Selling Tomorrows

Introducing The B2B Formula

For the last few months, I've been breaking my own guideline about not covering two topics in one blog.  The fact is, the PR/Marketing Futurism folks, which SellingTomorrows.com is for, don't care as much about social media.  Or if you do, you want to read about it in a blog that's tightly focused on that topic.  And the B2B Social Media crowd isn't as interested in how the perception of the future has changed over time and the ways marketers use the premise of the future to sell things.

So...I've launched a SECOND blog, this one just focused on B2B Social Media.  I call it the B2B Formula (b2bformula.com). 

Both blogs will continue, and in fact, there's some great news coming down the pike about SellingTomorrows, so stay tuned for that!

My New White Paper: The CMO's Guide to Tweetups

My apologies for skipping out on posts the last month...I've been working on a very exciting white paper that has entered the wild today: The CMO's Guide to Tweetups.  Nine delicious pages chock full of research, rationales, strategies and tactics designed to help CMO's and heads of public relations at Business-to-Business companies use launch their own tweetups. 

While most of the tips came from my experience at NASA's tweetup of the launch of shuttle Atlantis in November, all the strategic sections are based on Makovsky's work with B2B's that sell complex services, products and -- at its root -- ideas to customers and investors.

For many companies in this space, using social media at all, much less hosting a tweetup, can seem strange. But as readers of this blog know, when it comes to complex ideas, there's no better medium for educating audiences, and then engaging them all the way down the marketing funnel than social media. 

I invite you to take a read and add your thoughts in the comments section below.

"It's Beating" - Morley Safer Sees a Regrown Heart Valve and Points to BOTH Frankenstein and Pixies

Last night 60 Minutes aired a segment on how researchers are growing human body parts -- ears, kidneys, lungs -- to be used as replacements for veterans and people who have diseases that require amputation.  It was a great example of how certain thousands-of-years-old themes are still with us.  

At one point, Morley Safer asks, "Are you suggesting a remarkable future of when organs fail we simply replace them and live to 120, 150?" [Translation: are we talking the holy grail of immortality?] To which the researcher responds, "The hope for the future is that if you do have a patient who has organ failure, you don't want the patient to die because you're waiting for an organ. People are dying every day on the transplant wait lists." [Translation: Of course, but you won't catch me talking about that. Let's focus on how we're saving lives right now.] Later, Safer says "It's enough to make doctor Frankenstein jealous," and compares the science to "pastry making," "pixie dust" and "magical," all of which reveal our intense desire and fear of scientific advancement.

Watch CBS News Videos Online

Selling Low Probability, High Impact Events

Tom Friedman has an excellent column today comparing the application of Dick Cheney's "One Percent" Doctrine on terrorism to climate change.  As Friedman explains, the question is what to do about potential events that are unlikely to happen, but if they do the fallout would be catastrophic.

With that in mind, he counters about the downside if we're wrong on climate change:

"If we prepare for climate change by building a clean-power economy, but climate change turns out to be a hoax, what would be the result? Well, during a transition period, we would have higher energy prices. But gradually we would be driving battery-powered electric cars and powering more and more of our homes and factories with wind, solar, nuclear and second-generation biofuels. We would be much less dependent on oil dictators who have drawn a bull's-eye on our backs; our trade deficit would improve; the dollar would strengthen; and the air we breathe would be cleaner. In short, as a country, we would be stronger, more innovative and more energy independent."

This is an interesting avenue of tomorrow-ism to explore. Anyone have other examples of low probability, high impact events that have been successfully sold to the public?  (Meritorious or not?)

How to Launch a Tweetup: Lessons from NASA

If it wasn't clear from my exuberant coverage a couple weeks ago, NASA PR completely rocked the tweetup of STS-129. Here's an excerpt from a piece I had published today in Bulldog Reporter on what NASA did right -- that any company can learn from and copy.  A white paper with the 35 things that NASA did right is coming out shortly.  Leave a comment or shoot me an email if you'd like to be on the mailing list for it.

If any of my #NASAtweetup tweeps are reading this, I'd love your input below on what YOU thought NASA did right in cultivating a community online.

"You may not have a spaceship, but your company has a fan base. Maybe they're customers who have relied on your product for decades and feel it belongs more to them than to you. Maybe they're engineers who appreciate how hard it is to create new kinds of paint—or improve the flavor of Tastykakes. Maybe they're investors fascinated with the countries where your company does business. They won't think of themselves as fans until they're in a room with like-minded people. They won't think of themselves as members of a community until you bring them together. And you can't be accepted as a part of that community—reaping all the sales, visibility, credibility and even free labor—until you get tweeting."

Read the full article here.

Flight from the City: "What the #%&@! is Wrong with our Economy?

You have to hand it to Borsodi. He looks at the economic devastation around him in 1933, people walking around shell shocked and penniless, and outright rejects it.  Where everyone sees a savage business cycle, he sees a savage economic model.  Where others queue for breadlines, he buys farmland to grow his own food.  Absolutists are easy to admire, of course, but unlike most of them, Borsodi doesn't substitute ideology for logic.  He embraces the scientific model and applies it over and over until he finds a way out of his mess.

Borsodi makes three arguments in the book. The first is that an economic system that can't eliminate unemployment is immoral and impractical.  Snip:

..."all these victims of unemployment are alike in this respect, that they are periodically unable to support themselves and their families through no fault of their own because of their dependence upon what they earn as a cog in some part of the complex machinery of our factory-dominated civilization."

...But what is even worse, our social reformers in slightly different words tell him virtually the same thing. There is nothing particularly wrong, according to them, with the complex industrial system which had formerly employed him."

"The unemployed, if they can't be given work here and now by our industrial system, should not be asked to live half hungry, half naked, half cold, while waiting for business to pick up. Above all they should not be fed upon promises of blissful security in the distant future - after our reformers have finished tinkering with he industrial system and remolding all our institutions nearest to their heart's desire."

"We have dotted the landscape with our factories. We have filled the cities with skyscrapers. We have covered the continent with a network of rails and roadways. But in spite of all these things, we have been unable to furnish the American people security even as to such bare essentials as food and clothing and shelter."

Given the degree of change he's about to propose, a rejection of some of the most fundamental underpinnings of the economy are needed.  Of course, he's helped by the fact that in many people's minds, those underpinnings have already been shaken to their core.

Check out his use of mechanical metaphors: "Machinery," "Cog," "Tinker" "Complex" "System."  Borsodi has a love-hate relationship with machines, and one that's important because it marks an inflection point in the way Western society views technology.  Up until WWI, technology was almost uniformly seen as a force for good.  In fact, on the eve of its first big battles, some people wrote that technology would end the war faster because people could kill so much more effectively.  Though WWI gives rise to the first tech-driven dystopic views, they don't cross into the economic sphere until the Great Depression.

In "Flight" Borsodi takes not just a middle road, but a completely DIFFERENT road between the utopic and dystopic views.  He says that the way we USE machines is economically irrational.  That instead of using machines in factories, we should bring them home -- to farms -- to make our own goods.  Machines in an agrarian setting?  We're all ears...

Tomorrow's post: Borsodi's economic argument for machines at home. 

Flight from the City on Amazon

First post on "Flight" can be read here

What Would You do if Unemployment Hit 30%? A Three-Part Look at 1932's "Flight from the City"

You know you're living in interesting times when Ron Paul's amendment to audit the Federal Reserve gets passed out of committee 43-26.  But then again, 10% unemployment has prodded a lot of people to start questioning some fundamentals.

When unemployment hit 31.2% in 1932, an economist named Ralph Borsodi wrote one of the most important utopic works of the 20th century, "Flight from the City."  And he didn't just write "Flight" -- he lived it.  Ralph looked at the depression around him and decided to pack up the family, buy a farm, and make his own economic way in the world. And it mostly works.  He's not a socialist, though he finds a lot of flaws with capitalism. And he's not a "return to the earth" kind of person, noting many times he hates backbreaking labor and finds many ways to have machines do the work for him.

Like most utopias, "flight" says more about the times in which it was written than those that came to pass.  And yet it's worth reading because the eerie similarities to today reveal how darned constant and consistent our utopic hopes are. Hopes that go back for thousands of years.  Understanding the intricacies of this dynamic is the key to laying out a CONVINCING vision of tomorrow.

Plus, it's just really fun to read.

This week kicks off a special 3-post look at "Flight." I hope you enjoy.

New Must-See for Future Fans: PopSci's "This Week in the Future"

Each week, Popular Science is summarizing its news about the future by creating images that mash up their latest stories.  The art is really something (sorry, they haven't enabled image sharing features, so you'll have to go to the site to see), and it's worth checking out. 

Life Span Limits? Civil Rights for Robots? Cracked.com Counts Down Tomorrow's Laws

In this brilliant mix of original thinking, legal insights and pop culture, Cracked reveals the "6 Insane Laws We'll Need in the Future."  snip:

"From the war on drugs to gay marriage to file sharing, it seems like the law is in a continual, often losing, battle to keep up with the modern world.  But it's only going to get worse from here. Advances in genetic engineering and AI are going to change what it means to be human, and that means lots and lots of work for the future's lawyers."

First Lady to Kids: "Start Thinking About Your Future in That Way"

There was a gem of a quote in today's NY Times coverage of the Obama's state dinner hosting India.  The First Lady, talking to some schoolchildren, said:

“Who knows, maybe one of you all sitting at this table, one of our little mentees, will be living and studying somewhere in India — maybe New Delhi or Mumbai or Bangalore,” the first lady said. “Just imagine that. Start thinking about your future in that way. This visit at this table is the beginning of that for all of you.”

While this will send chills down the backs of those who fear Fareed Zakaria's "rise of the rest," I think it's one of those perfect statements that can captivate a young person's mind about worlds far beyond their home towns, exotic cultures that reveal we have as much in common with other nations as not, and the chance to learn and think and do in a world that's becoming more global by the day.  I'm looking forward to reading a Times article in 30 years about how one of those kids took Ms. Obama's advice to heart and did something great.

(Picture from August 2008)

Could Any Marketing Convince You to Eat Cloned Human Meat?

I'm a big believer in the power of rational and emotional messages' ability to change people's minds about innovations, but eating cloned human meat?  

In this feature on LiveScience.com, Mark Post, a biomedical engineer from the Netherlands, says, "In principle, we could harvest the meat progenitor cells from fresh human cadavers and grow meat from them," Post said. "Once taken out of its disease and animalistic, cannibalistic context — you are not killing fellow citizens for it, they are already dead — there is no reason why not...Still, Post suggests that marketing could overcome such hurdles.  "If every package of naturally grown meat by law should have the text, 'Beware, animals have been killed for this product,' I can imagine a gradual cultural shift," Post said. "Of course, we still have a long way to go to make a product that is even remotely competitive with current products.'"

The article brings up a lot of good points about how cloned meat -- chicken, beef, etc. -- would reduce CO2 levels and feed the hungry.  It's worth reading, if not totally...consuming.

How would YOU market cloned beef?  Would any argument convince you to eat cloned human meat?

Why We Came Together for Y2K But Fall Apart on Climate Change

Farhad Majoo has concluded his two-part look at the Y2K anniversary on Slate, and given its study of how one vision of the future was widely believed and stopped, and another is mostly believed and MIGHT be stopped, it's worth careful study. Snip:

"Davison says the most important difference between Y2K and global warming is the cultural attitude surrounding each case. Y2K never became a moral issue. "It was always framed as a simple design error," Davison says—nobody fingered it as the consequence of our reliance on digital technology or argued that the way to get out of this mess was to get rid of computers. The debate over climate change, meanwhile, has always been as much a social and political argument as a scientific one. "Climate change brings into view questions about modern society in general," the Australian scientist says. It's not just a question of what fuel we should use to power the planet—there are questions about where we should live, what we should eat, how we should travel. "It's become a general debate over modernity itself," Davison says."

How the Human Side of Twitter can Backfire for Public Companies

Gene Marbach, Makovsky colleague and author of the IRThereforeIAM investor relations blog, has a great post today on how corporate efforts to express a personality on mediums like Twitter can fuel rumors.  This isn't to say you shouldn't express the human side via Twitter -- in fact, it's one of the biggest benefits social media offers to publicly traded companies -- just that you need to have an investor relations filter along with the customer, regulatory, employee and other filters in place when you use these powerful tools. Snip:

"People can tweet about the most inane and trivial matters; however, seemingly innocuous information can lead to rampant rumor-mongering. As CEOs tend to hang out with other CEOs, mentioning a social lunch date could lead to speculation about a merger between the companies. A visit to a doctor can touch off speculation about an illness."

Read the full post here.

We're Just 10 Years Away from 16-Hour Workweek Says 1967 Article

The Paleofuture blog has dug up another retro-future gem of an article.  This one, from the Gastonia Gazette, quotes a very worried man who wonders, "There is reason to fear, as some do, that free time, forced free time, will bring on the restless tick of boredom, idleness, immorality, and increased personal violence."

Such worries frequently accompany articles about the future, with the utopians saying new technologies will lead to a paradise with no work to do, with dystopians saying it will lead to more vice.  Looks like we have just 10 years left to figure out a solution.

Why US Education Embraced Science, Then Humanities in 20th Century

In his argument that U.S. education needs to focus on both the sciences and humanities, Alan Brinkley of Columbia neatly summarizes how we embraced science at the start of the 20th century, only to turn to the humanities when it failed to fix -- well.. us. 

"In the heady progressive years of the early 20th century, few things were more alluring than the promise of scientific knowledge. In a world struggling with rapid industrialization, massive immigration, and chaotic urban growth, science and technology seemed to offer solutions to almost every problem...Many Americans came to believe that scientific certainty could solve not only scientific problems, but could also reform politics, government, and business. Two world wars and a Great Depression rocked the confidence of many people that scientific expertise alone could create a prosperous and ordered world. In the aftermath of World War II, the academic world turned with new enthusiasm to humanistic studies, which seemed to many scholars the best way to ensure the survival of democracy and to resist tyranny."

Read the full article from Newsweek here.

Check out past posts on the oscillation between utopian/dystopian visions of the future here, here and here.

What Does a Real Scientific Controversy Look Like? - 10 Rules from Gary Herstein

One of the media's favorite news hooks is to cite a "scientific controversy."  It's an attention grabber because most people believe that science is set in stone, and that it's one of the few sectors of public life that's opinion-free.  Gary Herstein wrote a great post on the subject in July, and it's worth the full read.  Snip:

"Real scientific controversies casually require decades to play themselves out, and MSM journalists generally have neither the time nor the training to follow such play with the kind of nuance required to accurately portray them."

Mark Your Calendars: Dec 4 - The Biopolitics of Pop Culture

Basically, the only thing holding me back from this conference is that it's at the other end of the country, and my wife just let me go to one of the other ends of the country for the NASA Tweetup last week.  It's a cruel world...unless you can get to Irvine, CA for this fut-tastic event:

Biopolitics of Pop Culture

"Why is it that almost every person in fiction who wants to live a longer than normal life is evil or pays some terrible price? What does it say about attitudes towards posthuman possibilities when mutants in Heroes or the X-Men, or cyborgs in Battlestar Galactica or Iron Man, or vampires in True Blood or Twilight are depicted as capable of responsible citizenship?

Is Hollywood reflecting a transhuman turn in popular culture, helping us imagine a day when magical and muggle can live together in a peaceful Star Trek federation? Will the merging of pop culture, social networking and virtual reality into a heightened augmented reality encourage us all to make our lives a form of participative fiction?

During this day long seminar we will engage with culture critics, artists, writers, and filmmakers to explore the biopolitics that are implicit in depictions of emerging technology in literature, film and television."

Confirmed speakers include: Annalee Newitz of my favorite blog, io9.com, David Brin, the writer of the Tomorrow Happens blog, transhumanist leader Natasha Vita-More, space expert and futurist Alex Lightman, and nanotech futurist Mike Treder (check out his overview of nanotech risks here).

David Brooks on Americans' "Eschatological" Faith in the Future

What?  You don't know what the heck "Eschatological" means either?  Let's ask our friends at Wikipedia: 

"...a part of theology and philosophy concerned with what are believed to be the final events in the history of the world, or the ultimate destiny of humanity, commonly referred to as the end of the world.)

Snip:

"this eschatological faith in the future has motivated generations of Americans, just as religious faith motivates a missionary. Pioneers and immigrants endured hardship in the present because of their confidence in future plenty. Entrepreneurs start up companies with an exaggerated sense of their chances of success. The faith is the molten core of the country's dynamism...The anxiety in America is caused by the vague sense that they have what we're supposed to have. It's not the per capita income, which the Chinese may never have at our level. It's the sense of living with baubles just out of reach. It's the faith in the future, which is actually more important...And it becomes obvious by comparison [to China] just how far the U.S. has drifted from its normal future-centered orientation and how much this rankles. (Read the full column here.)

"Findability" Now the Primary Concern of Marketing - Jonathan Blank

Social media guru and Makovsky colleague Jonathan Blank has written a must-read post on his blog, b2bcoffeeshops.com, about the importance of "findability."  It was just recognized as one of the top five social media posts of the day by Sarah Evans, the moderator of #journchat.

Snip:

But today when you pick up that phone, stick on the stamp or press the send button, you do so knowing there are fewer people on the other end and those that are still there are probably ignoring you. Against this backdrop of outbound marketing getting less effective, findability has become the primary concern of the entire marketing department - business unit marketing, content marketing, public relations, search engine optimization...Focus your marketing on making your content more relevant and more extraordinary. Make it easily shareable. Use it as a response to the content of competitors. Yes, actually talk openly about how your conclusions compare to that of others. Take the time to Google your experts and see if their digital footprint matches up with their point of views. Are they easily found? Are they easily connected with? (Read full post here)

Let's Help Meghan and Garrett Find a Job by Thanksgiving!

I was walking out of Grand Central this morning and spotted two people handing out their resumes.  It's a tough job market, they explained, and this was their latest tactic.  They had come prepared:  both had a blown-up version of their resume on placards so people could read them from a distance. 

Meghan Carlson (carlson.meghanr (at) gmail.com), a recent grad from Fairfield University, holds a BS in Organizational Communication with a minor in marketing. Her senior thesis, "Judging a Book by its Cover, Clothing as Communication," was accepted to the 35th annual undergraduate DePauw Conference.  She's looking for something in advertising/marketing.  

 

Garrett Marqua (garrett.marqua (at) gmail.com), also just graduated from Farfield with a BS in Business Management.  He was an intern at UBS and served as Varsity Swim Team Captain.  Garrett is seeking a job in finance.  Here's his video resume.

Shuttle Launch: A Personal View from the Shore of the Earth

I’ll skip the poetry and just try and convey what went through my mind through the launch. 

 

The shuttle jumps so quickly from the ground.  The flames coming out the back. A rainbow made of fire. No. A fire made of rainbow.  Doesn’t make sense, but that’s what it really looks like.  There’s a full spectrum of reds.  Isn't it supposed to be white and bright?  What is this?  Burnt maroons, hot yellows in streaks, just like a cartoon rainbow.  It has texture like rough sandpaper. It’s SO bright.  I shouldn’t be looking at this.  No one should be looking at something this bright.  Am I blind? I tried to look away for a second to see if I could still see.  Couldn’t move my eyes away.  Must not be blind yet.  Who cares. Wow. The fire was long and wide.  And it isn't shooting out and stuttering back, but stayed consistent.

 

At the same time, there are the sounds.  You know that moment at the campfire, when some old, dry knot of wood expands and bursts with a crack?  It was like that, except instead of sticks it’s building-sized redwood tree trunks cracking over and over.  Some of the sounds were small, and they tapped my eardrums.  The bigger ones gently puffed against my face and neck.  There’s no pattern to it; no match-up to the shape of the fire.  

 

As the rocket turns away, the shape of the flames changed from a streak to a dot.  Like the world’s biggest star falling in reverse.  A crazy thought went through my head to make a wish; some old instinct misfiring.  It’s not wishing time, but it’s time to try and relate this to something else I know.   My newborn son comes into my mind.  I thought about how he makes me feel, and how he’ll feel when he sees one of these one day.

 

The depth of the dot changes quickly, moving away.  I suddenly remember there are people on-board and feel a flash of fear, study the bright dot and make sure that nothing was going wrong.  I remember the story Mike Massimino told us yesterday. How it’s a like a beast grabbing you, pulling you into the sky, and you just hope it knows where it’s going.  I say a quick prayer for their safety. 

 

The dot disappears behind the clouds and I look down to the water, to the shore, and back up to the contrail...clouds that man, not nature, has made.  

It's Not the Shuttle Launch that Makes NASA's Tweetup a Success - It's the Right Topic + Right People

Given some stereotypes of social media users (I just told a reporter from the German Press Agency that the Star Trek ones are true :) ) this group is not a bunch of people who prefer to stare at their iPhones instead of making eye contact.  In fact, their most defining characteristic is the ability to have a great conversation.  They're interesting and interested.  Their hyper sharing online translates into hyper helpfulness offline.  And given the friendly nature of the technical social channels, there's much more of a "we're all in this together" feel than you would find at a space-focused industry conference.  So this tweetup, far from comprised of 100 geeks who can fill out an online form really fast, is a precision filter for knowledgeable, passionate and uber-information sharing members of the new media. 

And since EVERY company works in a sector where people are passionate about its ideas, ANY company can enjoy similar success with atweetup.  No space shuttle required.

Forget the Shuttle Launch: Real Story is Collission of Traditional and Social Media

I thought I was attending this Tweetup to cover the shuttle launch.  But I've found a better story:  the real-time collision of traditional and social media spheres.  Consider that we've got 101 Tweeters in their own media tent right next to the CBS and NBC buildings.  There's a FOX News van parked outside.  Journalists and twitterers are both eating the same gross hot dogs at the roach coach; no velvet line separating the two.    

Some reporters have popped in to do segments, and the neat thing is we're doing segments on THEM, as they do segments on US!  We're a spectacle, they're spectacle, and whichever flavor the audience -- all of you out there -- want, can be had with a click. 

I've interviewed four journalists and six tweeps so far today and learned two things:

1. Journos are clearly nervous about the state of journalism, but they don't see social channels as a threat.  Rather, they want in on what WE'RE doing.  They love the enthusiasm; one clearly wished she could adopt our pro-romantic approach instead of sticking to the ethically required staid style. Another fully believes social coverage enhances interest in the topics that they're covering in different ways.

2. In the new media ecosystem, trust is the coin of the realm.  That trust can be achieved BOTH by professional journalists, who follow an ethical code of non-bias, bring wisdom and perspective to events, and have a track record of not distributing bad information.  Subject matter experts can also build up and bank trust, either because they've studied something for a while or because they have real-time access (like the protesters in Iran).  There will always be a market for valuable information, and trusted sources are an irreplaceable part of that market. So there's an economically sound argument for the co-existence of traditional and social.  Of course, as Murdoch once noted, it'll probably take a painful decade to fully work itself out.

Ok, back to the shuttle launch.  You didn't forget, did you?  There's 500,000 pounds of liquid hydrogen and oxygen that's about to ignite and send six people into space!

What Does a Shuttle Launch Look like from a Plane?

different view

Space Art & Public Opinion: An Interview with Jim Plaxco

Sure, ISS research may cure diseases, but when it comes to selling space, it's the visuals that win the public's heart.  On a day when our tweetup is going to be tweated (err, treated) to a sensory feast, I figured it would be interesting to ask a space artist about how imagined views of space influence public opinion and what responsibilities space artists feel they have in selling visions of tomorrow.

Jim Plaxco, a digital artist who specializes in space, astronomical, abstract and algorithmic art, kindly stepped up to the plate.  Most recently, Jim's work has appeared on the cover of Mars Quarterly, and, for the second year in a row, he's served as a judge for NASA's "Life and Work on the Moon" art contest.  Here's his blog and gallery.

How do you think space art influences society's views on space, and the value of exploring it?

It influences the public's opinion by providing visions of what could be. People living and working on the Moon are 21st century explorers. I think that the idea of going where no man has gone before and establishing a human presence appeals to something basic in human nature. 

 

Was there a single moment early in your life when you became hooked on space? And art?
My father died when I was very young. One of the few memories I have of him, and my first memory of space, was when he took me out in our back yard and showed me the Echo 2 satellite as it was passing overhead. That, science fiction, and my fascination with the space program got me hooked on space exploration early on.

I think that the origins of my interest in art can be traced back to my interests in space. I would read books about our future in space and would be captivated by the artwork that illustrated what it would look like to live and work on this new frontier.

How you conceptualize places that haven't been seen in-person or a future that may or may not happen? (like our return the moon or travel to other planets)

Conceptualization depends on what I am setting out to accomplish. I break astronomical and space art into two categories. The first would be the school of realism in which the art you create adheres to the known principles of science and engineering. The second category would be that of anti-realism where science plays no role in the creation of the artwork but imagination is everything. Discarding science, I am free to use my imagination to conceptualize whatever types of worlds I want.

 

Do space artists have a professional code that they follow in terms of how realistic their work needs to be, or are there widely held beliefs about their responsibilities to the public in doing their work?
Traditionally because so much of the demand for space art is for use as illustration for educational materials and science related publications, space artists have prided themselves on using their knowledge of geology, planetary science, and even physics, as the foundation for their artwork. It's a drive to paint a scene that no one has ever seen so that if that place is ever visited, that visitor will say "wow, he got it right."

So many space artists recognize Chesley Bonestell as an inspiration. What is it that separates his work from others? What other artists have inspired you?

For Bonestell, it was timing, imagination, vision, composition, and believability. Looking at a Bonestell painting one could imagine that Chesley had a time and space machine that allowed him to travel to the future on other worlds, photograph what he saw, and present it to us as a painting.

For the most part I've been inspired by non-space artists. Artists of the Hudson River Valley School, J M W Turner, and M C Escher. With respect to space art in addition to Chesley Bonestell, I'd say Pat Rawlings and Lucien Rudaux. In the field of science fiction I would add John Harris and John Berkey.

Can you tell us the story behind a work you're particularly proud of? Perhaps your thinking behind Quantum Moon?

I was reading How To Read A Modern Painting which discusses the painting A Sunday on La Grande Jatte by Seurat  - a painting I've viewed a number of times at the Chicago Art Institute. I was fascinated with the pointillist technique and wanted to experiment with a digital derivative of my own. Quantum Moon was a product of that experimentation.