The Salt Lake City-based Complete XRM did not disclose the financial terms of the deal.
Fanatic Software, founded in 1997, develops mobile and Mac applications. Its flagship product is the Pocket Informant Mac, iOS and Android productivity apps. It has more than four million app downloads during its 17 year history, according to a news release.
“Fanatic Software has built an excellent reputation with its products, and we have tremendous respect for the community of users that support Informant,” Keith Norris, CEO of Complete XRM, said in a news release. “We are on a mission to drive and define the Culture of Productivity with our PlanPlus brand. Pocket Informant is one of the best and most loved personal productivity tools on the market. We’re excited to bring these two businesses with common purpose under one roof so that customers of both can benefit from the complementary capabilities that will be coming to each of their product brands.”
Complete XRM plans to keep the Fanatic Software team intact, according to a news release.
“We had been looking to expand our vision for our flagship product Informant by offering more support for Android, Windows, and web platforms,” Alex Kac, developer and CEO of Fanatic Software, said in a news release. “By joining with Complete XRM we can now offer more collaborative, sync, and business features to Informant as well.”
OutboundEngine, which makes an online marketing platform for small business owners, on Monday announced it has completed its acquisition of Toronto-based ReadyChat, a web-based live chat service for real estate and mortgage companies.
OutboundEngine acquired ReadyChat in December of 2015. But the company remained in stealth mode until now. OutboundEngine focuses on real estate, mortgage and insurance companies and ReadyChat was a great fit for its platform, according to a news release.
“ReadyChat is a great acquisition for OutboundEngine because it shares our mission of making online marketing easy and effective for businesses of all sizes,” Branndon Stewart, Founder and CEO of OutboundEngine said in a news statement.
OutboundEngine now offers customers the chance to get their own branded chat widget tailored to that company’s brand. It integrates with platforms such as Boston Logic, Tribus and BoomTown.
“Many businesses don’t have the time or interest to manage chat capabilities on their websites, including real estate and mortgage brokers,” Deepak Surana, Vice President of Product at OutboundEngine. “The acquisition of ReadyChat’s technology will improve users’ ability to establish relationships with prospects, serve existing clients and ultimately close more deals.”
OutboundEngine, founded in 2012, creates marketing products that help companies grow. Its software as a service platform automates email marketing, social media posting, online reviews and more for more than 10,000 customers.
John Erskine, vice president of publishing at Cloud Imperium Games. Photo by Hojun Choi.
By HOJUN CHOI
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Managing expectations for projects that have been crowdfunded can often pose as large hurdles for innovators whose creations depend on the support of a faithful and engaged community.
“Managing people’s expectations on how long it’s going to take to build and launch is probably the hardest part about crowdfunding, because you’re selling your vision before your product,” said John Erskine, vice president of publishing at Cloud Imperium Games.
Erskine who took part in a South by Southwest panel titled, “The Star Citizen Community: A Crowdfunded Success Story,” said projects can benefit from putting extra effort into building a community around their product development.
“Open development is really about sharing content, engaging with your community and using the community to continue building the game,” Erskine said.
Developers from the studio, which has now raised more than $145 million through crowdfunding, told South by Southwest festival goers that the hype surrounding the project needs to be nurtured through transparency.
“We share the good things as well as the bad things. There are a lot of ‘ups-and-downs’ when developing a creative project like this,” Erskine said.
Because of its non-traditional funding structure, Erskine said developers of the game have more freedom to address ways that it can serve its audience.
He said more than 1.6 million people have engaged with their feature product, which has led to more than 4.5 million posts on the game’s official forum.
“The goal is to incorporate this feedback so that the next time we share something, it’s a little bit closer to what people are interested in,” Erskine said.
Tyler Witkin, the company’s lead community manager, said a major goal of the studio is to maintain interest in their product through consistent updates on progress. He currently aids the production of weekly videos and monthly progress updates.
Recently, Witkin said developers have also decided to share internal production schedules with the community to show the delays and successes of the company in greater detail.
“It could be easily misportrayed by someone who does not have an interest in understanding the game development process, but it’s a decision we made because we felt like we just wanted to put it all out there,” Witkin said.
Witkin said the company will continue investing in new ways to create content for their community in addition to the efforts that are already being put towards social media and online forums.
Though the game is still in development, the studio has been releasing playable content to test servers since August 2013. Those interested in public testing can get early access through purchasing “packages” on the studio’s official website.
Last year, the studio also began testing its “Evocati Test Flight,” a closed testing server that allows players to try out game mechanics before new updates are released to public testing servers.
Those granted early access to the new closed server are required to sign non-disclosure agreements, and are encouraged to share their thoughts and comments on forums.
Eric Green and Marissa Meissner, whose responsibilities revolve around player support and feedback, said online interactions have already helped developers improve the game.
Through an online forum called the “Issue Council,” Meissner said the game’s online community can communicate their concerns in a way that was useful to developers. The platform allows players to vote for threads they think are important, which helps the company identify credible problems.
“I don’t know any developers necessarily thrilled to hear about more bugs, but they do appreciate getting to spot them faster,” Meissner said.
Austin is home to one of Cloud Imperium Games’ four office locations. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles, and also has locations in Germany and the United Kingdom.
The panel took place at the Austin Convention Center on Saturday, the last official day of the SXSW gaming conference. This year was the first time that the conference was marketed as its own segment of the festival.
People without badges could attend conference events with wristbands that cost between $25 and $49.
Day-passes for the conferences were also provided to participants of the “cosplay” contest, which took place Thursday. Children under the age of 12 were also given free admission to the gaming conference, which featured exhibits, guest speaker panels and tournaments.
Correction: this article has been updated to clarify the status of the company’s “Evocati Test Flight” system.
Afghan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob, photo by Susan Lahey
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
The first time Afghan entrepreneur Roya Mahboob saw the internet, it changed her life. She lived, she said in a “predefined reality.” “We live in a dark place we only see what the family chooses for us. We only hear what people say about the West.” But the internet opened her eyes to the reality that there was a whole world outside the one she lived in. Now Mahboob, founder of the Digital Citizen Fund, and activists from other authoritarian regimes, are looking for tech savvy people who can help them use information to break open their dark worlds and liberate the people who live in them.
Mahboob was part of a SXSW Panel called The Real Information Revolution with Cuban activist Rosa Maria Payá, Syrian activist Abdalaziz Alhamza, Eritrean activist Meron Estefanos, and Human Rights Foundation founder Thor Halvorssen.
All of the activists use technology to spread their messages and all need help from web developers, game developers, cybersecurity experts, programmers and more who are willing to volunteer their skills to teach students, create websites and games and create protected information networks—to hack for freedom.
Mahboob, listed on Time magazine’s 2013 list of 100 Most Influential People founded Afghan Citadel Software Co., an IT consulting firm in 2010. Most of her employees are women who develop software and databases for private and public organizations. Because of death threats from the Taliban, she no longer lives in Afghanistan but still runs an organization teaching girls and women to code.
SXSW Panel: The Real Information Revolution, photo by Susan Lahey
Payá’s father Oswaldo Payá was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for his fight to free Cuba from one party rule before he was killed in 2012. She is fighting for a plebiscite under cubadecide.com to let Cubans vote for a change in the Cuban constitution which keeps the Castro family and party in control.
Alhamza is a journalist and founder of the group Raqqa is Being Slaughtered Silently which reports on the attacks of Syrian president Bashar Al-Assad and Isis on the civilians of Syria. Many of his friends and colleagues have been killed for their efforts.
Estefanos is from Eritrea, Africa and has helped to save more than 16,000 refugees trying to flee that country—known as the “North Korea of Africa” for its gross violation of human rights. Eritrea, she said, has a “shoot to kill” policy at the border. Those fleeing have a 50 percent chance of making it out alive. Those who escape have a 50 percent chance of being kidnapped and made slaves. Though she now lives in Stockholm, Sweden, her phone is a hotline all summer for refugees, many of whom try to escape via the Mediterranean Sea and who must be rescued when their boats begin to sink.
Using Tech for Freedom
The regimes of these countries perpetrate the idea that any efforts to introduce free elections or cultural or religious choice are acting as imperialists, disrespecting the sovereignty and culture of other nations. The activists say that’s simply a tactic to maintain authoritarian control. People may still choose to live as they do under the authoritarian regimes—but they need to be able to choose. The number of people living without freedom, according to the Human Rights Foundation, is nearly four billion. That dwarfs the numbers suffering from extreme poverty or lack of drinking water, both around 800 million.
In many cases the oppressive governments initially painted themselves as liberators—as did Cuba’s Fidel Castro and the government of Eritrea. Then, said Payá, they turn into oppressors “Because there are not institutions. They are always against real institutions. Independent civil society. Tech is transversal…we need to use technology to spread the word. We need security for our website. Our government has hackers who always try to bring it down. We need help with new and innovative ideas for spreading information where being online is not an option—from cellphone to cellphone. We also need help to get to influencers through social media.”
Halvorssen said many of the activist groups they work with use FireChat, which can be used without internet, Protonmail, and Wickr. But they have other unique needs. Estefanos, who said she can most easily be reached through Twitter @meronina, said she thought it would be helpful for people to have a game to understand how hard it is to seek freedom in a place like Eritrea. Mahboob is looking for developers and others who could teach the thousands of girls and young women who have signed up to learn to code, build websites and pursue other tech skills. Those teachers could either go to Afghanistan or manage the classes remotely. They also need laptops and will happily take second-hand ones.
But for all the activists, an important key is that people understand what it is to lack freedom. Payá responded to the common American narrative that they want to get to Cuba “before it is spoiled.”
“That’s racism,” she said. “They want to see the monkeys in the zoo before they’re globalized.”
In the U.S., the current administration has begun attacks on the media and on the kinds of institutions that preserve the rights of citizens against authoritarian leadership. But, as Halvorssen pointed out, it’s a far cry from what these countries face.
“When someone overextends executive power, a judge stands up and says, ‘Oh no you don’t.’ When we turn on late night TV we see people making fun of those in power with abandon. They’re not being arrested. They’re not being taken away in the middle of the night. I like the idea that people in America are waking up.”
SXSW podcast advertising panel, photo by Todd Nevins.
By TODD NEVINS
Special contribution to Silicon Hills News
SXSW Interactive was packed full of sessions and panels on the exponential growth of the podcast industry as well as meet ups and live podcast performances from local and global shows.
Once the basics were covered in each of these panels like, “How do you start a show and grow an audience?”, the conversations quickly focused on monetization. This was covered extensively by a few industry veterans and their message was extremely optimistic for this burgeoning industry.
The Evolution of Podcast Advertising was a packed panel moderated by Nick Quah, Founder and Publisher of Hot Pod Media, LLC which is a leading news source in the on-demand audio industry.
The tone of the discussion was that of incredible opportunity in an emerging market that has catapulted over the tipping point referring to the percentage of people ‘familiar with the term “podcasting’’’ that topped 55 percent (155 million people) in 2016 compared to 22 percent in 2006.
It’s not just familiarity with the term, but listener growth has skyrocketed in the last 10 years. In 2016, 36 percent of the U.S. population had listened to a podcast, which is 98 million people and 21 percent reported that they listened to at least one podcast episode per month.
With this tipping point comes advertising budgets from large corporations moving the ad spend from radio over to podcasts.
Sarah Van Mosel, Chief Podcast Sales and Strategy Officer for Market Enginuity points to a few specific metrics that are driving ad dollars to podcasts:
1. Authenticity
2. Transparency
3. Deep audience engagement
In addition, Van Mosel says that listening on-demand creates more habitual listening in a person’s daily life.
The most encouraging numbers came from Matt Leiber of Gimlet Media and confirmed by Matt Turck of Panoply. Lieber made his name hosting the StartUp Podcast, which is a transparent look into how he started his podcast network, Gimlet Media. Lieber projects that podcast ad spends will triple from 2016 to 2020.
Podcast Ad Spend Projections from 2016 to 2020
2016 = $167 million
2017 = $264 million (projected)
2020 = $500 million (projected)
These dollars pale in comparison to the ad money spent in the radio industry in 2016 alone:
Radio Advertising for 2016
2016 radio ad spend was $17.8 BILLION
80 percent of the ad dollars were focused in local markets only
Average of $10 per 100 hours for radio ads compared to $2 per 100 hours for podcast ads.
The final trend pointing to greater ad spend in the podcast industry is renewal rates from existing customers’ advertising campaigns. Gimlet Media is trending at over a 90 percent advertising renewal rate from their existing customers.
Companies aren’t just spending more on advertising in the podcast industry, they are creating their own podcasts to advance their brands mirroring what they’ve done previously with video and written content marketing.
Monetization is the key to sustaining and growing a successful show. Based on reports from SXSW 2017, the industry is a solid media play for entrepreneurs wanting to market their startup and for corporations growing their brand and customer base.
The SX vibe solidifies that podcasting is a sky rocketing industry that’s not about to touch down anytime soon.
Article written by Todd Nevins, Host of the Go Hunt Life podcast and Founder of digital marketing agency CLICKPlacement headquartered in Austin, TX.
Pakistan is working hard to grow a tech ecosystem, and this week signed agreements both with the City of Austin and Capital Factory to further those efforts. A Memorandum of Understanding between the City of Austin and the City of Lahore was signed by Mayor Adler and Dr. Umar Saif, chairman of the Punjab Information Technology Board, (PITB) designating the two cities as Sci-ence Cities. The MoU was signed during SXSW.
This follows an agreement launched by “Global Entrepreneurship Evangelist” Alicia Dean with the U.S. State Department that awarded the City of Austin a grant to connect the community of entre-preneurs and investors in the Austin to those in Pakistan. The Greater Austin Asian Chamber of Commerce will be managing the Austin based activities of the grant. In addition, Nabeel Qadeer, director of entrepreneurship, and enterprise development, PITB has signed another MoU with Capital Factory’s Touchdown Austin program to launch a Global Market Access Program (GMAP) for Pakistani startups.
The Global Market Access Program (GMAP) is a three – phase business acceleration program designed to rapidly and strategically assist foreign technology companies entering the U.S market with the least amount of risk. It will include an in-country bootcamp and a follow up US itinerary for select startups to ready Pakistani startups launch successfully within the U.S.
These agreements are planned to spur several levels of cooperation between the cities as well as between Capital Factory and Plan9. Every six months, a cohort of 5-to-7 startups from Pakistan will spend three weeks at Capital Factory receiving mentorship from Gordon Daugherty and oth-ers in everything from monetization to pitching. Austin companies will also be invited to spend time at Plan9 Incubator in Lahore learning about expanding entrepreneurial opportunities in Asia and in particular Pakistan.
Qadeer said the relationship between Austin and Pakistan makes sense because of the cultures.
“This is the landing pad that is closer to how we operate,” said Qadeer. “It may not be as ‘cool’ as the valley but coolness is only going to get you so far…we feel we can adapt to the Austin culture, as opposed to so much plastic.”
Austin’s focus on enterprise software, for example, is more about getting work done, which aligns more closely with the Pakistani approach, he said. And while Pakistan startups are currently ex-perimenting with many kinds of innovations and business models, they’re particularly strong in e-commerce which is an area where he feels Austin can excel. But he acknowledged that also relies on getting other areas right, like fintech.
Entrepreneurship for Change
Pakistan has had some outspoken advocates for an entrepreneurial ecosystem including Dr. Saif who, according to Faizan Mahmood, assistant program manager for Plan9, told the government he wanted to start an entrepreneurship program but would not follow the typical bureaucratic rules for government programs. Since Plan9 launched in 2012, many other incubators and accelerators have grown up around it. More than 60 percent of the population of Pakistan is under 30, and while most have been trained to be employees rather than entrepreneurs, the interest in entrepre-neurship is huge.
But because entrepreneurship is so new, it’s difficult to get private investment. Many industrialist families own everything, Mahmood said: factories, banks, resorts, dairy farms and more. If they take an interest in a startup, their natural inclination is to buy it, not invest in it. Plus, the stock market is leading the Asian markets with huge returns, making investments in startups far less attractive. Qadeer plans to up the interest by launching a Pakistani version of Shark Tank.
“My goal is to bring a social change,” he said. “We don’t have a Mark Cuban. Who people are in-spired by does not come from a business perspective.” Consequently, he hopes to make entre-preneurship as exciting and accepted in Pakistan as it is in the U.S.
Another change that is likely to come from the entrepreneurial efforts is a greater involvement from women. Currently, Mahmood said, Pakistan is the third largest country for freelancers. Plan9 has a program—Herself—to help equip women with skills to compete as business owners both as founders and freelancers. The organization’s website points out that women struggle to be taken seriously by investors and to get funding, but that their tendency toward collaborative leadership has proven more effective and profitable than the leadership styles of their male counterparts.
This anthology written by some of Austin’s best artists came together via a social collaboration platform built by Weeva, a Capital Factory startup that creates custom books.
Weeva founder and CEO Kim Gorsuch was curious: What makes Austin’s musicians tick? Why do they make music? What inspires them?
To find out, Gorsuch decided to ask them. She hired Carley Wolf, guitarist and frontwoman for the Ghost Wolves, to curate the project. They invited local musicians to answer a few questions and to upload their writing and photos to Weeva’s online platform. Then Weeva’s editors and designers got to work.
The result is an inside look at the Austin music scene from musicians telling their own stories and offering insight into the creative journey and the music business.
Gorsuch will tell the book’s story at the SXSW Interactive panel The Power of Crowd-Sourced Storytelling & Publishing on Thursday, March 16, at 3:30 pm. Joining her will be Carley Wolf, Rudy Garza of G51 Amplify, and Beka Nicholoas of High Brew Coffee, who worked with Weeva to create a book celebrating High Brew’s company culture and history.
To celebrate “Seduced by Sound: Austin,” Weeva hosted a party this week featuring bands and artists who contributed to the book, including Shinyribs, the Ghost Wolves, Walker Lukens, Annabelle Chairlegs, Nathan Edge, Tee-Double, John Evans Band and Justin Wade Thompson. The party took place Wednesday at The Townsend, 718 Congress. A portion of the proceeds from the sale of the books will go to the Health Alliance for Austin Musicians (HAAM), which provides access to affordable healthcare for the local music community.
Rahul Koduri, CEO and co-founder of EORA 3-D, which won Australia’s pitch competition for best business at SXSW.
Australia showed off its tech industry in a major way at South by Southwest Interactive 2017.
And the country’s tech startups performed well, said Patrick Hanlon, Trade and Investment Commissioner and Deputy Consul General in the Houston Australian Consulate-General. The Australian Trade and Investment Commission, known as Austrade, led the Australian events at SXSW.
Sounds Scouts, based in Sydney, Australia, won the SXSW Accelerator pitch competition in the Health and Wearables category.
The company created a game that is designed to test the hearing of children just starting school. It’s an accessible and low cost hearing test.
And on Monday, Australia held its first SXSW software and hardware pitch competition. Seven tech startups from Australia gave three minute pitches and then answered questions from a panel of judges. In the end, EORA 3D, which makes a high precision 3D Scanner powered by a smartphone, won for best business.
Rahul Koduri, CEO and co-founder of EORA 3-D, said the company is entirely bootstrapped. In 2015, the company raised nearly $600,000, far exceeding its $80,000 goal to launch the product. To date, the company has sold more than 4,500 units at $300 and is talks with major customers in heavy manufacturing, forensics and more, Koduri said. It already has customers in more than 60 countries that are using the scanner to digitize models for a variety of uses including 3D printing and industrial design.
The device is a fast and easy way to capture objects and surfaces accurately in 3D. Competing scanners cost anywhere from $18,000 to $100,000, Koduri said.
“The scanner works by projecting a green laser across an object and utilizing the smartphone’s camera and processor to study the distortion of the laser line and reconstruct a 3D model, that is accurate to sub-100 microns in under 10 seconds,” according to the company.
EORA-3D recently received Popular Science’s Invention of the Year for 2016 award.
Another startup, Quizling, based in Canberra, Australia, is a quiz platform where anyone can create, play and share quizzes. It won the pitch competition for best pitch.
Winners of the Australia pitch competition at SXSW.
Last week, Quizling presented in the SXSWedu Launch competition. School teachers Dion Oxley and Damien Trask founded the company in July 2014. The company has created quizzes for museums, galleries and libraries to make learning fun and easy for kids.
Its key partners include the National Gallery of Australia, The Royal Australian Mint, National Library of Australia and Inspiring Australia, a technology advocacy organization.
The other startups included Quitch, an educational technology company. Grainne Oates, a professor, started the company to engage students more in academic learning.
Linius Technologies, which makes video security and anti-piracy technology, is a public company based in Melbourne, Australia. It has a patented Video Virtualization Engine. Christopher Richardson is the CEO.
Jugglr, a mobile app that helps moms, created a platform for listing and getting paid for services. The platform also features a business affiliate program enabling local businesses and organizations of all sizes to have presence in Jugglr to market to moms. It is currently operating in Australia with plans to expand globally starting with North America and the UK. Elio Adragna is one of the founders.
Intelligent Security Integration Australia, which has been in business for 15 years, just launched its Mobile CCTV Command Center. It can be configured with customized video surveillance applications. It is marketing the product to government agencies, disaster management agencies, prisons, private security companies and others. Stephen Bell is the founder and CEO.
Artlivemedia, an enterprise search specialist agency, based in Minneapolis and Melbourne, Australia with 15 employees, specializes in Search Engine Optimization. It has worked with major companies including Cisco, Officemax and OfficeDepot, as well as Australian companies including Telstra, Henley, CGU and Tennis Australia. Michelle Bourke is the CEO and founder.
Editor’s note: Australia is an advertiser with Silicon Hills News
Driverless car panel at SXSW with Don Civgin, Allstate, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, Chandra Bhat, UT’s director for the Center for Transportation Research, and Fast Company’s Neal Ungerleider. Photo by Susan Lahey.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Reporter with Silicon Hills News
No one knows precisely when driverless cars will become the norm in the U.S. but the speakers at a SXSW panel on the future of transportation can say they will impact society in myriad ways.
For example, the federal government collects more than $50 billion in taxes from automobile ownership, but with driverless cars providing public transport that may plummet. It will impact police stations where half the calls that come in are from traffic accidents. It will impact insurance companies who currently cover drivers, rather than manufacturers. It will impact cities planning roads, traffic, and parking. And it will impact people who don’t realize the huge role that transportation plays in how they live their lives and spend their money.
The Tuesday panel, sponsored by Allstate Insurance, featured Don Civgin, Allstate’s president of emerging businesses, former U.S. Secretary of Transportation Anthony Foxx, Chandra Bhat, UT’s director for the Center for Transportation Research, and was moderated by Fast Company’s Neal Ungerleider.
Civgin said there are more than 260 million automobiles in the U.S., most of which are only used four percent of the time. They cost a total of $3 trillion a year (in payments, insurance, fuel, parking, and maintenance) and 40,000 people died last year in automobile accidents.
“When I think about transportation it has three legs,” Civgin said. “The technology, the infrastructure, and human behavior.” Civgin noted that driverless cars were “rocket science” only seven years ago, and he thinks they’re going to be the norm much sooner than people currently expect.
Driving Social Change
But people need to consider how that will impact their lives. The current system was cobbled together over generations and doesn’t fit anyone’s idea of an efficient system for moving masses of people to different points. If people are shortsighted about driverless cars, similar mistakes could happen. For example, Civgin said, people might choose to move far outside the city because in a driverless car they can use their commute time to get things done. But that ignores the impact of the automobile on the environment. Foxx expressed concern that a move to driverless cars needed to consider accessibility issues. Having a four-door sedan pull up to pick up someone in a wheelchair, for example, wouldn’t work. Also, for many people who currently use taxis or rideshares, the interaction with the driver may be their only encounter with people of a different culture or socioeconomic status.
In addition, there are the typical questions about tech: whether people want data collected on where they’re going and whether the driverless car systems are vulnerable to cyberattack. But for all the risks, Civgin pointed out, 94 percent of auto accidents are caused by human error. He talked about watching an autonomous vehicle study at the University of Michigan where researchers were collecting data in a controlled environment. In an hour, they had only logged about a mile of actual driving time on which they were collecting data. But when he spoke to someone from Tesla, they informed him they were collecting data on more than a million miles a day.
“The players who are going to push this are not playing the traditional way,” Civgin said. But while the news gets up in arms about one driverless car accident, he said, we forget that we’re beginning with 40,000 deaths annually. If driverless cars could halve that, it would be a major success.
As we move into the era of driverless cars, the panelists all agreed, it’s important to think not just in terms of the next step in transportation but in the role transportation plays in our lives, how we plot our days and activities, and the impact of that on others and the environment.
“We need to broad our discussion,” Bhat said, “into a bigger picture of society and what we want it to be.”
By LAURA LOREK
Publisher and Reporter with Silicon Hills News
Buzz Aldrin, photo courtesy of SXSW
Buzz Aldrin, one of the first two men to set foot on the moon, thinks that should be a stop on the journey to Mars and the U.S. should occupy the red planet.
Aldrin participated in a featured session at South by Southwest Film on Tuesday with Time Magazine Editor-at-large Jeffrey Kluger, who just completed writing the book, Apollo 8, on the first manned mission to reach the moon, orbit it and return to earth safely.
Cycling Pathways to Mars, courtesy photo.
Aldrin, astronaut on Gemini 12 and Apollo 11 missions, was at the festival to premiere with 8i, a holographic technology company, and Time’s Life VR “Buzz Aldrin: Cycling Pathways to Mars, a virtual realty film featuring Aldrin’s hologram on a journey through space.
He wanted to do the project to share his plans with the world to create a human settlement on Mars. During the panel, they showed a trailer for the VR project, which features a photorealistic 3D hologram of Aldrin. It will be distributed across multiple VR platforms on Friday.
During the rest of the talk, Kluger asked Aldrin about his plans for space exploration and colonizing Mars and his experience as an astronaut and space pioneer.
Kluger asked Aldrin why he is critical of what he calls the “flags and footprints” model of exploring space and what are its limitations.
“It means that as a nation, we don’t care too much about the science, or the geology or how long you’re going to stay or what you’re going to eat, we just want you to go there and put a flag down,” Aldrin said. “It symbolizes an expedition. That’s not the way we want to venture outward at all. It’s kind of a degrading term. We don’t want any more of this flags and footprints.”
Instead, the plan is to go to Mars and stay there for five, seven or ten years and to continually occupy the planet and build a permanent settlement there, Aldrin said.
“The moon enables us to go to Mars,” Aldrin said. “It’s essential. It’s almost mandatory in my way of thinking. The base we want at Mars. We will design and place it on the moon.”
The moon will become a landing and refueling stop on the way to Mars as part of a multiple-step approach, Aldrin said. A spaceship would also continuously travel back and forth from Mars to Earth. The U.S. would design the moon station with participation from Europe, Russia, Japan and China, Aldrin said. He is already talking about these plans with the Chinese and Russians at the Buzz Aldrin Institute at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. He also serves as chancellor of the International Space University in Strasbourg, France.
During the talk, Aldrin recounted how the first person to propose going to Mars was President John F. Kennedy in April of 1961. He met with NASA officials at NASA headquarters and told them “we got to really boost our technology. I think we should go to Mars.” NASA officials told him that was beyond their capabilities but that maybe they could get to the moon in 15 years. They beat that goal and did it in a decade, Aldrin said.
On July 20th, 2019, it will be the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing and that would be a good time for the President to announce plans for the U.S. in two decades to lead international crews to occupy Mars, Aldrin said.
“Our purpose I believe is to settle the planet Mars,” he said. “And I think that should be our objective. We’re not going to sell the American people, certainly we’re not going to sell the government on that right away. But if we occupy, then we’ve got several years to fine tune that.”
Twelve years ago, NASA landed Spirit and Opportunity rovers on opposite sides of Mars. Spirit quit after five years and Opportunity is still working, Aldrin said.
“In five years, with both of them moving around, what they accomplished could have been done in one week if we had human intelligence around Mars,” he said.
The permanently shaded regions of Mars are where the ice is and that is where the source of hydrogen and oxygen is and NASA can use that to refuel spacecraft, Aldrin said.
Today, NASA’s budget is just shy of $20 billion, which is as much as it has been in several years, Kluger said.
“The budget in 1965, before we correct for inflation, was $7.5 billion, which would be just shy of $60 billion in today’s dollars,” he said. “NASA represented four percent of the U.S. budget in the sixties. It is now .04 percent. Do we have the wisdom to spend the money it takes to become a two-planet species?”
“The wisdom to spend the money,” Aldrin said. “That’s the first time I’ve heard that. It takes fiscal wisdom to do with the taxpayers’ money what we should be doing.”
The peak of NASA’s budget was the peak of the early Apollo missions, it was already on the decline by the time Aldrin and Astronaut Neil Armstrong went to the moon, he said.
For 10 to 15 years, it’s been a half a percent, Aldrin said.
NASA simply doesn’t get enough money to do what it needs to do, Aldrin said. The shuttle stopped flying in 2011 and the Orion spacecraft was supposed to take over. But it wasn’t ready.
“How do we get to our $100 billion space station?” Aldrin asked. “In a Russian space craft. And the price, as you expect, keeps going up.”
Commercial spacecraft and rockets felt they could replace the rocket that was not ready, Aldrin said.
SpaceX and Orbital Science have been delivering cargo. Within a year, SpaceX and Boeing are expected to deliver crew, Aldrin said.
“Without delivering crew to earth’s orbit, we’re not going anywhere,” he said. “That’s really worse than we were in April of 1961.”
“One of the reasons that we go to space is simply because we go because that’s what we as an idiosyncratic species do,” Kluger said. “It’s the same reason we write symphonies and we dance. None of that stuff keeps us alive but it’s all reasons we want to be alive in the first place. Do you feel there is a safe space for that sentiment or must it always be this is how we can benefit pragmatically, financially, technologically?”
“I had a speech writer help me out. He said We Explore or We Expire,” Aldrin said.
Aldrin also recounted a few stories from his time in space like when Astronaut Neil Armstrong left the capsule first feet first and then Aldrin. But he had to turn around and partially close the door to the capsule. He couldn’t close it all the way because there wasn’t a handle on the outside of the door and there would be no way to get back inside.
He also said when they were ready to return to earth, he had an “absurd” conversation with the mission command center in Houston.
They told him “Tranquility Base You’re cleared for takeoff.”
He answered: “Roger Houston, we’re number one on the runway.”
“Absurd,” Aldrin said. “We’re the only people up here. There’s no runway.”
Aldrin also advised the audience to train their brain to think outside the box.
“You have to expand your way of thinking, into not absurdities, not risky things, but better ways of doing things,” he said.
Fanatic Software, based in Cedar Park, now belongs to Complete XRM.
By SUSAN LAHEY
Special Contribution by LISA WYATT ROE
