A big conference program regarding spacecraft operations awaited in Marseille at the biennial SpaceOps Conference 28 May to 01 July 2018. I was thrilled to attend it for OKAPI.
It was kind of a short-term decision, but I was able to find accomodation nonetheless (thank you, AirBnB!). So, there I was, near Marseille‘s port within lots of restaurants. However, there wasn‘t much time to be a tourist. The conference program was packed Monday to Friday. The same applies to the conference venue which, at times, was extremely busy with around 900 participants. The diversity of allowed presentation types was incredible. Apart from the usual stuff there were „e-posters“, „Open-Access presentations“ – and Start-up Pitches! Although I only came as a visitor to SpaceOps, Mr. Bruno Costa who organized the pitches for Starburst was kind enough to allow me to pitch Okapi and so I did. Lots of interesting conversations followed.
The pitches were accompanied by a part of the exhibition called „Startup Village“ in which the attending Startups could present themselves and meet with people. I didn‘t have a booth, but the village and the conference in general provided vast oppertunities to come in contact with the spacecraft operations community. Greetings to all the nice people that I met!
I also tried out Bouillabaisse. Interesting…