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Well, I started at Goddard in 1984,

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and early on

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I was involved in some computer

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graphics projects

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where we were visualizing

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the Space Shuttle cargo

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bay for the Broadband

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X-ray Telescope, BBXRT.

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Eventually

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I moved to the SVS

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in the mid to late 90s.

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The SVS at the time

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was much more real-time focused.

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In other words,

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they had big, huge

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SGI machines

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that could render things on the fly.

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They had some headsets

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and something called a boom,

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a virtual reality boom.

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Virtual reality was hot

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for a while in the 90s.

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Possibly the biggest event

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in history,

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The wind changes

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with El Niño

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actually started changing

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a year ago--

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El Niño stuff was just

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wildly successful,

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and was on TV

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just almost every night.

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We had this sort of tripod

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approach of:

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you have visualizers,

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you have scientists

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and you have media folks,

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and they all contribute

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to making a story successful.

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I think we're okay

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on the sound bites.

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That was the early days

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of sort of pioneering that,

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and I think it worked really well.

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Our technology has

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changed drastically.

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Our software is so much better.

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We have a million times

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more disk space,

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but the process that we use

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really hasn't changed very much.

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We meet with the scientists.

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We experiment with our data

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to make sure

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we can visually tell the story

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that they want to tell

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with their data.

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I think it's an awesome job,

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because

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part of the reason we exist

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is to make discoveries,

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and we are right there at the edge

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of “What is the discovery?

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Let's share it with the public.”