We regret to tell our community that after much discussion this week, we are canceling Ephemerisle 2010 due to insurance costs. The estimate for insurance-related expenses has risen from an early estimate of $55,000 to a total of $135,000, with much of the jump happening a week ago. This caused us to take a long, hard look at Ephemerisle's budget and the ROI of the event as a whole.

Here's our futurist-focused promo for Ephemerisle, please link to it and spread the word!

Here's our libertarian-focused promo for Ephemerisle, please link to it and spread the word!

As you probably know, the long-term goal for Ephemerisle is to be an incremental path towards seasteading, by cutting down the challenges along every dimension, and then advancing year by year. Here are some of the dimensions, and how we are making progress this year:

There are a wide variety of opinions in the seasteading community about whether Ephemerisle is a plausible path to full seasteading. Here's my pre-event pitch of why Ephemerisle is useful. Post-event, I have an additional thought.

Our Ephemerisle structure and setup basically worked as plan, with a few exceptions. One is that it took longer than we expected, and was not completed by the noon Friday starting time (although everything did come together for Saturday evening).

Just in case you haven't seen it yet on one of other feeds, check out the awesome 9-minute documentary Jason Sussberg made about Ephemerisle:

The Seasteading Institute November 2009 Newsletter

Table of Contents

• Highlights

  • The Poseidon Project: Building the World's First Independent Seastead by 2015
  • Conference Recap
  • Ephemerisle Recap
  • Hiring - Three positions

• Poseidon Project

  • Platform
  • Commercial
  • Residential
  • Fundraising

• Awareness & Community

  • Membership Program
  • Events
  • Media
  • Book

Highlights

The Poseidon Project: Building the World's First Independent Seastead by 2015

At the Seasteading 2009 Conference, we were excited to un

The website & blogs have been quiet because we've been very busy (obviously) with the conference & Ephemerisle, James & I just got back last night. I suspect this will be a bit of a decompression week for us, so don't expect to hear much this week either, but I'll try to get some links and roundups posted when I can.

We'd like to remind everyone of our upcoming Second Annual Conference and First-Ever Ephemerisle Festival, where the far-flung seasteading community will gather in person to explore the theory and practice of seasteading.

Here's a quick preview of the art projects that have been awarded Ephemerisle grants so far:

Exercise Ball Platform by Kipp McMichael and Trea Grillo
A triangular-shaped floating platform buoyed by 12 x 65cm exercise balls. One side of the triangle will be docked to the main festival platform.