6^th Responsive Space Conference Questionnaire Results

Poor.  If I had not attended last year I would not have known about.  I didn’t even get an announcement about it this year, which I would expect since I attended RS5.

Easy to get to and stay without extra expense.

The sponsored parking, computers and Wifi were excellent-continue to solicit support for those.

Westin has separate internet systems between rooms (wired) and meeting areas (Wifi).  Twist their arms to unify those systems so if you pay once, you can work anywhere (not a big deal of you keep the sponsored wifi).

Paid parking is great!  I would think the hotel makes plenty or money and should get rid of the $10/day fee.

Parking sponsor is great but parking spaces were limited.

TV reception and remote were not working.

Easy access to LAX, receptions.  Lack of free in-room internet access.

I recommend another site for the next conference one without a competing meeting!

Very enjoyable but the size is outgrowing the conference facility.

Good facilities.

Find another location or work a deal to include internet access in room rates for attendees.

The cost of the reception bar is too high.

Have the hotel provide larger plates at the receptions.

Food was pretty good for most part.  A little healthier food-no dairy, fried, red meat-more whole grains, veggies/fruits, whole wheat bagels.

Meals and banquet were not great.

Warfighter panel was best seen to date.

Panels were excellent.

GENERAL COMMENTS

How was the cost of this conference, relative to other comparable conferences?

Low (1)       9              Typical (2)           68              High (3)      25            Average 2.16

Overall, how was the conference?

Very good and very disappointing.  Good because well attended, clear that momentum has built etc., and a huge amount of passing in RS and the activity it must fulfill.  Very disappointing because nobody is actually doing anything yet, only talking.  And a shame the conference is really an ORS conference (US Defense focus) as opposed to real RS conference (-looking at areas outside military apps more).  I’m sure there are responsive activities in University, commercial and International domains that the ORS community would love to hear about that were not brought into RS6 due to….maybe a lack of awareness in these groups of how RS6 could be a good forum for them to talk at?

Fine-lots of enthusiasm and dialogue.  Minor point-the frequent cell-phones & buzzing noises are unavoidable nowadays, I guess.  It is an unfortunate sign of our times.

Good, but prohibitively expensive for any student not aided by the student scholarship.

Good representation of progress.

Well organized, on-time.  Booth organizers were great.  Lots of contacts made that I didn’t expect.

Excellent.  An exceptionally important forum to exchange community-wide ideas and vision.  Our ability to get the right senior speakers was absolutely outstanding.

Very well run.  Exhibits somewhat lacking, but not a major factor.

Excellent exchange.  Useful networking.

Excellent-good possibilities.

Well above average-especially for all the people you were able to lure in from WDC and COS.

Somewhat mediocre.  However, considering the relatively new topic area of ORS, the event is worthwhile.  Perhaps there will be more stuff to talk about next year.

Great!

Excellent.  Looking forward to RS7.

Excellent in all respects.

Very useful.

Excellent opportunity to learn what is going on in almost all areas of the ORS community, not to mention networking opportunities.

Very good.

Good except the other interference on Thursday morning.

Excellent!

I think it concentrated too much on budget, regulations, standards etc. and not on actual products and ORS innovations (Launchers, very small payloads…) missing engineering presentations.

Great lots of information.

Great conference!  It is my first year attending and the information was very useful.  I liked the mix of policy and technical presentations.

Very good-but some of the presenters need to be less technical.

My first RSC, one of the better organized conferences I have attended.  I believe Operationally Responsive Information Office is more appropriate-utility time, rapid info to end user are key, and the specific implementation. 

I enjoyed it.  I found there were too many ½ hour speakers (particularly military) saying the same thing-as we need to have a speaker every time we eat.

Good.  Speakers were pretty good. Horne was best.  They should all be that good.

Very good.

Two days and more selective technical papers would be better.

Very good.  I have had 3 days good experience by your nice hospitality.

The same questions on ORS have been asked but the responsiveness to the question is not clear.

It is great to see the conference mature right along with Responsive Space itself.  Julie Jackson and all of her folks do a great job!

Well worth it.

Very well run, organized with timely information.

Very pleased overall with RS6 and its organization/execution.

Could have used more DoD and government agency representatives on the agenda.

Excellent. Very well organized.  A job well done organizing sponsors, speakers and presentations.

For a 1^st timer, it was not only enjoyable but educational and enlightening.

I thought this year was much more focused than RS5.  Good program of speakers to provide their insights and thoughts on ORS.  I’ve been involved with ORS from the start and the conference did a great job this year at identifying ORS issues.  Differing thoughts on how to go about it, and the future.  I, as with everyone present, have very distinct thoughts on ORS.  The conference allowed these thoughts to be expressed.

Very good and useful.

Well organized and achieved its goals.

Very good, excellent attendance, stimulating.

Great, I enjoyed it.

A little less enthusiastic than last years. Technical papers are no that interesting and not enough of them.  Political talks were not really telling any news.

Need for large vendor participation.

Not bad, however, there was not a clear definition of what ORS is.  Also $675 is rather high for a fee.  I would have expected a portfolio or something with the RS6 logo and information to be provided for the cost.

The best you organized to date.

Very good.  I enjoyed the higher level perspective speakers in the morning sessions the best.

Very useful for networking and hearing ORS leadership, view points and vision.

Conference good-need more technical papers, multiple tracks. 

Good-adapting well to evolving definition/status/maturity of ORS environment.

Very good, in part because it is focused on one specific topic, Responsive Space.  Great work!!

Good.  Does not influence my work.

On the whole very informative.  Not sure if ORSO really understands the problem or how to set up a method for solving it, I hear a lot of rhetoric, not much substance.

Good networking environment.

The conference was very good.  The one detractor was the breakfast meeting on 1 May next to our meeting.  It made hearing Dr. Wegner very difficult…he was the one speaker we all wanted to hear.

Informative and energetic.

Good interaction.  Would appreciate more near term future discussion that past and 5-7 year out vision.

Good content, would like to see more area responsible speakers.

This was the best conference I’ve attended in years.  A far as relative information presented and the key leaders participating.

A little long.

Great as usual.

There appears to be a disconnect between the RS6 organizers and individuals actively involved in ORS, which make me question the efficiency of the conference as a whole.

Informative and timely with new ORS Director.  Do need more precise definition of Responsive Space, but getting there.

Good.  My only complaint is that I’m not sure what the specific outcomes of the conference are.  If those were announced, reiterated and measured it would make me feel that the expense, time and money was worth it.

Very interesting and valuable.

Excellent-very informative.  Could use slight more technical content in technical papers.

Very enjoyable.

Well organized and well attended.  A good range of senior policy to junior users level presenters were scheduled as well as a good range of technical presenters ranging from students to recognized experts.

Excellent-glad to see networking is recognized as part of the conference and that time is built-in for networking.

Well run, good content, good facilities. Should have given more time to the ORS panel Q&A.

I think this has been an excellent run conference.  Thank you.

Primarily a networking venue.  Technical content is very low.  Suggest splitting technical sessions into smaller groups running in parallel this will allow greater depth.

Good.  Community participation was high.

Very useful information and a broad spectrum of topics/issues.

It was a really good immersion conference for me.  I had some prior limited “big space” experience and it was good to see the other side.

Very valuable.  Senior speaker selection and participation was very good.

Excellent conference, information rich.

Interesting program and good forum for interactions.

Informative and interesting

How did you hear about the conference?

38– Word of Mouth

31 – Email

25 – RS6 web site

12 – Other (explain)

9 – Space News

6 – Another Conference

6 – Company bulletin board/web site

3– Bulletin Board

Bob Conger

SMC advertisement

AIAA email

SSTC

Past conference attendee

Colleague was attending

Been to most, work already with ORS office.

TacSat weekly telecon

Previous attendee

Internet search and follow on discussion

Surfing the web

Company conference attendance plan

Schedule on weekly NSSI space news email

National Space

Supervisor tasked me to attend

My company suggested

Invited to the YP dinner

Most important, what could we have improved and how could we have improved it?

Organization could not be improved-excellent.  Wireless access would be good.

Enforce no cell phone and no blackberry rules they are distracting and frequent.

Divide technical paper presentations into parallel sessions rather than one huge session and shorten the conference by a day or so to reduce time and monetary costs to attendees.

Perhaps reduce to 2 days by eliminating technical papers.

Have small conference. NoForn to talk freely.

Pay more attention to the special needs of some attendees (with allergies).

Break out sessions with some technical depth in key ORS areas.

Arrange for power outlets in conference room for laptops.  Investigate transcription service-lots of good info put out verbally in panels and addresses that is not in slides.  Manage volume on speakers-Jim tends to lean in and shout, but others stand well back-when there is reverb in the room.  Please adjust levels.

Shorten to 2 days (we’re all pretty busy-hard to dedicate 3 days) and emphasize OPNS over tech papers.

Should provide a classified session @ AFSPC for appropriate folks.

It would be better to have more focused discussions in key technical areas.

The panels were better this year than last year.  The meal speakers were generally good but some of the others could have been much better.

Turn down the volume of the speakers.

The audio services were not really ready for prime time.

Perhaps more frequent breaks.

It would be interesting to have some birds of feather discussions or narrow topics such as optics electronics etc.

Choice of topics.

Hold a classified session.

Better grouping of papers by sections.

Rightly so, for now very space centric.  Need to encourage more presentation/discussion on end-to-end system aspects.  Integrating these capabilities into new/existing infrastructure may provide challenges.

If it gets bigger consider concurrent technical sessions-not everyone is interested in every topic, but some would like to see more in a particular area.

Invite an actual real contracting officer so they can explain how the acquisition process works.  Everyone complains about the process-they should hear how it actually works.

More focus on business opportunities.

At this moment nothing.

Better audio control in panel sessions.

Congressional representation.  More specifics on ORS implementation.

More DoD and government speakers.  Each of the services should brief how they support ORS goals.

Include some of the 3 letter organizations from IC.

No real thoughts for improvement-well done.  Hosted receptions refreshments.

Organization was exemplary.  Meals and banquet were not great.

Free beer and wine at receptions.

Conference was well balanced and good scope/depth.

Add more focus to technical and operational talks over the political organizations stuff.

Keep it the same.

More technical talks-panels.  Less speakers (2/3 opening/lunch/dinner).

Inviting guest speakers from allied defense departments (such as Canada, UK, France, Australia) to hear what these nations are doing with respect to responsive space and how their efforts could be leveraged by small ORS efforts.

While useful for some, the technical sessions seem too technical foremost.  Just my personal observation.

My 1^st one-well run, good speakers.

Speakers chart displayed better.

It was all terrific.

Visuals were typically difficult to read set standards for fonts.

Do not put conference viewgraph up immediately after speaker finishes.  Leave his conclusion/summary slide up as long as possible.  Very frustrating to reading conclusion slide and have it replaced with the conference slide.

More discussion on C² for ORS.

Overhead projections are hard to see, poor image quality.  Slides hard to read.  It is not a big issue given the CD Rom that is provided.

Conference is too long.  Should be broken up into separate sessions.  This will also facilitate much more interaction among conference goers.

Convince other organization not to dual schedule (space control, SERB, etc.).

Identify and announce a few measurable outcomes-in concert with the ORS office-there was a lot of pontification…little that I can tell my boss about what was accomplished.

I wasn’t totally clear on the format as someone new to the conference.

More technical content in technical presentations.  Perhaps a tactical the first day.

Add additional sidebar sessions/activities such as the Space Show.

Session on Tier 1 efforts.

Would have liked to see more displays.  The ones you had were good, but clearly just a sampling of what’s out there.

Have you considered a classified session?

Better hotel location-leave LA got to San Diego or elsewhere-Midwest.

Maybe a little bit more emphasis on current solutions in the technical sessions.

I came to find out procurement plans for the next ten years and found out that we are much too early.

Avoid panel/keynote speeches that repeat what is already known/previously said about ORS.

Needed a presentation on required encryption supporting ORS (e.g. TT&C mission data transect) and required Type 1 certification [presenter: NSA]. NSA presentation: software solutions for space.

Find another location or work a deal to include internet accession room rates for attendees.

Provide recordings (mp3 or real audio) of speakers and panel discussions, particularly when slides are not available.  Transcription would also work.

Would you be interested in attending another Responsive Space Conference?

                                                Definitely          81           Maybe          21           No    3         

What topics were we missing that we should have tried to cover?

Also would be good to re-focus audience on key issues highlighted-may be this will happen this afternoon, but a forum for the RS leaders to resume the take away message they got from RS6 would be interesting to see if they are going away with the right message.  Next, year would be good to move from “what is responsive space” – to get to session dedicated to Tier 1, 2 and 3 activities actually happening.  Would be good to make “ORS” into a stream, with maybe commercial and university activities as a parallel stream, as the problems to ORS are not always the same as those in commercial responsive space domain.  The RS message and RS6 attendance is broad enough to support multiple streams.  Would also be good for the RS organization to start a centralized list of capabilities and opportunities to start accelerating RS activities…To move forward, and push the envelopes of responsive space, we as a community need to focus on each envelope, maybe independently: the drivers for Tier 2 activities may well differ from Tier 3 and at this point, the cross-talk may be enterprise-level integration of tiers would be a good forum to look at the areas when the tiers need to work together.  So I’d be very keen to see RS7. 

• -target international RS

• -target more university and industry (esp. small industry) groups-even groups such as Celestis again

• -refocus on each area of the problem

• -get more “implementation of RS” papers rather than “discussion” assuming this is happening (else RS will disappear all too soon!)

It may be that a dedicated ORS conference and RS conference could exist, but a single forum for both would be a much healthier exchange forum.

What operationally responsive capabilities are not best met by space assets?  i.e., what tasks should be passed on to other communities (e.g. airborne UAVs).

I required more ground system sessions (like a VMOC).

It might be helpful to have a person from NASA provide a short overview of efforts underway at NASA that might be applicable to ORS.

C²/TPED session; Intel community perspective on ORS

Open architecture

C² enterprise V. stovepipe mission/apportionment/TPED/TPPV systems came up a lot, but didn’t have their own session.

Legislative issues-not platitudes-what does Congress expect, how long will they hang in there waiting for results?

How does near-space tie in?  The ground segment wasn’t covered much.

Gossamer structures

Good coverage.  Now let’s see what happens.

New launch concepts, new missions for microsats actual products.

Ground system technical presentations.

C²/ORS

Has there been any discussions of having a 1-day classified session?

Acquisitions

More on launch.

Business opportunities

On-going projects presentation (ex.) TacSat-3, status, technology etc.

Software, software, software.  Too much focus on space launch and satellites need to focus across end to end responsiveness.

This year’s topics were great and appropriate.

TacSat payloads and associated demo plans.

How to overcome low TRL technologies for ORS.

Terminals end to end problem.

Launch opportunities for ORS demos.

Some topics/speakers needed more time, tough issue to resolve but you might start allocating more time to those topics that were “hot” issues from RS6 during RS7.

Provide an assessment of Congressional, DoD and gov’t. to ORS.

Some topics need class enrichment.

USASMDC G-3 discussion of initiatives and involvement with ORS the Army is stepping out in this area.

A very senior warfighter would have been good to put the warfighter panel into perspective.

I’m afraid that the ground aspects (e.g. the ED of TPED) were not emphasized in a balance weight and I’m very concerned.

Several-maybe I’ll write a paper.

Operationally responsive software tools.

Actual innovative simplified process/concepts (e.g. req’s integration, launch).

More heavily geared to warfighter needs and capability requirements.

Most emphasis on terminal demonstrations could have some invited speakers describe how they see the “operational constellation” of ORS assets.

Several speakers mentioned “long poles” (e.g. frequency mgmt and crypto) what is being done to address these?

.

Consider facilitating a classified session to discuss TPED & ISR solutions.  This could be hosted at SMC on industry site like Northrop Grumman or GD.

Multiple tracks more industry technical/more lab technical standards to track/ORS opportunities/payload modularization.

How to get a responsive space by using space assets of allies around the world.

Need to talk requirements/systems engineering aspects.

Commercial technology insertion.

More from STRATCOM & JFCC Space-warfighter perspective.

There should more than one industry day.  Provide a better opportunity to interact with the ORS Program Office.

Need a list of acronyms for neophytes.

International involvement in responsive space.

Gov’t organization talking about ITAR, streamlined acquisitions waivers.

How can new companies become genuine contributors?

More examples of existing HW/SW useable by ORS.

US Congressional perspective; more international perspective of ORS and international progress. Industry Panel on ORS.

One or two additional panels addressing challenges in acquiring.  Fielding and operating ORS capabilities should be acquisitions orgs and command staffs (i.e. Centcom).

Responsive range conops capabilities.

TPED ORS-it’s all about the product not just launchers/satellites.

1 year; check in on ORS how do we really increase launch ops?

Perhaps more presentations from industry (not just vendor exhibits).

Find a location that does not charge an additional fee for internet access.

Technology efforts by gov’t org (e.g. AFRL, NRL) might be useful addition.

NSA’s role, security issues, information assurance.

What else could we have done in terms of organization, preparation, or running of the conference to make it better or more useful to you?

Make it more clear that you have a particular template for the technical papers, e.g. communicate this actively (in an email) rather than passively (posting on the website).

Overall an excellent job-can’t think of anything to add.

Very smooth operation-my compliments.

Great!

Wonderful as is!

Keep up the good work!

Get Gen. Chilton or Gen. Kehler committed to make it a go.

Locate it in New York.

More SBIR vendor exhibits.

Nothing.

I suggest creating separate workshop choices that we could pick, instead of everything all together.

Better time management.  Hold joint warfighters and decision maker panels.

ORS organization chart would be helpful.

Some topics/speakers needed more time, tough issue to resolve but you might start allocating more time to those topics that were “hot” issues from RS6 during RS7.

Offer opportunities for out-of-towners to explore LA (after the conference day).

I would be delighted to get the contact details (where possible) of the participants.

Not much to improve.

Nothing, it was very well put together.

Earlier distribution of presentation material (CD Rom).

Focused technical interest groups.

Well run conference.

Everything went well.

Well done!

This conference was very well run.

Get the AV guys a bit more on the ball with microphones.

Great conference venue.

Conference is well staffed for its size; staff is approachable and friendly and available in a reasonable amount of time-very helpful and friendly.

I felt it was well organized and run.

Nice job!

It’s not broken, so don’t try to fix it.

Any other comments, recommendations, or suggestions?

Open up to more international RS group (CNES Myriade/Proteus, DLR’s, TET, FSA? Initiatives Japanese universities, Indian launches-not available to US, but available to other)-collaborate with e.g. ESA’s smallsat conference maybe?

I have no particular suggestions-It seemed ok for it purposes.

Divide the technical session into simultaneous breakout to shorten the conference and reduce costs.

Jim, Bob and their team did an excellent job once again.

Keep up the good work!

I like the warfighter panel, please continue that.

I like the warfighter panel more than ORS panel-they talk more and present less. Consider having less people on ORS panel so we don’t end up with 90 minutes of power point and 10 minutes of discussion.

A little healthier food, no dairy, fried, red meat-more whole grains, fruit, whole wheat & bagels.

Have lunch speaker’s start/finish earlier to allow more networking time.

Overall score – Excellent.

Gen. Horne-great speaker.  Parking sponsor is great but parking space were limited, more technical sessions.

Clarify with more information on the “Young Professionals” dinner.  Was not sure what this was until it was too late.

Great show thanks.

Things were heavily compressed which meant some speakers got more attention than others.  The powerpoint presentations were often too small to add value-presenters should be given advice on projection issues and auditorium capabilities.

Possible classified sessions?  Thanks for a great conference!

More focus (in the real ORS activity…)on the whole ground segment aspects.

Do not revert to a “panel only” format, like the other conferences (useless!)

Have one day (day 3) geared toward the operational mission only.  Keep the more technical issues to days 1 & 2; that way, people could show up for portions of the conference that was applicable to them.

How about a “most valuable paper” MVP award-could help to maintain the quality of contributions to the conference.

Maybe a “lessons learned brief” as well as a classified session prior to the main kick-off.

For RS& focus on reporting progress of ORS office, executed BAA’s, missions-establish mental score card/reporting.

I like the change from last year for no panel after each session.

When it takes 3 people to explain Responsive process, the process is not responsive.

Less whining about money/credit cards/checkbooks (getting old).

Great job!

Speakers you put up a slide with the word “questions”-while I’m reading your conclusion slide-very bad style.

May consider organizing committee with the small sat conference organizing committee.

Keep up the great work!

Start the conference with the Pledge of Allegiance.

Audio quality spotty, esp. for panel discussions.  Make CD’s available slightly sooner for people departing earlier.

Great job all. Thank you.