Something that the Next Generation blog really shows is that it's a great time to be a student in the space industry.
Even if you don't fit into either of those categories, however, there's still plenty you can do to support the cause and have a great time doing it!
For the past two years, I've served as the director of media relations for Yuri's Night. Ok... now I know you're asking, "What's Yuri's Night?"
Yuri's Night was founded in 2001 to celebrate launching the first human -- Yuri Gagarin -- into space, as well as the first flight of NASA's space shuttle. Both happened to fall on April 12 (20 years apart, of course), so each year hoards of people around the world show up to Yuri's Night parties. These can range from an evening of academic speeches to all-night blowouts rarely seen outside of Burning Man.
In 2008, for example, Yuri's Night held 198 parties on all seven continents -- not to mention another world, aka a 24-hour bash in the virtual world of Second Life.
Most parties are small get-togethers, but last year thousands descended upon a flagship event at NASA's Ames Research Center near San Francisco. Will Wright demonstrated the highly anticipated game Spore, Tesla Motors showed off their 2008 Tesla Roadster, and acts like Amon Tobin, Phil Lesh and Freezepop played to a crowd that filled the hangar at Moffett Field.
Back to my role: As director of media relations, my job was to keep track of the awesome Yuri's Night events going on, and of course promote them as best as I could on a limited budget.
Yuri's Night is a largely grassroots organization, which gives individual parties a lot of leeway in deciding how to publicize their individual events. Still, Colombian National Radio, MSNBC.com's Cosmic Log, Space Lifestyles, and other media groups thought it was a good idea to contact me about interviewing the organizers of Yuri's Night (George and Loretta Whitesides).
I also wrote dozens of press releases and updates for the Yuri's Night blog and some wire services. These highlighted individual parties from Stuttgart to the South Pole and nifty features -- one of which was the Yuri's Night's collaboration with American Forests to plant "moon trees" at as many parties as possible. Our 2008 news feed is temporarily off the main page while we set up the 2009 site, but you can read my posts here.
In previous years, Yuri's Night received coverage from CNN, Wired magazine, scores of newspapers, and even MTV. Attending a Yuri's Night party isn't just a chance to have fun; it's a great way to remember mankind's achievements in space and keep space exploration in the public eye.
Wondering how to get involved now? It's extremely easy. Visit www.yurisnight.net and see if there's a party going on near you; if there is, make sure to stop by. Bring a friend who isn't as interested in space as you are -- they'll probably have a great time. If there isn't a party, make your own! It can be as large or as small as you want it to be, but either way you'll be doing your bit to celebrate space.
I'll be taking a secondary role on the media relations team for this year's festivities, but if you have any questions about Yuri's Night I'd love to take them at brice at yurisnight dot net.
Brice Russ is a linguistics graduate from UNC-Chapel Hill, the new media director for 4Frontiers and a member of the National Space Society's Web Oversight and Public Affairs Committees.
Photos: yurisnight.net
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