share these thoughts with you today. In closing, I’d like to take a few seconds to acknowledge some of the people from my past who’ve helped me professionally such as NASA’s John Young, my first boss on the consolation program at NASA, Don Backer. Lieutenant Chapman from the national science foundation, Liz flood, down at Neon, the National network. And the leadership team at Draper and Steve Lindsey and John Curry with me at NASA. Thank you for your time today, you have been wonderful. At this time you would like to open the floor to any questions. Yes? AUDIENCE: You mentioned collaborative leadership on Apollo versus consensus leadership on Challenger. How are they different? Great question. The collaborative approach, in my experience, really values critical thought. Whether it’s part of the majority group position or something different. You know, in my experience it’s often the orthogonal, you know, coming from the 90degree view or opinion that could be a gamechanger. Whereas leadership by consensus too often seems to marginalize some of those divergent views in a desire to achieve a quicker solution. And you lose that value, that contribution. An example. We were working on maintenance for the International Space Station. In zero G, quite often, simple things become challenging. Something as simple as drilling a hole, in space you have those filings in 1G that lay on the surface, those filings, fiber or metal, are going to fly around. Or float behind a panel and possibly create a short circuit. So this was something we were trying to tackle and challenge. The majority group view was to develop some sort of encasing box, you know, with a vacuum attachment. That would work. It was also kind of cumbersome. One of my astronaut peers, Frank Caldeiro said, well, use shaving cream. And the group was like, what? Be quiet, Frank. And Frank luckily, Frank persisted. He said, no, really, use shaving cream. So one of the people in the room turned to Frank and said, you know, what are you talking about? He says, well, I built my own airplane. And to keep the shavings from, you know, getting all over the work place or blowing around, he took regular shaving cream, sprayed it on the site, drilled, and the cream itself and the tension of the bubbles in the liquid embedded the filings in it. So that when the job was done, you just wiped it up. And that’s what’s being used on ISS. So you can have the complicated approach with the box and the seal and a vacuum attachment, or you can use shaving cream. Yes? AUDIENCE: My question is, was it scented or unscented? No Probably unscented. AUDIENCE: As this is more of a comment than a question. But every April, tax time rolls around. And my husband and I aren’t smart enough not to pay taxes. I haven’t figured that one out yet either. AUDIENCE: So your presentation made paying the taxes more palatable since this is what our government funds. Thank you. Thank you. Anyone else? AUDIENCE: What was your first aircraft that you flew on? First aircraft? AUDIENCE: Yes, sir. In flight training? That would have been the 234 Charlie Turbo Mentor. It’s since been retired because I’m really old. But it was a great airplane. I have flown about 32 aircraft, including everything from the Goodyear blimp to the Mirage 2000 to a Mig. AUDIENCE: How was it moving from the airplane where you have direct control to the more modern flybywire system where there’s this layer between you and the control? It was thanks. It was pretty seamless. In the F18 they used different things to give you the feel that you were physically connected to the aero surfaces. They put a weight on the bottom of the stick so that under G you would get feedback. They also used springs. And that gave you the tactile feedback. But then the digital flight computers, they’re just magic. They they enable you especially in the F18 I’ve flown the F15 and the F16, Mirage, Mig, they enable you to use your depending on the situation what gray matter you have left, on the task at hand. So whether that’s, you know, combat, landing aboard the aircraft carrier. It’s really an amazing system. Space shuttle used flybywire. And actually, in the space shuttle, they use rotational hand controllers. You’re hands off for launch. If a problem happened on launch and you had to go hands on, as opposed to the F16, where the controller is pivoted at the bottom, on the space subtle the pivot point’s in the middle of the handle. So that under the acceleration of launch, you’re one, two to a maximum of 3Gs going from front to back. When the astronaut, when she or he would take manual control, the weight of your hand and the pull of the G wouldn’t induce a pitch moment to the vehicle. So, again, just kind of brilliant design. Thank you. AUDIENCE: Hi there. I was wondering so you have a perspective of the Earth from above. You know? And I was wondering if you could speak a little bit about how geospatial, like spatial analysis may, like how it influenced your experience? How you use a map and, you know, potentially like what a collaborative map look like for you? More? Thank you. The I mean, as a pilot, I have been kind of a consumer of map and map products for quite a long time. The, you know, for me the as a user on that level, you know, the accuracy. It’s critical. And the availability of it and the interaction at least within an aircraft or spacecraft the seamless interaction with the other systems. Navigation, guidance and so forth. And that was critical for my career. And as I mentioned, you know, what strikes me about what you’re achieving here is the collaborative kind of grassroots approach contributing, enriching that map in a myriad of ways. I think we have time for one more question. Anyone? Anyone? But maybe I get it? So, presumably you took a commercial flight yesterday. I did. To join us. As someone who has flown so many aircraft, does anything go through your mind when you’re not in the driver’s seat? No. You know, I love flying. I like flying a lot more when I’m up in the office up front with the view. But it’s just it’s, you know it’s amazing. You know, the I mean, talking about innovation and technology, and I’ll kind of take the question and take it off me and kind of put it on my paternal grandfather. He was born in San Jose, Costa Rica, came to the U.S. Worked in Boston. He was born in the late 1800s. So during his lifetime he saw, you know, steamships, powered human flight, you know, two World Wars, the atomic age, and space flight. You know, what we’ve seen, the technological changes and advances just in commercial air transportation in my lifetime is pretty remarkable. You know, there’s companies like Boom Arrow down in Denver that are working on a supersonic transport. Kind of an evolved form of the Concord supersonic transport. There’s other companies that are working on the same thing. So the future is pretty interesting. It’s pretty bright and I’m looking forward to seeing what comes next. Thank you for joining us today. Thank you. I’m so excited you could join us. A round of applause. [ Applause ] So for those that know me, I’m a geographer by training. And I was attracted to geography because I was always lost. So the directions I gave you to get to the Touchdown Club for lunch today were incorrect. Oh, no! So the real directions are, please take the elevator down the way you came in. There’s signage to take you there. You need to head northwest and sort of curve around. Just follow the signs. And that will get you there. And if you get lost, I will try to assist you, but I will use a map first. Thank you. We’re going to start sessions very shortly. So as a reminder, we have two session tracks running. Everything is outlined in your agenda, and I hope you all have a wonderful time.