"The most engaging reality show of the summer had a happy ending Tuesday. The Discovery has landed."
- Seattle Times editorial, written by someone who doesn't watch much TV

On the morning of July 26 I awoke as usual to NPR. As soon as I heard that the Space Shuttle Discovery was about to launch, I switched on the television.

Both CNN and "Headline News" showed the launch in short segments that were pretty much a blip of background, "Here's the launch" - whoosh - "and now sports." Fox was even more abbreviated. Its coverage was along the lines of: Whoosh! "There goes Discovery and now sports. Naked." (OK, so I made up that last bit.)

Feeling a little short-changed, I switched over to the NASA channel. I was amazed. Here we have an incredible technical achievement, a truly awesome spectacle, men and women and machine boldly going, and the NASA channel was like watching paint dry.

It made me think: You often hear the complaint that the youth of today aren't interested in science and that the public's interest in space conquest ranks somewhere between filling out tax returns and having a new water heater installed.

Why should this be? Easy. Because there's no sizzle. This was real rocket science, and it had less pizzazz than having a pizza delivered. Big mistake. When your competition is video games, MTV, "Survivor," "Fear Factor" and the rest of pop culture, you've got to compete if you want attention.

What NASA should have done was have "Mission Control Central," a high-energy, sophisticated real-time news and analysis TV program with associated Web content and so on that's all about rocket science and that engages its target audience. Get the public excited. Sell their value.

It also struck me that this is exactly what most IT groups fail to do. You guys might think you're at the bleeding edge of technology, but you're really at the leading edge of business.

Despite this key role in how your organization functions, the public in general and your users in particular see you as a bunch of geeks who do that digital voodoo (which you know you do so well). They see a bunch of hardware and services they hardly understand, which they think of as giving them problems. They don't see the rocket science.

Here's what you need to do: You need a control room, one that your users can see. Your computer rooms need to be at least partially visible (and have lots of flashing lights - you're short on flashing lights? Get some.).