You Have to Go Through to Get To
On any given Sunday before the pandemic lockdown, a common phrase could be heard in many church services where the congregants are predominantly African-American:
“You have to go through to get to.”
Ministers deploy many biblical stories to illustrate the aphorism, but my favorite is the story of Jesus and his disciples crossing the river on a boat in the midst of a storm. Jesus – knowing that the storm was just a thing they were going through to get to the other side – slept peacefully while his disciples panicked. Of course, they reached safely to the other side, where welcoming multitudes waited to greet them.
I got to thinking about this during the 2020 Hall of Fame Celebration – a joyous and intimate event on March 10 of this year, which turned out to be the day before the World Health Organization named COVID19 a global pandemic. One guest, SSPI chairman emeritus Chris Stott, proclaimed it the best Hall of Fame Celebration in years. The BEST! SSPI’s newest friend, actor Cas Anvar from The Expanse, said he enjoyed the event “Soooo much!”
Say Goodbye to the Satellite Prom
Of course, if we could bottle that success formula, we would surely open the bottle year after year – except maybe for the part about the global pandemic. But some of that success wasn’t in the ingredients – it was in the process. Do you remember the days when the Celebration was known as the “Satellite Prom,” with more than 1,000 guests competing for space and to make themselves heard? The 2020 Celebration was about as different as it could be from those days.
That change reflects broader changes across our industry. New technologies. Rapid change in markets, from media to broadband and maritime. A wave of investment that saddled some companies with too much debt and launched others with business models that would face their own moments of “going through to get to.” More competition and, with it, much greater potential opportunity. And now, with COVID19, the fastest-growing sectors of our business have slammed to a halt and face uncertain times ahead – yet we know they will return to growth because the need driving them is so great.
These changes have driven most of the industry to rethink their mission, their value and their operations. SSPI is no different. For this one event we have had to rethink its purpose and place within the mission of the organization. Once our biggest fundraiser, it could no longer fulfill that role. What size should the event be? What would be meaningful, given the import of the occasion? After all, this is the Space and Satellite Hall of Fame, not an award that can be won by anyone and not an honor that can be granted twice.
A Boat on the Waves
If I’m being honest, it has been a scary process. None of us on the management team would have voluntarily torpedoed 80-90% of our audience. Who does that? This change, this churn, was the “go through” – the deeply uncomfortable, stormy winds tossing the industry and its association around, like that boat on the river in the Bible story. This year’s event was a safe landing – a place we arrived at unwillingly, and yet, the better for it.
As the industry faces the global storm that is the COVID19 pandemic, we are all being forced to shift, rethink, adapt. The structure of our workforce will change. How we work with customers will be different. The need for satellite broadband is ever more apparent. A global pandemic of structural inequality is aiding and abetting the novel coronavirus. Now more than ever, our industry is needed, and we will need to think creatively to seize the moment. We always have, and will continue to do so, as the stories in this issue of The Orbiter make clear.
I’m looking forward to seeing who and what we are when we get to the other side.
Tamara Bond-Williams is membership director of SSPI. You can reach her at [email protected].