TSI: October Update

[Patri Friedman]

Hey all.  This is a belated October update.  We'll be sending these emails approximately monthly, with updates and info on upcoming socials.

Socials:

Last one was 11/6/08 in Portola Valley.  Considering doing December social online in Second Life.

Update:

(Also located on the blog, where you can comment)

Mon, 11/10/2008 - 16:07 — Patri

We are going to switch to monthly snippets, as weekly seemed too often for such a small organization. In addition to posting them here, we are emailing them to the new Seasteading Announcements mailing list, as many people said they preferred email to blogs.  The list will receive a subset of the information on the blog: monthly snippets, social announcements, and major updates.

• Community
  • We've started a mailing list for Ephemerisle planning.
  • We held the second Seasteading Social in Portola Valley.
  • We are considering holding the third social in Second Life, as an experiment to let people from all over the world participate.  If you are interested in volunteering to help coordinate this event, please email volunteers-at-seasteading-dot-org.
  • Bay Area Seasteaders Sailing Club members are tentatively planning to take sailing classes in January in Redwood City.  Join the list to join the fun!
  • Videos from the conference are available online.  (Slides are there too - my intro talk slides are uploading now).  DVDs soon.
  • Volunteer Coordinator Update from James (we'll start doing these regularly).
    • Revised volunteer roles / priorities / system w/ Patri, created a volunteer database, established a placement process for ongoing volunteer roles.
    • Volunteer requests email list, and a 3d volunteers list.
    • Ben is on board as our sysadmin, Michael Dent on board as a programmer.
    • Ball is rolling with getting the conference videos distributed (thanks to Crasch).
    • Followed up with many more volunteers who had reached out to us over the past several months.
    • Key Unfilled Role: Membership Program Administrator.
  • Key blog posts
    • There is another way!  Seasteading and the US Elections.
    • First Seasteading Conference
    • 10/13/2008 Snippets
    • 10/6/2008 Snippets
• Engineering
  • Analysis of structure performance in waves off SF.
  • Meeting consultants next week to discuss architecture/eng updates.
  • Patent will be filed by end of year so we can show you pretty pictures.
• Research
  • I talked to the director of MBARI about hosting a TSI researcher there.  They said no, as they currently have a space crunch, and they have no way of tracking spending by project (which lowers their overhead).  I will contact other west coast marine science institutions next.  If anyone has contacts at such places, let me know.
  • We're considering setting up some prizes, see the discussion on this forum thread.  Participate there, or email wayne-at-seasteading-dot-org if you are interested in helping w/ the prize program.
• Publicity
• • IO9: Ephemerisle Is Waterworld With a More Realistic Budget
• • EconTalk podcast interview (been getting lots of emails from people who heard this).
  • CNN Radio upcoming (3000+ stations worldwide)
• Administrative
  • Non-profit app completed (finally!).  Now we wait 6 months to hear from the IRS...
  • Wrote 2008 Q3 Quarterly Report, with info on progress so far, future plans, and financial details.  Lots of info there.  Held the Q3 board meeting.
  • Accounting: updated books w/ all items to date, prepared 2009 budget estimates.  (See Q4 report above for spending to date)