Date: April 26, 2012
Title: Larry Bock: 2nd USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 28 & 29
Podcasters: Mat Kaplan with Larry Bock
Organization: The Planetary Society
Links: The Planetary Society: http://planetary.org
Planetary Radio Talks With Co-Discoverer of Near Earth Object 2012 DA14: http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000488/
http://www.usasciencefestival.org/
Description: SpaceX, Lockheed Martin and NASA will be there, but so will hundreds of other science and engineering companies, organizations and promoters of science. It’s the USA Science and Engineering Festival, coming Saturday and Sunday, April 28 and 29, to the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington DC. Festival head Larry Bock expects hundreds of thousands to participate in the free event, which includes a Stargazing Party at the National Air and Space Museum on Saturday evening. The Planetary Society’s Mat Kaplan talks with Larry about this gigantic love affair with science.
Bios: Mat Kaplan is the Planetary Society’s Media Producer. He has also hosted and produced Planetary Radio, the Society’s award-winning weekly podcast and public radio series about space exploration and development, for nine years. The show presents the men and women who are leading our push into the final frontier, along with regular contributions from Bruce Betts, Emily Lakdawalla, and Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Catch it on a local radio station, Sirius XM Satellite Radio, in the iTunes Store, or at http://planetary.org/radio . With this return to 365 Days, Mat and the Society kickoff a monthly contribution on the last Thursday of each month in 2012. (With the exception of August, when it will be heard on Thursday the 23rd.)
Larry Bock is a successful serial entrepreneur who has founded, co-founded or financed the early stage growth of 40 companies in the life and physical sciences from inception to achieving an aggregate market capitalization in excess of $30 Billion. He was the inspiration and executive director of the Inaugural San Diego Science Festival which was the world’s largest science festival of its kind. He earned his B.A. in Biochemistry from Bowdoin College and his MBA in Finance from UCLA. Larry is responsible for recruiting major Collaborators and Sponsors and Public Policy initiatives. He and his wife have contributed $250,000 of their own money toward the effort. In addition, Mr. Bock is working fulltime on the Festival and is not drawing any compensation.
Sponsors: This episode of “365 Days of Astronomy” is sponsored by The Father of the Bride…. with lots of love to Christina and Jeremiah on the beginning of their grand journey!”
This episode has also been sponsored by the Lake County Astronomical Society: Celebrating 30 years of stellar service to members and the public.
Transcript:
April 26, 2012 365 Days of Astronomy Podcast
Larry Bock: 2nd USA Science and Engineering Festival on April 28 and 29
Transcript
Mat Kaplan: Larry, if I’m excited about what’s just about to begin in the Washington Convention Center, you must be thrilled. Congratulations on what is about to happen.
Larry Bock: Thank you! I guess I am excited. We thought we put on a huge event last year. We have doubled it! So, if people were overwhelmed last year they will be exhausted this year.
You know, I didn’t get the benefit of going along with some of my colleagues in the Planetary Society to attend the last one, but they were so impressed. And this was outdoors. This time you’ve brought it inside. Why is that?
A number of reasons. Primarily, because there are a lot rules and regulations about doing things on the National Mall. We could do a lot edgier exhibits within the Convention Center. So, we could blow things up and so forth. We hope Bill Nye will be doing some of that in our booth.
Mat: Yeah, if he’s not blowing things up we hope he’ll imploding a few things that you’ve been helping us with. Bill Nye’s appearance in our booth and on your stages is just one tiny fraction of what you have planned. This is just an incredibly huge event. I frankly don’t know how you’ve pulled it altogether. What are some of the highlights that people should be looking forward to on Saturday and Sunday?
Well, we have about 3,000 hands-on, interactive exhibits, and about 150 stage shows. On the interactive exhibit side we have everything from flight simulators to virtual reality environments, to surgical robots, to making virus structures with marshmallows and toothpicks. And on the stage show side, we have everything from magicians, mathemagicians, comedians, rappers, musicians, ultra-cool science demos, and then some leading science celebrities like Bill Nye. We have Jamie Hyneman and Adam Savage of the Mythbusters, cast members from shows like Big Bang Theory, Time Warp and others.
It’s going to be incredibly cool, and it’s too big even for the Walter E. Washington Convention Center. What’s happening Saturday night over at the National Air and Space Museum off the mall?
Yes. If you didn’t get enough of all the activities during Saturday, we have several evening events. One of them is a stargazing party at the National Air and Space Museum on the National Mall, where Bill will be there participating. We’ll have telescopes set up by Celestron. We’ll have guided tours of the model solar system on the National Mall.
We’ll be doing a version of our Planetary Radio Live show there, the show we do in front of an audience, that version of our weekly show—as sort of the capper for that evening at the National Air and Space Museum. You know, as amazing as anything else in all of this is that you’re doing this at a cost to attendees of absolutely nothing.
I can’t emphasize that more! Many of the acts that you would see at our Science Festival you would go to another science festival and pay anywhere from $40 to $120 per person to see. Any one of these acts! We have 100 plus of those, and it’s all entirely free.
It is expected to attract a big crowd. I know that your folks are recommending that people not try and park near the Convention Center. I guess the best way to get there is on the Metro?
Yeah. You can take a number of different lines right to the Convention Center. So it’s very convenient, and the good thing about our event this year is it doesn’t matter whether it rains or shines. We’ll be in a comfortable environment.
Of course, not everybody’s going to make it to DC, but I think you have some companion events, or at least affiliated events, taking place elsewhere?
That’s correct. On the same days as our event takes place in Washington DC there are satellite events that occur throughout the United States. So people can come to our website, usasciencefestival.org, click on our satellite event map, and see if there’s an event in their area. And if not, we’ll also listed a number of affiliate festivals that are upcoming that may be in their area.
How have you been able to pull all of this together. I mean, this is gotta be a labor of love. But it’s a tremendous amount of work. Your team is not that large.
Yeah, we often say don’t look behind the curtain. We’ll be a little bit nervous. We have great people obviously working on it. This year we have over 1,000 volunteers helping us on the Festival. Actually, I got back this last Saturday from four volunteer trainings where we had close to 750 people over the weekend that were training. And then we have very generous sponsors like the Planetary Society that make this all possible.
Well, we are honored to be part of it. And we have 25 volunteers, roughly that, of our own who are going to be coming by our booth. And Bill Nye will be spending some time there as well. We’re a couple of aisles over from a whole line of booths—the presence there by NASA. And since this is 365 Days of Astronomy, I guess we should note that space science is a big component of what people will be able to see and participate in.
Yes, absolutely. We have large exhibits by NASA. We have leading companies like SpaceX there. We have obviously one of our major sets of exhibits is from our host sponsor Lockheed Martin. So you’ll get to climb aboard an Orion capsule. And we have a lot of leading astronauts there for people to interact with. People like John Grunsfeld or Anousheh Ansari, the first private woman in space. I believe Tom Jones is in your exhibit space?
You bet. He’ll be coming by.
This year we also added a book fair to our festival where we have an additional 35 leading science and engineering authors.
We’re just about out of time. This is not something that you needed to do. I mean, far from making money off of this, you’ve actually sunk a lot of your own funds, you and your wife, into creating this second USA Science and Engineering Festival. What’s the motivation? What is your incentive for putting in all this work?
Well, I spent most of my career as a serial entrepreneur, starting up high technology companies. And I couldn’t recruit Americans to these advanced science positions because they were not going into these fields anymore. You know, society gets what it celebrates, so we celebrate athletes and pop stars and actors and actresses, but we don’t celebrate science and engineering. So my goal was to put on the largest celebration of science and engineering.
Just one other quick mention, and this is not something that’s open to the public. As this podcast airs on Thursday, the next day is actually what you’re calling the Sneak Peek. I think you’ve got lots of school kids coming.
Absolutely right. We have a special event just for students from underserved schools that we call Sneak Peek Friday, but we’re also inviting a number of other people to that. We are inviting military families, home schoolers and the press to help us get the word out. Right now, as you said, it’s by invitation only, but we’ll have well over 15,000 people just at Sneak Peek Friday.
And many, many more, perhaps hundreds of thousands, Saturday and Sunday at the USA Science and Engineering Festival. The website once again is usasciencefestival.org. It’s starts on Saturday morning at 10am. I think I got that right, Larry?
That’s correct. Actually, people should arrive by 9:30. Our first book fair presentations start promptly at 10.
And it runs Saturday until 6, Sunday until 4pm. It is free. There is no registration, pre-registration necessary. We hope to see many, many, many of you there, and I know Bill Nye feels the same way. Larry, I look forward to meeting you in person there.
And thank you for helping us get the word out.
Larry Bock is the, as he said, serial entrepreneur. He has founded, co-founded or financed the early stage growth of 40 companies in the life and physical sciences. Now, he is in the business of bringing science and engineering, the excitement of those, to Americans, beginning in San Diego. This, coming up April 28 and 29, the second of these to take place in the nation’s capitol—the USA Science and Engineering Festival. Thanks once again for joining us on 365 Days of Astronomy. I’ll be back in another month, the last Thursday of May you’ll be hearing from the Planetary Society again. I’m Mat Kaplan. Thanks very much.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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