Happy 2009 From The Seasteading Institute!

[Patri Friedman]

Happy Holidays from The Seasteading Institute!

It's been a fantastic journey together in 2009, and thanks to your involvement, commitment, and support, our small organization has continued its rapid growth.

Accomplishments

We've collectively accomplished these things to advance the frontier of Seasteading:

• Learned a great deal about seastead engineering and shared it with the world by releasing all 100+ pages of documentation on ClubStead, the world's first professionally engineered and validated floating city design.
• Spread the word about seasteading via coverage in numerous media outlets such as CNN.com, particularly for our Design Contest Winners whose global publicity ranged from National Geographic to Fast Company.
• Achieved a critical organization milestone by getting our non-profit 501c3 status from the IRS, which is crucial for fundraising.
• Developed our community through means like the Membership Program, and bringing people together for the 2nd Annual Conference which grew attendance by 75% and speakers 5-fold, and the First-Ever Ephemerisle - where 125 people converged on a combination of home-built platforms and boats to fully engage with the realities of living on the water.
• Developed a medium-term strategy called the Poseidon Project to build the world's first independent seastead by 2015.

For more details on our wonderful year, you can browse all our monthly newsletters.

Plans

Some of the exciting things in progress that you can expect early in 2009 include Eelco's Seastead Engineering Overview, the public release of the Poseidon Project, the rest of the conference talk videos, and a re-designed Ephemerisle website featuring media from the event, including a 10-minute documentary by Jason Sussberg. Our bigger plans for the rest of the year including moving the Posiedon Project forward by hiring a Director of Engineering to do more detailed engineering designs, oceanography research to determine ideal location, and of course a conference and Ephemerisle that are even bigger and better!

Help!

We're excited about what we've done this year, but we are only at the beginning of this incredible journey towards diverse, competitive government, and we need your help to continue. We thank our 110 paying members for their generous support thus far, and ask that all of you please consider a tax-deductible contribution to The Seasteading Institute as you think about your year-end fiscal planning. This is your last chance to join as a founding member of TSI's membership program and be able to say that you supported this world-changing movement from the beginning! Contact our development staff if you'd like any assistance.

We understand that 2009 was a tough year financially for many, and we also appreciate contributions of time and mindshare by forwarding this to friends and joining our social networks:

Thanks fellow pioneers!

Patri Friedman, James Hogan, Eric Jacobus, Naomi Most, Max Marty, Gayle Young, Alexis Bright, and Eelco Hoogendorn from The Seasteading Institute.

(you can link to this as http://seasteading.org/blogs/main/2009/12/28/happy-2009-from-the-seasteading-institute)