Tomorrow, Monday Nov 8 is the first session of the course I am taking on the Business and Economics of Space. The last few days I have been getting acquainted with the student portal and going through the onboarding process.
Also, I have met my peers on this journey. What an impressive group of people ! We were encouraged to introduce ourselves to each other on the site, so I did that plus reached out to connect with them on LinkedIn and follow them on Twitter as well, if they were users of the platform.
Some interesting trivia about our cohort;
It is a diverse group by many metrics. A quarter of the group is female, which I was pleased to see. Often at telecom events the ratio skews much lower than that.
I am not the only one that can claim to have seen Neil Armstrong take his historic steps on the Moon back on July 20, 1969 live on TV. About 15% of us qualify as “experienced” !
Two thirds of the class are from the United States with a full third being international. Strong representation from Australia, with Canada coming in second most. Other nationals from the UK, Ireland, New Zealand , Germany, Belgium, Sweden, Spain, India, Singapore, Oman and Rwanda were also represented. I was a little surprised not to see more from the UK and also would have expected Italian students.
There were far less Twitter users among this cohort of people than I expected. Space Twitter is a real thing, and they are a great group of people. There is a lot of good info on Space Twitter and sharing of information. Genuine camaraderie. I think I may have to advocate that they check it out. Twitter doesn’t have to be toxic; if you avoid the hot button topics it can actually be a good experience !
After tomorrow’s class I will try to write a synopsis of the material. It is on the History of Space and the Contemporary Space Agency. Fingers crossed that is, as i promises to be a very full day otherwise.
