VolunteerList

Overview

Thanks for your interest in The Seasteading Institute's volunteer opportunities!

As you can see, there are many ways to help. This page contains three identical lists of our volunteer roles, organized by urgency, skillset, and strategic area.

If you're interested in helping out with any of the items described here, please drop us a line at volunteers@seasteading.org. Feel free to contact us as well if you have your own questions or ideas about how you can help besides what is listed. We also have a Volunteer Mailing List (please join, or read via RSS!) which we'll notify when there are urgent projects or major changes to the list below.

Note that we sometimes recruit for paid positions as well. Information on those is available here.

Volunteering with TSI

It almost goes without saying that the best volunteers are reliable, autonomous individuals who are passionate about TSI's mission: To establish permanent, autonomous ocean communities to enable experimentation and innovation with diverse social, political, and legal systems.

If you are considering volunteering in some way, thank you! If you're offering help for one of the projects listed on this page, we ask that you only do so if you believe you can commit to the time investment requested (and in the case of ongoing roles, for at least one month). False starts can sometimes slow things down more than no start at all.

That said, we understand that any donation of time is a generous gift, and that life priorities can fluctuate and require you to leave a volunteer task unfinished. You'll find us reasonable folks, and we'll appreciate your open and honest communication about these situations if they come up.

Also note that we've tried to break down the projects on this page to pretty granular levels, but they're flexible. If you want to do a portion of a project (or want to do more than one project!), drop us a line and we'll see what we can do.

Volunteer Opportunities, Listed by Urgency

High Urgency

Project/Role	Description	Special qualifications	Estimated time	Target completion date
Ephemerisle Research	Ephemerisle is a floating festival TSI is considering organizing in Summer 2009. Ephemerisle could serve as a proof of concept, and create awareness for, many of TSI's goals, including floating communities and experimentation with different systems of government. To make Ephemerisle happen, we need some people who can help spearhead preliminary research in two areas: - Legal research, focusing on questions of what activities are legal, and who will be liable for injuries or property damage at the event. We're interested in the letter of the law, and also very interested in practical applications, e.g. things that are not illegal but might generate concern and involvement from the Coast Guard. We have a friendly contact at the Coast Guard to help with this. - Infrastructural research, focusing on an engineering analysis of building a floating community center for the festival, including: Requirements definition (size, transportability, comfort, etc.), design options, cost analysis, etc.		10+ hours	Feb. 2009
Volunteer Coordination Help	This is an important role because it's highly leveraged -- more volunteer coordination help means more effective volunteer man-hours, and that can help all aspects of TSI's vision. We have lots of people who are interested in volunteering with TSI, but it's a good chunk of work to recruit them and make sure we've got productive tasks ready to go. We could use many levels of help here, from assistants who could help manage things like this wiki page, to experienced managers who could help recruit for and manage large projects.		3 hours per week

Moderate Urgency

Project/Role	Description	Special qualifications	Estimated time	Target completion date
Website Drupal/PHP Developer	There are lots of small Drupal/PHP development projects that could benefit the website. Forum upgrades, Installing feedburner, configuring our upload module to allow users to upload images and other files, a digg/reddit-style voting system for forum posts, etc. Sharp programmers who can't know Drupal can generally pick it up without much of a problem.	Drupal and PHP development experience is a plus	5-20 hours
Website System Administrator	We've got one great volunteer sysadmin. Having a second would give us more overall bandwidth for projects, faster turnaround time when our developers need help, and backup for when someone is unavailable for a while.	Experience with Linux, Apache, Drupal, MySQL is helpful.	2-4 hours per week
Video Producer	We'd like to create a short introductory video for seasteading and TSI. For many people, nothing gets the message across like a short, simple video. Most of the content will probably consist of Patri, our Executive Director, speaking. We need somebody who can produce and edit the video. You don't need to be a pro; strong amateur skills will be considered, too!	Simple video production experience	4+ hours
Website Publicity Associate	Assist TSI's Development Director with various publicity tasks. These could include helping manage our website's blogroll, getting reciprocal links from other sites, growing blog/website traffic by posting blog entries to relevant places (forums, link-sharing sites) and emailing them to prominent bloggers (when appropriate), analyzing our search traffic to figure out how we could get more, etc.	SEO, blogging, and promotion experience is a plus.	Varies
Organizational Outreach	There is tremendous potential for TSI to grow the seasteading movement by collaborating with other organizations -- conferences, think-tanks, universities, and so on. Establishing relationships, giving talks, and attending conferences are vital steps to help us build the support network we need to make this movement realize its potential. There's a lot of research legwork needed to make this happen. We need people who can look around on the web for organizations that are likely to be sympathetic to our cause, and draft letters (probably customized form letters) introducing ourselves and helping them understand why our cause is relevant to them and why they should be excited about it.		5-10 hours per person
Help Find A Book Publisher	Our seasteading book is one of the main ways we're going to generate greater awareness and discussion of our research so far. We need to find a publisher! If you've got experience or contacts in the publishing industry, you can help. Referrals, help writing pitch/proposal letters, and general advice from someone who has done this before would all be welcome.	Prior experience with the publishing world	Varies
2-D Graphic Designers	We occasionally have a need for flyers, brochures, or website content. We use these at our socials, conferences, on our website, for our conference DVD, our future press kit, etc.	Experience with graphics software (Photoshop, etc.) Ability & willingness to write good content is a plus!	Varies (project based)
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Coordinator	TSI chapter coordinators organize events for the local seasteading community. These are generally fun, informal, face-to-face meetups used for building the seasteading community, discussion of seasteading ideas, disseminating TSI news, general networking, finding volunteers, etc. Chapter coordinators are responsible for finding hosts/venues, handling publicity, driving attendance, arranging for refreshments, coordinating with TSI colleagues to organize agendas, etc.	Local to the San Francisco Bay Area. Good organization and communication skills.	2-3 hours/week
2009 Conference Volunteers	We need some organizers for our 2009 annual conference, to be held this June. Our 2008 conference included 50 participants from 8 countries around the globe. Attendees learned about our vision, formed new relationships, and participated in strategy workshops which are informing our approach going forward. We expect our 2009 conference to be significantly larger.		100-200 hours (to be split among multiple people)	June 2009
Presentation Coaching	Reading books like Made To Stick has made it clear that we have a long way to go in refining our vision and pitch to its bare essentials, so it will have the strongest appeal to the most people. Basically, this entails working with Patri Friedman to make seasteading sound cool and awesome, rather than weird and scary. :) And to appeal to a broad audience, not just crazy libertarians. There are a number of volunteer projects in this vein; this one targets our live presentation material.	Experience designing inspiring/sticky marketing, preferably with small non-profits.	2-5 hours
Media Coaching	As TSI gains momentum, we're getting lots of media exposure, which means lots of interviews for print, radio, and television. It would be great to have someone who can help coach us on professional techniques for being maximally effective and compelling in these contexts.	Professional media coaching experience	2-4 hours
Website Community Manager	Moderate comments and forums. Aggregate community feedback and questions for TSI executives. Help answer questions and keep the forum community informed in a more day-to-day manner than management is able to directly. This role entails community management on the TSI website, and on various social networking sites (Facebook, Tribe, Livejournal, etc.)	Experience with community management and the above social networking sites is a plus	2-4 hours per week
Establish Scientific Advisory Board	Our Scientific Advisory Board (SAB) will consist of subject matter experts from a variety of scientific fields related to seasteading. We want someone to help us define the size/scope/function of the SAB, identify and recruit members, and act as the liaison.	Not quite sure what types of experience would be most relevant (besides having done the same thing before). Some experience with academia, nonprofits, volunteer-based organizations.	10-30 hours
Administrative Assistant	It would be great to have somebody who can assist our Executive Director with administrative tasks -- responding to general e-mails sent to info@seasteading.org, for example, or maintaining a list of TSI contacts. We'd like to get his time freed up to focus on more strategic things. This work could be done remotely.		2-3 hours/week
Wikipedia Maintainer	The Wikipedia articles on seasteading and TSI are very sparse and contain out-of-date information. They needs to be updated, and ideally maintained by the same person. Obviously we want somebody who is knowledgeable enough about seasteading and TSI to make sure that a decent picture is being portrayed, while still maintaining an ethical and unbiased stance while writing content.		5-10 hours initially, 2 hours/month thereafter
Sunnyvale-area Workshop Space	We need a workshop to construct seasteading technology prototypes, including small platforms. The space needs to be not very far from Sunnyvale, CA, be around 250 square feet or more (that's about a two-car garage), have power and lighting, and have vehicle access. An accessible toilet and sink within a block or so are needed as well. Phone and internet are plusses. An indoor space would be most effective since it would provide shelter from weather, but an outdoor space could work as well if there's a shed to store tools and such, and if there aren't concerns about damage to grass.
Recruit A Volunteer	Find a friend who can help with one of our volunteer tasks! There's obviously a wide variety of expertise that we need, and many projects have small time commitments. If you think you know someone who might be able to help, please speak to them and ask!
Grant Research	Help do research, under our guidance, to find grants which TSI might be good candidates for.	Prior experience writing grant applications would be a bonus.	3-5 hours

Some Urgency

Project/Role	Description	Special qualifications	Estimated time	Target completion date
Weekly Research Topic Moderators	Our Weekly Research Program uses our web forums to organize seasteading community members to do effective research on seasteading-related topics. Each week, a volunteer moderator selects a research topic (we have a list of several, or you can come up with your own), facilitates a discussion, and does a wiki writeup of the results. You can sign up to be a moderator in the "Proposed" section of the program's wiki page.		2-8 hours each week
Website Marketing Consultant	The website content could use some revisions to make the idea of seasteading seem more understandable and appealing, particularly to a broader audience. A pretty good assessment is here. There are a number of volunteer projects in this vein; this one targets website content.	Experience designing inspiring/sticky marketing, preferably with small non-profits.	5-10 hours
Constitutional/Legal Systems For Seasteads	How might new governments on seastead communities function? What rights will individuals have, and how far will powers of new governments extend? These questions will ultimately only be answered by new communities as they form, but exploring and documenting the implications of various systems might help some of those communities get off on the right foot. It can also increase public awareness now of what this new world will have to offer. We're looking for individuals who want to self-organize into researching and documenting this in a more formal manner.		Varies
Supporting Blogger	One way to try to drive web traffic to The Seasteading Institute is for other blogs to link to us. If you have a blog, or would be interested in starting one, that covers seasteading-relevant issues or technologies (e.g. Blue Economy), you can help. The idea here is to try to grow your readership independently, and link back to TSI's main site when you can.		Varies
Second Life Seasteading Socials Organizer	We've started to do occasional meetups in Second Life. We could use somebody who's familiar with the Second Life world and technology to organize things for us -- get meeting places set up, provide newbie-friendly instructions and support to those interested in attending, and so on. These socials would be similar to the current face-to-face Bay Area socials, and would be used for pitching seasteading, updating the community, networking, finding volunteers, etc.	Experience with Second Life	5 hours/month
Bay Area Seasteading Social Hosts	We're looking for people to who might be willing to host our monthly socials. These are used for pitching seasteading, updating the community, networking, finding volunteers, etc.	A venue that can accomodate 30+ people	5 hours total for limited coordination, and to attend the social itself
Regional Associates	These are unofficial roles where you agree to help out with a particular country. We might direct press inquiries from that country to contact you for a quote or interview, ask you to translate or summarize local articles, or for a couch to crash on if we come visit :). There are not currently any projects to be done here, but we are gathering a list of interested names so that we have them when things come up.

Lower Urgency

Project/Role	Urgency (1-3, 1=high, 3=some)	Description	Special qualifications	Estimated time	Target completion date
Your Own Idea	Have an idea how you could help that's not on this list? Drop us a line at volunteers@seasteading.org with your ideas and relevant experience.
Top 10 Reasons To Live On A Seastead	Add clever/funny suggestions to our list of Top 10 Reasons To Live On A Seastead, and vote on existing suggestions. We are printing a t-shirt based on this list, and will revise the t-shirt as the list changes.

Volunteer Opportunities, Listed By Skillset

Administrative

Volunteer Coordination Help
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Coordinator
Second Life Seasteading Socials Organizer
Website Community Manager
2009 Conference Volunteers
Administrative Assistant

Legal

Ephemerisle Research
Constitutional/Legal Systems For Seasteads

Engineering

Ephemerisle Research

Strategic

Establish Scientific Advisory Board

Software

Website Drupal/PHP Developer
Website System Administrator

2-D Art / Design

2-D Graphic Designers

3-D Design / Graphics

We use a Google Groups mailing list to distribute small 3-D design/graphics projects.

Video

Video Producer

Marketing & PR

Website Marketing Consultant
Website Publicity Associate
Presentation Coaching
Media Coaching
Wikipedia Maintainer

Writing & editing

Supporting Blogger

Publishing Help

Help Find A Book Publisher

Anybody

Recruit A Volunteer
Sunnyvale-area Workshop Space
Weekly Research Topic Moderators
Organizational Outreach
Grant Research
Bay Area Seasteading Social Hosts
Regional Associates
Top 10 Reasons To Live On A Seastead
Your Own Idea

Volunteer Opportunities, Listed By Strategic Area

Community Projects

Community Projects: Community Building

Ephemerisle Research
San Francisco Bay Area Chapter Coordinator
2009 Conference Volunteers
Organizational Outreach
Second Life Seasteading Socials Organizer
Bay Area Seasteading Social Hosts

Community Projects: Website

Website Drupal/PHP Developer
Website System Administrator
Website Publicity Associate
Website Community Manager
Website Marketing Consultant

Community Projects: Publicity

Website Publicity Associate
Presentation Coaching
Media Coaching
Supporting Blogger
Wikipedia Maintainer

Community Projects: Other

Video Producer
2-D Graphic Designers
Regional Associates
Top 10 Reasons To Live On A Seastead

Research Projects

Ephemerisle Research
Help Find A Book Publisher
Sunnyvale-area Workshop Space
Establish Scientific Advisory Board
Weekly Research Topic Moderators
Constitutional/Legal Systems For Seasteads

Engineering Projects

Ephemerisle Research

Other Projects

Volunteer Coordination Help
Recruit A Volunteer
Grant Research
Administrative Assistant
Your Own Idea