Inspiring 8th Graders in East Texas

On Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending an 8th grade career inspiration day in my town of Longview, in East Texas. I was thrilled to talk to young kids all about my work with Icarus Interstellar, and all the exciting and profound research and activities we engage in.

I’ve been working with the Longview Economic Development Corporation (LEDCO) this year, after founding the East Texas Entrepreneurs Group. LEDCO kindly invited me to the event, with the direction that I was to inspire the kids. Not a problem!

As this was a career event, and as I’m passionate about entrepreneurship I’d originally envisioned talking about my startup company CitizenShipper, which I founded in 2008. CitizenShipper is lifestyle company born out of the explosion of applications that serve the “sharing economy.” CitizenShipper was a pioneer in the creation of the sharing economy. Since 2008 we have been making easier for regular folks to ship personal valuables from city to city, all over the United States. What started out as an idea has grown into a business serving tens of thousands of people nationwide.

As exciting as CitizenShipper has been, I don’t have much in the way of visually inspiring posters. I also didn’t think that CitizenShipper would inspire in quite the same way that talk of star flight would. So I set up my booth, flanked by some wonderful Adrian Mann art. On my table I included the books “Mining the Sky“, “Starship Century“, “Quantum Field Theory” and “Founders as Work“. I also took along several copies of JBIS, as well as a nice brochure on Icarus Interstellar and a flyer and some photos taken from Starship Congress.

I must have chatted to 100 kids by the end of the day. Most used phrases like “cool” and “awesome” when I told them about Icarus and what we do. I even met a few students who dreamed of becoming astronauts! While it was my job to inspire the kids, I myself found myself inspired by their enthusiasm and their energy!