August 16, 1998Minutes from the twentieth meeting of the Tri-State Chapter held on August 16, 1998 at Dmitri Donskoy's apartment in West Haven, CT. Members Present: Bean Meeting PreliminariesThis was the first meeting that the Tri-State chapter has managed to have since February due to everyone's busy schedules. It was really nice to be able to get together again as a chapter. This was also our first meeting since the Core Conclave earlier this month in Denver, Colorado. Our chapter had excellent representation there. In all there were 6 of us there including: Ed Nash, Sam Liebowitz, William Gale, Bean America, George Romano, and Dmitri Donskoy. Once again we had a very busy conclave with lots of business and news to share. The Actual MeetingThis month's meeting was different from any in the past. We decided to all get outdoors for a change and headed to the beach. Our first stop was to pick up lunch at a local take out Chinese restaurant. Then we went to the beach down the road from Dmitri's apartment in West Haven. We avoided all of the usual business meeting formalities and decided instead to hold a completely unstructured free flow discussion. We briefly discussed the events which took place at the Conclave for the benefit of Ed Desplaines who was not able to attend this year. All of the rest of us were there in Denver. We conversed over a great number of topics including the latest in computer technologies, a brief discussion of nanotechnology, and of coarse any women which happened to pass by our blanket (unfortunately, there were entirely too few). Ed Nash had to leave the meeting early but did mention the current projects the FMF was working on; including the 1 square mile piece of real estate promised to us at New Utopia. He also mentioned the mariculture research opportunity the FMF was given by Sea Solar Power. They are potentially the first commercial company to win a contract to build a fully functional land based Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC) power plant. Sea Solar power has asked the FMF to work with them in producing a profitable mariculture venture for their OTEC. SEE UpdateWe all asked Bean and George numerous questions about there upcoming move to Space Environments Ecovillage (SEE). Both seem very optimistic about the project which is the FMF's first intentional community designed to study the dynamics of community living as well as the opportunities of joint business ventures. Bean and George explained that they are planning to move to the community early this fall. Both men realize that they have a great deal of work ahead of them but also that they have many FMF members eager to see them succeed and lend a helping hand when needed. Bean mentioned his intention of building himself a strawbale home as soon as time and money permit. Chapter ProjectsAside for SEE which is moving along smoothly, Dmitri proposed that the Tri-State Chapter take on the outreach project of making contact with other types of "Grass Roots" organizations. The first kind of company to be proposed was Environmental groups. It was pointed out that although they may be in line with the FMF's long term sustainability approach to the environment, many groups might not like our strong push for increased technology. Another group of people which was mentioned was Biological societies and more specifically, Marine Biologists. The chapter was not interested in taking on this project so Dmitri has offered to spear head this one on his own. The next meetings are tentatively scheduled for: September 13contact the author of this home page: Dmitri Donskoy |
