April 13, 1997Minutes of the ninth meeting of the Tri-State chapter held on April 13, 1997 at the Loeb Student Center at NYU (New York University)
In Attendance: The chapter met up at the Loeb Student Center to take part in EmpireCon 1997. We decided to come out and support Sam Liebowitz who was giving a talk on the First Millennial Foundation. Sam began by outlining the plan as presented in the book: The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in 8 Easy by Marshall T. Savage. He then continued by explaining the role the Tri-State chapter has played in that plan, and ended by driving home the point that this is the kind of project worth doing but in order for the FMF to reach its goals, more people need to hear the message. That was the main point in giving this presentation to begin with. Sam did an excellent job throughout his presentation. It is clear that he is experienced at getting up in front of groups and talking to them. He was clear and concise. Sam has proved himself worthy of representing us at this year's Core Conclave when he presents the concepts of SEE to all who attend. After the presentation, we gathered together for our monthly chapter meeting. We started the meeting off in the usual way by taking turns introducing ourselves for the benefit of the new attendees. We had two new guests at this meeting; both were women. They were Sue and Marilee. We moved on to discussing updates from the FMF nationwide. A new piece of property was being reviewed in St. Croix for the location of Aquarius Rising. It is smaller than the first plot but has more useable land since it isn't as hilly. Other locations being looked at are Grand Cayman and Hawaii. Sam and Richard Crews began reworking the old prospectus into a full business plan. This new plan will be site independent so we won't end up locking our sites on just one place again. Sue one of our chapter's newest guests, who claims to have experience in such matters, has offered to help Sam and Richard on this new business plan. One other piece of news is the start of a new chapter in California. Apparently one of the chapters out there recently split and in doing so they formed the "Universal City" chapter. Congratulations!!! The next topic on the agenda was discussion of SEE (Space Environments Ecovillage). Gale has been busy calling real estate agents looking for the perfect piece of property for us. He admits that there aren't as many available plots as he had hoped but he did find several potential pieces of land in Bastrop county. We are all hoping to at least have a contract established on a specific piece of property by the time we go to present SEE at this year's Conclave. Lots of potential business proposals have been thrown around for the colonists at SEE. Sam suggests that we remain critical about which we choose to pursue. Sue asked if SEE would be handicapped accessible, and we discussed that issue and agreed that in the least, community centers and those homes with handicapped individuals living in them would be designed accordingly. Outreach was next on our list of topics to discuss. It is critical that we as a group (both nationally and locally) get the word out to the public about ourselves. Sam is personally working on getting us on the radio at WEVD and at WBAI. Dmitri began discussion on a future chapter to be formed in Connecticut. Membership in this area is still lacking but that needs to be remedied. We will begin by having one of our upcoming chapter meetings located at Dmitri's home in Connecticut. All are invited. The date and directions will be announced as soon as this information is available. After Dmitri suggested moving the meeting to his home, others began suggesting that meetings be moved every once in a while to other peoples homes. We all discussed the merits of giving presentations like the one Sam did. It was pointed out that all one needs to do is put up a few flyers in your local library and set up a time to present the First Millennial Project to your local community. For those who don't already know, this year's conclave will be held at the Embassy Suites Hotel in Arcadia, CA. The Tri-State chapter will be presenting SEE to the Core members in attendance and will be looking to get in touch specifically with those Core members who might be interested in being a Settler or Investor, but haven't heard of us due to lack of email.
Gale commented that we are having very good meetings for not having thought explicitly about how we conduct our meetings. He reviewed some basics of meeting dynamics that have been found to work by the intentional communities movement, and suggested that we discuss these further and try using them. Roles that have been found useful are facilitator, time keeper, process watcher, vibes watcher, devil's advocate, and recorder. Facilitator is a key role. It involves keeping the discussion on topic, restating and summarizing discussions, and drawing out people who have not said much, among other things. Sam has been filling this role, but it would be better to have most or all of us able to fill it. It is useful to plan meeting time for introductions, to review the agenda before starting and put times to items, to schedule time for breaks, and to evaluate the meeting (what went well, what could be improved, in that order) as a closing. The next chapter meeting will be held at Sam's apartment on Sunday May 18 contact the author of this home page: Dmitri Donskoy  Last modified: Wednesday, April 13, 1997  Home |