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Society Gears up for More Action with Project Teams
by kokhmmm 
Link: http://www.moonsociety.org/projects/projectteams/index.html
From Society President Peter Kokh
August 16, 2008
At the August 6th Management Council meeting in the moon-leaders room of the ASI-MOO online chat-room environment, in discussing recent major member-ship growth, the effect of aggressively pursued carefully thought out projects took center stage.
In the past two years, two projects in particular absorbed the lion’s share of Society leaders’ attention:
? The production of the “Moon Colony Videos” suggested by director James Gholston and led by former Hollywood videographer and screen writer Chip Proser
? The production of a working demo model of the current favored design of a solar power satellite, suggested by Major Peter Garretson, USAF, with teram leaders vice-president Charles Radley and Chairman of the Board, R. Scotty Gammenthaler
Both these projects have been highly successful, and are continuing! Chip, with assistance at recent ISDCs from James Gholston and David Dunlop, continue to produce more excellent videos. Our Solar Power Beaming Demo team, now under Peter Kokh, is following through with production of two additional units requested by Space Adventures and the National Space Society.
Online “Kits” that will help other groups produce their own units comes next and will be based not on the original but on the improved "next generation" design for the two additional units.
But this is not all that’s going on in your Society!
We have also committed to aggressive pursuit of the goal of advancing the viability of production of real solar power satellites from Lunar Materials. This team is led by Dr. Peter Schroeter and Peter Kokh. This project goes to the heart of our long term strategy to advance the day when there will be civilian settlements on the Moon producing things that will help people on Earth better handle our environmental and energy problems and challenges.
The same duo is behind an effort to commence a relevant conversation between the space and environment communities on a more comprehensive plan to save and heal our home planet’s environment. Dr. Peter Schroeter had called our attention to an opportunity to get funds from the Environmental Protection Agency, EPA, for innovative conferences on addressing environ-mental problems. In collaboration with the National Space Society, we put forth a proposal for a “Mother Earth-Father Sky” conference, later renamed the Planet Earth & Space Conference/ Our proposal did not make the first cut, but is stil alive, and worth pursuing with or without EPA support. The editorial and essay in this issue address the need.
Other active Team Projects include Lunar Surface Logistics. It makes no sense to put up scattered moon bases without equal thought given to transportation and commerce between them, absolutely necessary for our vision of the Moon’s role in Earth’s future. This area includes our Google Group: Railroading on Moon & Mars, but also the mapping of logical transportation corridors, road making, road vehicles and support, cableway systems and more. This effort is not yet at the stage we need it to be, identifying specific doable projects.
Finally, Director David Dunlop is in the early stages of resurrecting a Lunar Reclamation Society effort from the early 1990s focused on Experimental Lunar Agriculture, and has identified a number of new doable projects. We will not be able to live long term on the Moon without autonomous agriculture and biosphere life support. Our efforts will address the agricultural aspect.
Different from the “ASI Discussion Teams”
Society old timers who came aboard in the mid-late 1990s in the Artemis Society years will remember the lengthy list of Artemis Society Teams. Is this Moon Society effort just a revival of older ASI-? The answer is a resounding “No!”
While the intention was for the many ASI Teams to come up with concrete projects that would further the cause, in reality, these teams for the most part never got beyond the “discussions” stage. Each Team has/had a discussion list, predictably with a high noise to signal ratio, and again for the most part, never identifying concrete projects within the team’s area of attention.
Moon Society “Project Teams”
Our recent measured successes have been the result of identifying specific projects with defined goals and achievement levels. Each new team has a Team Leader who aggressively moves the effort on towards the defined goal. Looking at the successes of the past two years, your President would like to add one more key person to each team, the project manager, whose role will be to identify action items and recruit volunteers to address each of them, in order to aggressively move each identified project forward. It would be misleading to say that we are there yet. Are these two roles in conflict? They need not be.
The Team Leader is in charge of keeping us focused on the vision and mission of each team, and identifying new projects within the Team's focus area.
The various Project Managers, one for each identified concrete project of each team, is in charge of moving forward a specific project within the team’s area of focus,
Project Focus Moves to Front Center Stage
We have redone the Registration Page, and our Welcome Packet & Vistors’ pages to give the opportunity to join Project Teams front center priority visibility.
Presenting our (current list of) Project Teams
# Promotional Video Team
Chip Proser - chipro@aol.com
James Gholston - webmaster@dimesnsionality.com
# Public Relations Team
James Rogers - jarogers2001@aim.com
# Solar Power Beaming Demonstration Team
Peter Kokh - kokhmmm@aol.com
R. Scotty Gammenthaler - scottygamm@dfwair.net
# Lunar Materials for SPS Construction Team
Peter J. Schubert - deepsky137@comcast.net
Peter Kokh - kokhmmm@aol.com
# Space and Environment Conversation Team
Peter J. Schubert - deepsky137@comcast.net
Peter Kokh - kokhmmm@aol.com
# Experimental Lunar Agriculture Team
David Dunlop - dunlop712@yahoo.com
# Lunar Surface Logistics Team
(including Lunar Railroads)
David Dunlop - dunlop712@yahoo.com
Peter Kokh - kokhmmm@aol.com
# Lunar Analog Research Team
Peter Kokh - kokhmmm@aol.com
Dave Dunlop - dunlop712@yahoo.com
Paul Graham - pggraham@gmail.com
#Growing our Society
Obviously, to advance the work of all these teams, we need more members, the more the better, new members ready to roll up their sleeves, more total dues money to fund our growing list of concrete projects. We are gaining a reputation among space groups as “the little engine that could!” We need your help!
Comments? kokhmmm@aol.com
08/21/08 04:15:08 pm, 
Sept 17, 2008 Society's 1st Annual Membership Meeting
by kokhmmm
By Peter Kokh, President
As a new feature in the Moon Society’s recent bylaws revision of February 6th, as reported in MMM #212, February 2008, Moon Society Journal Section (p.9), this year, on the third Wednesday evening of the month after Society elections are finalized, we will launch our first Annual Membership Meeting.
Save Wednesday evening, September 17th!
The meeting will be online, in the ASI-MOO special chat room environment, 9-11 pm ET, 8-10 pm CT, 7-9 pm MT, 6-8 pm PT. We realize that this window will not be convenient for many members. But neither would any other window. But why this window? This is the time and day slot in which the Society’s Leadership Council, Management Council, and Board of Directors meets.
Practice now!
If your schedule makes attendance at this event possible, and you have never been on the ASI-MOO, you will save yourself a lot of frustration that evening, if you first practice loging on. It is quite simple.
1 Go to our homepage www.moonsociety.org
2 Scroll down the left hand menu column until you come to the ASI-MOO image link. Click on this link
3 Ignore the preliminary information on this page (for advanced users) and scroll down the page until you see the dual links: Java MOO client: Framed Popup
4 Click on either (I like Popup but that’s a personal preference)
5 Wait for the window to fully open. Some browsers are faster than others. Below the preliminary introductory text, you will see a line, below which you can type.
6 Type these three words: connect (your) username password all in lower case, each word separated by a space with no quotation marks. Hit carriage return
7 You will find yourself in the “Commons” Now you want to go to the “Auditorium” where the Members Meeting will be held. The instructions in the Commons say that the Auditiorium is “NorthWest” so type NorthWest without quotes and with capitals as indicated, then hit carriage Return, and you should be in.
Most likely problem you will have is not knowing your username and password. If this turns out to be the case, just contact me at kokhmmm@aol.com and tell me what your problem is. If you prefer an answer by phone, give me your phone # and best times to call in your email. We’ll get you in, but do not wait until the last minute as I will be busy with other things!
Format and Topics of the Meeting
In preparation for the meeting, we will post an Annual Report in the Members Area of our web site:
http://www.moonsociety.org/members/reports/annual_report2008.pdf
[This address will not be valid until a week before the meeting]
Publicizing this Meeting
Meanwhile, the notice for this meeting, including this “how to attend” information, will be printed in MMM (this is it) and posted on the Artemis-List as well as sent by email to all current members with current email addresses in our database. If you have changed your email address, do call that to our attention! You many change it yourself at www.moonsociety.org/mymoon/ though you will need your username and password to access that page. Otherwise simply email your current email address to kokhmmm@aol.com
Meeting Structure
The meeting will be chaired by Chairman of the Board, R. Scotty Gammenthaler.
After a review of the contents of the Annual Report, the floor will be open to questions from members. Members who plan to ask questions are invited to submit them in advance to kokhmmm@aol.com as this will help in bundling together related questions and responses. However, this is not necessary and spontaneous questions are welcome.
Questions can be about problems with member-ship processing, Society response to problems, current projects and new project ideas, the overall direction of the society and suggestions in this regard, membership benefits, how to grow the society in numbers, name recognition, and project output, etc.
The Annual Report
The annual report as prepared by the president, will cover recent bylaws changes, elections results, our Vision, Mission, and Strategy, existing and proposed new projects, our primary and auxiliary websites, Moon Miners’ Manifesto, our affiliations and collaborations, the treasurers report, awards of recognition for significant service to the Society, and our plans to make the Society ever more effective, and more.
To the Curious
If you are reading this and are not a current member, by all means so join or rejoin. We will be most happy to benefit from your ideas and energies and initiatives.
A Learning Experience
We have never held an annual Membership Meeting before and so this will necessarily be one of those “leaning experiences.” But even before the curtain falls on this first one, if you have ideas for features that should be included, don’t wait to share them with us. We want this first meeting to be as comprehensive as possible.
Other Preparations: a Questionnaire
We have been working on a Questionnaire, asking current and former members how they first heard of the Moon Society. We hope that the results of this survey will help us better direct our efforts to grow the Society. We hope to get this out soon.
Quarterly Town Meetings?
This is another but related idea that we have been considering – holding an online Town Meeting quarterly (three a year plus the Annual Meeting) and probably rotating the day of the week on which it is held. The idea would be to elicit continuous feedback and to provide more opportunities to participate.
Thanks, Peter Kokh