Space lovers' dreams will be fulfilled in Buffalo this November. Soon, NASA employees will be walking around UB.
Every year the national club, Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS), hosts a conference titled SpaceVision. Every one of the 34 SEDS chapters throughout the nation applies in hopes of being chosen to host the conference.
For the first time, UB has been selected and will be hosting SpaceVision from Nov. 8-11.
"This is the biggest engineering conference that UB has ever seen or ever will see again for [probably] the next 10 years," said Steven Coffed, sophomore airspace and mechanical engineer major.
Since Oct. 2011, when SEDS found out it would be hosting the conference, the team has been working together to ensure the conference is a success.
According to Andrew Dianetti, a senior aerospace and mechanical engineer major and conference chair, it is important to know how to network and connect with others.
"The organization does have some connections to past speakers and people in the industry, and they help you get in contact with people," Dianetti said. "The first [step] would be to write up invite letters to explain what the conference is trying to accomplish and email the letter to all the people you'd want to come to the conference."
The event is four days long and approximately 50-60 people will be speaking throughout the four days of the conference. Not only will there be panel talks but also keynote addresses, a banquet, workshops and other networking events.
"The conference enables you to rub elbows with the people that are going to hire you some day. It's not a representative of the company or someone who works for the company - it's the people who run it all," Coffed said.
The theme of this year's SpaceVision conference is "Crossroads: How Our Generation Will Take Us To the Space Frontier." Students interacting with the people who are associated with companies such as NASA are very important. According to Dan Pastuf, adviser of SEDS, around 25 NASA representatives will be attending the conference as keynote speakers.
"This is a great networking opportunity," Dianetti said. "There are hundreds of students around the country coming to Buffalo. It's a great opportunity to meet the people in the companies in which students hope to work."
There are major expectations UB SEDS hopes to reach. According to Coffed, in past years there have been anywhere from 200-500 people attending the conference, and a large turn out would be great for the Queen City.
"I hope that this will be one of the best conferences yet. I hope it raises the bar for SEDS USA," Pastuf said. "I want people to become more aware of the organization and the challenges that the space flight industry face and what issues the industry faces and what we, as a country, can do to advance us into the future."
Dianetti said the main goal of this year's conference is building the future of the space industry and building the future leaders of the industry.
The space industry is at a point of transition, and there are a lot of opportunities that not many people are aware of, Dianetti said.
"I want this conference to get students, in general, interested in space and ready to try and make a difference in our space efforts," Dianetti said. "I hope to bring that excitement and that energy to Buffalo."
There will be a multitude of unique ideas that will be brought to SpaceVision because there are many people from different backgrounds attending the conference
"These people have made the mistakes. They have stories to tell and the experiences to share and, that, I believe is the most beneficial," Dianetti said. "There are tons of things that you learn when talking to these people. Some academically focused, but some of them are not at all what I would learn in an engineering class. You learn about life lessons and hear people's actual life experiences."
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