Greetings Friends of The Seasteading Institute,
The clock is ticking on the Thiel Foundation’s 2011 matching grant. If you haven’t already given, please make a generous tax-deductible donation before midnight tomorrow night and your gift will be doubled. Your contribution is crucial to our 2012 strategy.
Next year, with your support, we will continue to foster seasteading business development, bolster our engineering research, and expand our movement even further into the mainstream. The amount of community financial support we receive will determine our ability to execute our ambitious agenda to the fullest extent. Currently, our plans for 2012 include:
- Convening a conference in San Francisco on June 1 and 2. This is our flagship project for 2012, and will serve to bring together individuals with the capacity to actualize seasteading ventures (i.e., entrepreneurs, investors, maritime experts, academics, seasteading enthusiasts, etc.)
Funding research projects specifically targeted at enabling seasteading business development. So far, planned projects include:
- An in-depth investigation of medical tourism
- A how-to guide for flagging vessels
- A how-to guide for maritime security
- A resource list for seasteading entrepreneurs
- Cultivating a volunteer research program, and recruiting college students to investigate numerous practical obstacles likely to affect seasteading businesses in the near future
- Communicating the viability of seasteading business opportunities through news media, our volunteer ambassador team, a university lecture tour, and other venues
- Growing and nurturing our invite-only Magellan network, comprised of business leaders and entrepreneurs, and expanding our volunteer ambassadors program
- Investigating the costs of outfitting ships, barges, and platforms with renewable energies such as wind, solar, and ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC)
- Investigating different ways to create modular designs for ships, barges and platforms, so that individual segments or “modules” can be built to fit the needs of residents or businesses on land and then transported to a vessel
- Teaming up with academic institutions and professionals to expand research
- Translating a 300-page Spanish language dissertation on seasteading into English for publication on our website
- Continuing to investigate long-term solutions to challenges facing city-sized seasteads, such as floating breakwaters and wave energy technology
- Publishing a seasteading book, Seasteading: How Ocean Cities will Reinvent Politics
- Launching a new website with more interactive features for our supporters and community to get involved
- Forging relationships with ocean industries and government officials
We’re counting on funding from forward-thinking people like you so that we can accomplish all this and more. Please give whatever you are comfortable giving before tomorrow night at midnight, and your tax-deductible contribution will be matched by the Thiel Foundation.
Let’s reach the next frontier,
Michael Keenan, President
The Seasteading Institute
www.seasteading.org
