My godson inadvertently busted my chops two years ago.  We were in a club in New York and I said that the music was too loud.  Without meaning to ignite the second stage of my ascending mid-life crisis the kid, who eats and drinks until all hours of the night, and bounces around a jogging track the following morning as if he lived a celibate scholar’s life said, "Uncle Louie, if it’s too loud, you’re too old.”

He is a smart kid, normally, but let’s give him a grade of "C-" for sensitivity. 

Rather than give him a lecture on the things you can learn from the stillness and the quiet, I left him to discover Wordsworth on his own, but reminded him that I was the only person in the family – and perhaps in the western world - who actually liked the sound of the vuvuzela.  The vuvuzela, as newly-minted soccer fans like me know, is the horn (quite a long horn as it turns out), which you heard throughout our industry’s coverage of the FIFA World Cup this past year.  You probably also heard the buzzing long into your rapid-eye movement sleep cycle later as well! 

If you have no idea what I am talking about, go to YouTube and listen.

One’s person’s noise is another’s signal of celebration.  So it is when we discuss the roaring sound which emanates, happily and constantly, at the SSPI annual Gala, where the industry’s most significant conference and dinner occur.  Like a vuvuzela, the SSPI Gala hum continues well until the wee hours.

For years, we have been asked to consider ways to "quiet” the event, if ever so briefly.  It has been suggested that we ask a politically potent VIP to address the audience or to stage an "opening event.”  We have tried and I can report that failure was an option.  I attribute it to the same spirit that would not restrain users of the vuvuzela.  People want the SSPI Gala to be horn-blowing, ass-kicking, high-volume networking party.  Period.  For the 1,200 who will again return to Washington and celebrate all things satellite, there will be no further discussion.

However there is one consideration: our growing legacy and heritage.  Since 1981, when a bar in Denver (barely) contained a group of young satellite professionals, whose enthusiasm for a growing industry could have launched a Jupiter-C, the Gala and the image of SSPI and the satellite professional have been linked.  It is a happily raucous, free-spirited and innovative character representing a universal concept: individuals working together to enable communications by satellite among cooperating nations, companies and professionals on every continent. 

Today, SSPI has 3,000 members in 32 countries, the support of universities, volunteer chapters and over 60 corporate supporters on three continents.  The mission is the same as it was that night in the bar in Colorado: to support satellite professionals throughout their working lives.

From that day in 1981 until now, we have added mightily to global progress.  We have left beaming tracks of innovation and achievement.  This mandates that those whose work has been stellar deserve to be recognized.  The recognition must be built into an enduring legacy so that the fun-loving and boisterous 1,200 will know that ambition, channeled well, and the power of satellite as a force for profit and the greater good are not mundane reflexes or another "job.” 

We have found a way to have this legacy celebration and "quiet moment” during the Gala without asking a busy, hardworking and dedicated Senator or Prime Minister to stand up before the happy 1,200 and talk to a wall of celebrating satpros.  For the sake of courtesy and to preserve an elected ego, we choose to let them speak and to be ignored where they are used to speaking and being ignored - on the campaign trail. We may be loud and fun, but disrespectful to leaders we are not.

Rather, we will create a quiet moment built around our most celebrated professionals.  In alternating years SSPI awards a select group of our most innovative organization, and inducts truly remarkable individuals into our Hall of Fame.  These are existing events which have the gravitas that an industry which has contributed so much to the modern world since 1957 deserves.  In 2011 we will take these to their next logical level by transforming them into an event that we will call the "Stellar Awards Reception.”  It will be our version of a stadium skybox (and without a trace of any signage – digital or otherwise – which reads, "If it’s too loud, you’re too old.”)  It will be a cocktail reception for 100 invited guests, where SSPI will honor our innovators and Hall of Fame inductees, as well as the recipient of our newest award for government service.  (As I said, we are not disrespectful!)

Like thoroughbreds strolling toward the gate for a major stakes race, the reception will allow those leaders planning to attend the Gala which follows a moment to cherish an intimate setting and an atmosphere for special guests and activities.  Most important, it will allow the recipients to enjoy the hour when, young or old, true stellar achievement in service of the wonder of the satellite can be recognized.  As the old Blue Label ad used to say, "When you have really arrived, you don’t have to shout about it.”  At this gig, we won’t.

The shouting, the toasting and the honest to goodness fun and chest-pounding will follow.  No vuvuzelas.  Sorry. 

If you are interested in being a part of this new event, I am limiting underwriting support to four companies.  Current SSPI corporate sponsors have the first right of refusal through 15 September.  If you are interested, you are welcome to help us make our first Stellar Awards Reception another legacy that we can, well, shout about!

The problem with spectacular events is that once they occur, we enshrine the moment and forever wish them to occur again.  In psychiatry this is akin to what is called "magical thinking.”  According to the theory, when we slip into magical thinking we suspend logic and view everything through that one experience.  It is a constant "high” that filters our judgment.  Although we are not precisely sure how the fantastic event occurred, we are sure that we can make it happen again.  (In New York, people experience this by becoming New York Mets baseball fans.)

These big, dramatic, successful events have a dark side.  There is a corrosive effect on those who live in their shadow.  Think of the Beatles.  Wasn’t every group for the next 20 years after destined to be the "next Fab Four?”   Whenever a golfer has an important chip shot in front of them isn’t Tom Watson’s chip shot on the 17th hole at the 1982 British Open the constant point of reference?  And isn’t it true that American and European politicians, whenever they are stuck for an answer about a big policy issue quickly suggest that what is needed is "another Marshall Plan?”  (Some wit noted that their sense of history is so poor, they may not realize that the first Plan was in response to the single greatest catastrophe in world history.  My advice, "Let’s not go there.”) 

While good memories are something to - well - remember, we only move forward when we allow the mortal dust of mere everyday experience to factor into decisions.  Call it science.  Call it empiricism.  Heck, let’s call it common sense.  As my Uncle Louie used to say, "You want succeed in life?  Get a stranglehold on reality.”

During the three days of our "Destination Broadband” program at NAB, I was able to put my hands around reality’s neck while thinking about the challenge of making the miracle that we call the "satellite industry" of greater interest to the media, new users of satellite services and the next generation of people who will go to work in our industry.

As I listened to wave after wave of speakers, especially "new media” representatives sprinkled alongside our own industry folks, I was struck by the degree to which magical thinking has crept into my view of the industry.  I spend a lot of time dreaming about the "glory days” of satellite.  Maybe it is Sputnik’s fault.  More likely it is NASA’s.
 
In fact, reality began to clear away some magic dust in Las Vegas (as odd as that phrase may sound if read aloud) thanks to two people who were central to a singular, spectacular happening – courtesy of NASA – many moons ago.  

Recall that in mid-April, two men with a miraculous moment in their scrapbooks had something of a public spat.  The only other human being who put his footprint on the moon before astronaut "Buzz” Aldrin commented quite publicly on NASA’s new plan for space exploration.  Neil Armstrong noted forcefully (at least for Neil Armstrong), that he did not like the direction that the United States was taking with its new blueprint for space.

Aldrin told it like it is.  Taking one small step away from the sacred memory of 1969, he said bluntly, "The truth is we have already been to the Moon – 40 years ago.”  In other words, let’s not go there.  In his clear, no-nonsense way he took my magical thinking and gave it a good whooping.  The second man to walk on the moon said what I needed to hear.  What we need in order to get ourselves retooled for the return to the last frontier is to "focus on lowering the cost of access to space and developing cutting-edge technologies to take us further.” 

I have no idea if he’s right, but I’ll be damned if I dare venture an opinion after these two guys have offered theirs.  It would be like advising Columbus and Magellan how to navigate the seas or, worse, telling Tom Watson how to handle a nine-iron.

But I filed away what was said.  As a result I was able to listen differently to the riveting sessions at the NAB program.  I began to see that what is needed for our team at SSPI is to communicate the industry’s mission more effectively for the territory ahead.  Job One is to not think sentimentally.  We can no longer tell people to launch another metaphoric "Apollo program” when simply showing them what a constellation of cost-effective and hard-working satellites have done – and will do for more people.

What will they do?  How about connect the unconnected and bring economic possibilities to people who have been living, economically speaking, on Pluto. 

How about helping people find their way onto the Interstate?  Sound dull?  Think of it.  Ten years ago this May, the American government was ordered to stop scrambling the GPS.  The result was to improve the accuracy of devices for users worldwide, making those of us who drive like Mr. Magoo a lot less lethal on those narrow roads at night. 

The potential of satellites?  Let me give you Mark Dankberg’s email.  Ask Mark what ViaSat-1 will do to lower costs and provide access – and so much more.  If he doesn’t answer right away, I’ll send you an attachment with remarks from speeches of every CEO who runs a fleet on the planet.  You’ll be moved.  Or ask Boeing and Lockheed and EADS what satellites do to protect us from legitimately lethal people with sentimentally corrosive ideas about their role in the universe.

But most important, in my view, satellites will continue to serve as the enabling arbiters of emerging enforcement regimes that will no doubt help us solve life’s greatest dilemma: the rollback of the sleazy tide of environmental degradation.  Small satellites will help clean big oceans. There is poetry in the sky - still.

Mario M. Cuomo, the former Governor of the State of New York, once noted the difference between setting the expectations for the great adventure of a political campaign for high office and actually governing.  "It is a fact,” the articulate Governor said, "that we campaign in poetry but we must govern in prose.”

After reading this issue of the Orbiter and the prose of your colleagues around the world, I hope that you will continue to support SSPI.  We have ongoing opportunities for corporate sponsorship, the Reception in September in Paris (World Satellite Business Week), the Future Leaders Dinner in October, and NAB 2011. 

I look forward to hearing from you as we scale the next frontiers for satellite.  +1 212-809-5199 (x102 and x103).  LZacharilla@sspi.org
Thanks.

The lessons learned from the earthquake in Haiti continue.  Despite a promise that the story would not drop from the consciousness of the world, consciousness in 2010 evidently defined as what news executive editors think, it is inevitable that it would fade as a front-page story, especially in lieu of yet another earthquake, this time in Chile. 

Yet the case of Haiti persists because the tragedy has been deep and searing.  We do not know if suffering is to teach or lead us, but as someone once said, "Life is 20% what happens to you and 80% how you respond to what happens to you.”  There is much to consider from Haiti’s current situation that may – just may – offer lessons from which the satellite industry can both learn as well as teach. 

There have been many articulate voices on what is to come next for Haiti, but one in particular has caught my attention.  That would be Professor Robert Maguire, who chairs the Haiti Working Group at the U.S. Institute for Peace.

I listened intently as Maguire, also a professor at Trinity University in Washington, gave eloquent testimony to the United States Senate on solutions toward a better future for Haiti.  Embedded in his remarks (in February), as well as in his follow-up writings and TV appearances, was one gem directed at rebuilding a sustainable Haiti. 

Maguire is a cut-through-the-jive fellow.  He "walks the walk,” having visited Haiti over 100 times, the last time being five days before the nightmare shook the nation beyond description.  He speaks Creole, and thus knows of what he speaks and how to speak to Haitians. 

His idea, stated as a call to action, is mainly built upon common sense and something we in the satellite industry have known for some time, or at least as long as a fine Via Satellite article by Mark Holmes in May 2007, which highlighted ways that governments can fund satellite-enabled initiatives to deliver quality education to rural areas.  The idea is simply to find a way to allow people on the other side of a digital divide to cross the divide without physically having to move.

Here are the facts in Haiti: prior to the earthquake, nearly one in three Haitians lived in the capitol city of Port-au-Prince.  That would be like having 33% of Americans, approximately 100 million people, living within the municipal confines of Washington, DC.  (If you think it’s hard to find a seat on your Metro now . . . .)

Port-au-Prince was the heart of a nation was not able to provide economic blood to its people.  It was untenable from morning until night.  Yet people flocked there chasing the mirage of employment and prosperity.  Mirage indeed.  There is no hope worse than a false hope directed at a community’s most ambitious, for the The devastation is double-edged.  As a result of constant migration into Port-au-Prince there was depopulation of the countryside yielding to an overpopulation of a city which, we now know, rested on a major fault line.  The place was never sustainable, Maguire notes. 

As Dr. Joe Pelton writes in his book, "Future Cities,” published by the Intelligent Community Forum in 2009, by the middle of the 21st Century the number of people living in cities could well be 70% of the world’s population.  That groan you hear is from the urban environment trying to generate enough economic output to hold them; and that wail you hear is the sound of mothers and elders left behind in small, rural communities with no economic support structure.  In short, Haiti experienced an internal immigration that left no one better off.  When the earth’s unpredictable plates shifted beneath them, residents of the city were left hungry, dead and without dignity.  In the countryside they were bereft of dignity through lack of proper education and connectivity.  The government’s ministries and critical services infrastructure were in one basket.  And it was nearly empty even before its bricks and mortar were turned to dust.  The ratio of rural to urban had jumped from 80/20 in the late 1970’s to nearly 50/50 on the day it all broke.  As Dr. Maguire said, "Haiti was seriously out of balance before the earthquake.  It was a disaster waiting to happen.”  On January 12th that wait ended.

Ironies abound.  There was always a belief that it would be the winds of a hurricane that would blow Port-au-Prince away.  It was something far, far worse.  However something else moved during those few days after the quake, which leads Maguire and others to see an image dimly appearing to be hope.  What also moved were people.  Hundreds of thousands evidently as a mass exodus back to the countryside took place.  Why not?  The government was holed-up at an airport and apparently quaking.  If it was concerned about its citizens, as CNN’s Anderson Cooper commented, "it had a funny way of showing it.”

Maguire says this reverse migration should be permanent.  It is an opportunity to "rebalance” the country.  His premise is this: people are back in towns and villages where there are secondary ports, an agricultural base, social mores and families.  If someone could enable local economies to be revived, Haiti’s persistent suffering might give way to natural sustainability.

What strikes me is what seems like a potential opportunity for the satellite industry.  Could it contribute its unique genius as part of an effort toward nation building, community by community?  We know one thing about the new economy, whether it be Haiti’s or Hawaii’s: it will be based on access to communications.  The desirable form of communications, as Mark Dankberg, Luc Temerman at Skylogic and others continue to remind us, is broadband.  But as we also know, access of any type is the first rung up the ladder of the digital age economic system.  Access to education, whether it be 1 mbps or 100 is access. 

With the countryside repopulated greater than at any time since the 1970’s perhaps the industry can make a case that satellite will enable villages and towns to remain relevant.  By providing access to schools and small businesses in conjunction with NGOs and others on the ground we may see a balance return to the rural/urban ratio.  Through only the slightest act of imagination and of course access, we can envision Haiti in ten years.   By eliminating the "middle of nowhere,” satellite offers Haiti the one indispensible requirement: economic opportunity. 

If it works – and there’s no reason to believe Haiti is different than anywhere else, the result will be that Haiti’s smaller towns and villages will have found a way to "keep the kids home.”  Good things happen from there.  As they enthusiastic kids says when hatching an improbable but successful scheme in those old Hollywood movies, "Maybe, professor, just maybe this might work!” 

*****

I look forward to seeing you at our Gala at the Gaylord Hotel in National Harbor, Maryland on 16 March.  Many thanks again for helping SSPI exceed its corporate sponsorship goal.  Special thanks to outgoing Vice President of Corporate Sponsorship (and incoming SSPI president) Keith Buckley for setting the goal and pitching-in despite taking over the helm at ASC Signal in the middle of our annual campaign.  Thanks also to the forever-believing and hard-working Tamara Bond for convincing many of you that SSPI has set a new trajectory for an industry on the move!  Her loyalty and commitment to SSPI, and to your future, have inspired another strong performance.  Do not forget that you can become a corporate sponsor of SSPI throughout the year. 

Dear Fellow Society Member,

I must admit to you that on rare occasions I am so embarrassed by our industry’s capacity as an enabler of unimportant news and events – and stunned by the public’s consumption of it - that I want to pack my bag with irons, leave home and join the Professional Golfers Association Tour.  Even though I do not golf (a fellow New Yorker once described the sport as being about "as exciting as watching grass grow”), I understand that there is now a chance for mortals like us to actually win again.  Someone else has evidently left home.

Yes, I too am writing about last year’s surprising swinger, Tiger Woods. 

I write not to bash or praise the man, but to add perspective.  After all, "perspective” is our theme this year.  In the days following his awful shank, the "Tiger” story plunked itself onto the cover page of the New York Post for 20 consecutive days - by unofficial count.  It seems to be a long drive on an asphalt fairway that will simply not stop rolling.  Thanks in part to our industry, and the well-established human capacity for consuming gossip and tragedy (see Shakespeare, William, author), the story is moving around the world faster than the feet of Tiger’s wife after she evidently decided enough was enough and started chasing the winner of 14 majors down the street with what appeared to be a golf club.  You no longer need to invent this stuff.  It actually happens now.  You just need an SNG truck nearby.  Having happened in America, there was found a reason for optimism in all of this.  Proclaimed these yay-sayers,  not so long ago the instrument of choice for the scorned spouse was a cheap rolling pin.  Today it is a Nike Forged Blade.  Yet another sign that prosperity and progress continue their relentless march toward the 19th hole of Nirvana!

Mercifully, there are other signs.  In the midst of the Woods clubbing, I escaped to a place where I thought the story might not reach, even by satellite: the planet Mars.  Looking for someone who might confine his libido to jet propulsion, I started reading Andrew Chaikin’s wonderful book, "A Passion for Mars.”  Wonderful it is.

While Mars does not have the juice it once had over our imagination, Chaikin’s book was wonderful tonic and offered some needed perspective for those of us needing to remain in touch with our mission here at SSPI. 

His story is another morality tale: one that any recipient of an SSPI Future Leaders award will immediately grasp.

Chaikin, a former executive editor at Space.com, was a new intern at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1976.  That was the year when Viking I landed on Mars and immediately sent back photos of a salmon-colored landscape, a color made by the reflection of airborne dusts, which proved that the red planet really is red.  The oxidized iron also suggested that after so many billions of years, the place had grown rusty.  We now know the rest of the story about Mars and, thanks to Chaikin and his interest in a group in Colorado called the "Mars Underground,” the interest in returning increased, especially in light of discoveries that prove the existence of water and our own concern that a species as fragile as ours needs a "Plan B.” 

Chaikin tells his story to audiences with constant reference to his mentors, the level of enthusiasm that permeated the mission and with a sense of awe and humility we need as we consider the magnitude of what we have wrought.  I note that his book is titled, "A Passion for Mars,” rather than "A Thoughtful, Plodding, Clinical Assessment of the Third Planet from the Sun.” 

In March, SSPI will continue to demonstrate the passion of thousands of people for all things satellite at its annual Gala.  This year, we will make it possible for those of you who have purchased corporate sponsorships and tables to include an intern from the T. Howard Foundation.  There is little doubt that passion for satellite is where you begin.  Satellites are the enabler of more things good than we can count.  This is an industry and an event where many of your company’s future leaders and best customers will take their first swing at our most global of industries. 

As you have been reading and hearing, thanks to our friends at Intelsat, SSPI’s 2010 theme is "Global Perspectives.” It encapsulates this simple fact: that this is an industry whose mission really does circle the planet and enables great things in every corner of it. 

So do not despair.  Sure you can Google "Tiger Woods Blogs” and get 46,900,000 listings, while Andrew Chaikin clocks in with maybe 46,840,000 fewer.  So what!? I am beginning to learn that it isn’t always about the numbers, but the perspectives. 

I hope that you will tee it up for us this year and if you have not already done so, please take time to become a sponsor of SSPI.  Check out the number of your colleagues who have already set foot on the territory.

Given that as a young man he was a fan of the Chicago Cubs, an investigation into intelligence was not unwarranted – even in the eighth decade of his celebrated life.

This was not a new question for him.  As a young man he was concerned that his own IQ was not grand enough.  (It was about 120.)  So he attended a seminar at the University of Chicago to study intelligence.  This was 1947.  I suspect what he discovered is this: that there are intangible aspects to intelligence, especially when coupled with its more ambitious siblings in the human experience, progress and success.  You can measure IQ, and you can certainly map human physiological destiny through the gene pool, but you would be hard-pressed to explain why a frustrated Cubs fan with an IQ of 120 would be the one to open the door to the most exciting scientific frontier of all time. 
Intelligence has some impact on success and our brains should work better, especially on Mondays.  But like leadership or charisma, the actual cause of success cannot be fully explained and is barely understood.  Can you fully explain why the New York Yankees usually win or why Meryl Streep is always brilliant?  (I know, I know – it’s in their DNA!)

Yet try to explain it we must.  After all, how else can we make progress?  During my remarks at this year’s Future Leaders Dinner in New York I offered my simple explanation.  Said I, “Do not underestimate the presence of plain old, dumb luck in all of this.”  People chuckled but I believe it – at least until a better explanation comes along. 

You never know when serendipitous conditions will prevail and make someone the most celebrated man of discovery since Darwin, or the first to walk on the Moon or, closer to home, the person who discovers the technology for video-on-demand or puts up the world’s largest satellite.  Watson himself admits that had genetics not been an increasingly accepted topic and, more important, had the ability to study what became the double helix not been sufficient because of the lack of data storage or technical resources that were available to him, forget about it.  Watson and his partner Francis Crick would have remained two wonderful minds working in wonderful anonymity.
Luck is a deity we must acknowledge, especially for those of us who work in a transformational industry like satellite.  Luck is the “tipping point” of much success in human affairs.  But who can predict its arrival?  I can answer that one even with my IQ.  No one can predict it.  The question to ask is what else do we need to ensure that when our lucky moment arrives, we are ready to ride it? 
Here is where your SSPI support comes in.  

I.M. Pei, the man who designed the Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, wanted to understand the essence of rock music before he began.  What Pei found enabled him to do his design, and defined most of the successful folks that you and I know.  “Rock ‘n’ Roll,” Pei declared, “Is about energy.” 

While the world may be run by “C” students, it is led and inspired by the “Type As.”  It is about their energy.  Call it passion.  Call it intensity.  Whatever you call it, our mentors and our leaders and those we admire have it in abundance.  The one thing I know about the satellite industry’s future leaders and future mentors is that they are not successful because of their intelligence.  Although that sounds like one of the jokes told from that podium in New York, I bet they will agree.  Smarts alone does not get you a Promise Award and alone it will never make you our Mentor of the Year.  You must have energy.

SSPI cannot help you there. 

However, we can make sure that you have an industry which produces events like the Future Leaders Dinner, the Gala and the Reception at World Satellite Business Week.  We can enable spontaneity to ensue, the intangibles to emerge and this industry to be celebrated and to flourish.  Passion is contagious.  Putting satellites into service and moving content around the globe is hard work. The rest is luck.  So far it is in our favor.

So please keep it going in 2010.  Renew or become a corporate sponsor.  After all, you and I and the thousands of others in this industry are alike.  We are really lucky and we are all about energy.