Think Tank Diary: Week 2.5 – Post-Conference

This series features guest blog posts from think tank leaders around the world. This month, we’ll learn about the work and experiences of the Seasteading Institute, written by Patri Friedman. This week we follow the Seasteading Institute through their annual conference and board meeting.  Check out past Think Tank Diary entries here.

Sorry for the late post – last week was every bit as crazy as you might imagine, and more!  I’m going to recap the conference now, and our Ephemerisle festival as a separate post later in the week.

Monday: The conference started Monday night at 7pm with an opening reception at the condo of our major backer, Peter Thiel, whose place was 50 stories above San Francisco with an amazing view of the Bay.  Sushi, hors d’ oeuvres, an open bar, and a hundred people with big ideas about jurisdictional arbitrage and settling the oceans jammed into a few rooms – it was great!  I tried to meet everyone, and mostly succeeded but not entirely.  We had people from Spain, Germany, the Netherlands, Denmark…and of course, all over the USA.  From students to rocket scientists, professors to businessmen, all interesting people – and interested in our idea.  It ended at 10pm or so, and some attendees went out for more drinks afterwards, but I headed back up to my room to rest up before my morning keynote.

Tuesday: My opening keynote used the theme of Duality (since this was our second conference), exploring Dynamism vs. Stasis (how ultra-dynamic seasteading is) and Reality vs. Possibility (how we are trying to bridge the gap).  Then Peter Thiel talked about “Back To The Future” and how seasteading is not just important but necessary and perhaps inevitable.  The third talk of the block was Michael Strong, who had joined our board the previous day, on Free Zones and how they might translate to increased competition among governments (which is the route we advocate to increasing freedom).  In the afternoon we presented “The Poseidon Project” – our audacious goal to raise $20,000,000 and build the first independent seastead by 2015.  Then came some related talks and an “unconference” – a series of short talks by attendees that had been voted on by attendees.

Wednesday: The morning was a bit different – participant-driven workshops and a seasteading simulation, where each participant was assigned the role of a group interested in seasteading, and progressed through a series of rounds to fund and operate seastead business venture.  The participants mainly chose very safe cruise ships, and so when the random event generator brought a zombie plague, instead of business being hurt it was helped because the seasteads became a luxury refuge for the rich!  In the afternoon, we had a series of business and engineering talks.  Then it was off to the waterfront for our (first) annual open board meeting and member’s dinner, which was an amazing bay cruise (some pictures).

People kept trying to tell me how well it went, and how much seasteading had grown from last year (which is true), but it never really sank in.  All I could think about were the challenges ahead – Ephemerisle on Friday, raising the funds for our Poseidon Project, and the numerous difficulties in implementation.  With decades of work left ahead, I just couldn’t put myself in the mindset to stop and celebrate success, even though it would probably be healthy to do so.  Relaxing had to wait until Saturday at Ephemerisle…but that’s a post for another day .

Talk videos will be posted on the TSI blog over the next month or two, as we get them edited (splicing in the slides).

I’m sure many organizations can relate to Patri’s feelings, always looking ahead to your organization’s next project. Join us next Monday for the next installment of the Seasteading Institute’s Diary, where we’ll learn more about Ephemerisle. If you are interested in becoming the next  Think Tank Diarist please contact Cindy Cerquitella.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 8th, 2009 at 9:49 AM. It is filed under Think Tank Diary and tagged with Ephemerisle, Patri Friedman, Seasteading Institute, Think Tank Diary. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.