A little over a month ago I received an e-mail from a graduate aerospace engineering student stating that he was heading a Cal Poly team for the 2009 NASA Means Business competition. He was looking for other students from all different majors to join his team and put together a serious entry. After reading more about the competition (which you can read here: http://www.tsgc.utexas.edu/nmb/help.html) I decided to e-mail him back and join the team. We met the next evening in the library where he described to me his plan and discussed what was already being worked on by other team members. The group he had assembled was perfect for this competition as it was multidisciplinary, consisting of people from all different backgrounds including engineering, journalism, management, child development, and now myself as the marketing arm. We worked together to figure out the role I would play and what needed to get done for the quickly approaching deadline. My job included doing extensive market research to establish how our public service announcement should be developed and in which markets and locations it should be placed. Other team members jobs included doing scientific research to learn more about the product, developing the overall branding strategy, putting together the storyboard for the PSA, and editing the proposal for errors and continuity.
In a matter of days our lengthy and detailed proposal finally came together and was submitted to NASA. The only thing left to do was wait to hear if we were chosen as one of the five finalists. The announcement day passed and my hopes began to dwindle. Then, on the morning of Christmas eve I received a phone call from our team leader congratulating myself and the rest of our team on becoming a finalist! I was incredibly stoked!
So what does this mean? Well, it means that our team will receive a $1,000 to develop our PSA and branding strategy. We also get to travel to Houston, TX and Cape Canaveral, FL to visit the NASA facilities and present our project. If we are chosen as the overall winner we will get to present our project at NASA headquarters in Washington, DC and received $10,000 or fly in the plane that they use to train astronauts and make us weightless!
Needless to say, I’m extremely excited and feel really honored to be part of a winning team. Congrats to all my team members and I look forward to the months to come!
Originally posted to Blogger: December 27, 2008
[...] Have you read my original post about the competition? If not, we are no go for launch. Read it here. If so, you are go [...]