Bruce,
Thanks for the report.
I have some recommendations for AMSAT based on this experience. First, a more extensive set of free-to-use educational diagrams would be very useful and, I think, an excellent recruitment tool. They would probably find their way onto Wikipedia and other places, with a reference to AMSAT. There may be more than I think already available: the AMSAT website was briefly and uncharacteristically unavailable when I was working on the presentation on Sunday night.
What sort of diagrams are you thinking of? I am administrating the CAPE wiki at http://ulcape.org and could use that as a springboard for such diagrams. One of the goals of the website is to not only provide information about the existing, yet to be launched CAPE1 and future CAPE2 satellites but also to provide information on satellites (cubesats and picosats, specifically) in general including the various subsystems such as communications, power etc. Other topics such as ground station operations and other aspects should be covered as well. In the process of documenting this, diagrams will often be needed and any created would certainly be freely available.
If the CAPE people are thinking of engaging local schools, they might consider how much little greater effort it would take to globalize the effort, seeding cubesat stations around the world. Bob's Navy lab would also be a great place for this.
As per Nick's earlier reply, one goal of CAPE would be to come with a very cheap "kit" that could just as easily be sent to Timbuktu as next door.
The other component of such a job would be to streamline and automate the collection and dissemination of telemetry. I'm working on a Jabber project that does this; stay tuned for more.
Keep us updated. I'm currently working on some telemetry plotting web based software using PHP and the PEAR libraries with mySQL for storage in my spare spare time (I'm having trouble finding time within my spare time). It could be possible to interface these with jabber as the broadcasting agent with a web-based viewer.
Jonathan Wagner ITT Electronic Systems Electronic Warfare Systems Louisiana Field Office