VolunteerList

TSI Volunteering Info

We also have a Volunteer Email List which we notify when there are urgent projects or major changes to the list below. Please join it if you're interested in helping us out!

Thanks for your interest in helping us out! A few general notes about our volunteer program:

We're looking for people to help grow the seasteading movement, as opposed to the skills for living on a seastead, since, well, there aren't any seasteads yet.
Volunteer positions are unpaid (the rare exceptions will be stated).
If you are interested in helping out, please:
- FillOutYourProfile skills on your seasteading.org account, if you have one.
- Add your name to any skills lists you're interested in.
- Link your name to your seasteading.org profile (if you have one) with {{U|your_username}}, as you can see in the existing entries. We can get your email address from that. Otherwise, add some way that we can contact you.
- Add any details, like special skills / qualifications that aren't in your profile skills section.
- Email us if there's an open project you'd like to take on.

By Skills

This section is organized by the skills we are looking for. Some of these are areas where we have no projects in mind yet, but expect them to come up (for example, graphic design projects come up regularly). Others include references to projects below.

Feel free to add new skills to the Miscellaneous section at the end. Please don't add/edit skills in earlier sections!

Unskilled / Anyone

These are general community-feedback projects that everyone can pitch in on:

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.

Art / Design

2D Graphic Design

Dean Landolt - Graphic design (Photoshop, Illustrator). Modeling (AutoCAD, Sketchup). I've done both professionally, but being a F/OSS developer I really ought to hone my design chops with the Free toolchain anyway.
[1] - Helen Lein - MA Interdisciplinary Studies from ESC NY - focus on Flow and Creativity, BA Technology Education. Better with words than pictures! Can provide help in content, layout, editing, proofreading, document design and layout, fact-checking. Will maintain records and data using Excel.

3D Modeling / Design / Animation

Paul Spooner - Blender Modeling (also Gimp and Inkscape)
ajtaka - Blender Modeling, svg coding, vector drawing
xoid - 3d graphics (povray.org)
Jesrad - Second Life and Wings3D modeling
Dean Landolt - Graphic design (Photoshop, Illustrator). Modeling (AutoCAD, Sketchup). I've done both professionally, but being a F/OSS developer I really ought to hone my design chops with the Free toolchain anyway.
Kenetor - BSc 3D Modeling and Animation, use 3ds max, vray, combustion. will do images in 3D for free, animations i would want to be paid for depending on the content and length.

Architectural Design

Charles Lee - Masters Degree in Architecture from California College of Art in SF. Sent portfolio, and would need to be paid.
Wendy Sitler-Roddier - Wife of Dominique Roddier, one of our engineering consultants, a professional in architecture design, doing some paid design work for TSI.

Marine Science Academic

(this is one of our rare paid positions)

Chief Scientist / Director of Research. Establish our academic research program, most likely working in conjunction with existing academic institutions (MBARI, Woods Hole, Scripps...) to share facilities and equipment (since we'll be very small to start). Get grants and conduct research relevant to our mission of establishing permanent ocean communities. Develop collaborative relationships with other academics in marine science, ocean engineering, and related fields. Be the scientific face of The Seasteading Institute for interviews, at conferences, etc.

Programming

Drupal Programmers

We have many small website projects available for those with Drupal/PHP experience, see Website Projects

Mathijs Koenraadt of Morningtime Internet Agency
Arto Bendiken
Dean Landolt - I've hacked around with Drupal -- I'm not expert but I know me some PHP.

GIS Programmers

We have several projects in mind to add more interactive geodata to the website, see Website Projects

Golovco Anatolie

Perl/Python Programmer

We have some scripting projects.

Brian Mendenhall

Publishing: Authors / Book Agents

Project: Publish Seasteading Book

Miscellaneous

By Projects

Volunteer work goes a lot better if you're excited about the project, so here are some of the specific projects we have in mind.
If one looks like fun and you have the relevant skills, please email us - volunteers@seasteading.org.
Because of the nature of volunteer-based work (people flake, you can't tell how reliable they are in advance, their free time and interest fluctuate) we prefer to give people projects (temporary) rather than roles (permanent). But some things are naturally roles.
There will be more projects available in the future, check back here later.

Community

Website

Site Associate

You would administer our Drupal website, moderate comments, watch for broken links on the site, report on web traffic and referrals. Website administration experience, some HTML / programming skills required. Ideally you'd also manage / coordinate of volunteers - the whole website would be your baby, and you'd help Patri brainstorm / prioritize feature requests, and coordinate volunteers (and occasionally professionals) in getting them implemented. Alternately, that aspect could be handled by the Volunteer Coordinator.

Offered so far (Thanks a ton! We will assign this soon):

thebastidge
Daniel Morgan
Brian Mendenhall
Patrick Moelands - Webmaster at a company, 10+ years web design, 5 years linux experience.

Wiki Administrator

(Handled by joep)

Guide the direction of the wiki, encourage people to use it, refactor the content, structure the content, fight spam, etc.

Secret GIS Project

This is a fun idea we'd like to keep secret, which would involve a moderate amount of GIS programming, in conjunction with an online store, and some visual displays (Google Maps, Google Earth KMZ output, etc.). It might produce some revenue (that you could share in) and publicity. You can use any platform you want for serving the data, but it will need to talk to our Drupal site for user information. We'd probably be willing to pay for this, since it is potentially revenue-generating and should be high-quality.

Little Drupal Projects

Lots of ideas: (coming soon - need to transcribe from elsewhere)

Non-Programmer Website Projects

Pretty Front Page - We want to replace the current image & Mark Twain quote on the front page w/ a slowly-updating slideshow with a variety of quotes and images. Perhaps make a screensaver version as well. You'd be responsible for finding inspiring, royalty-free artwork relevant to us (ocean scenes, ships, oil platforms, wind turbines...) and appropriate quotes. Ideally, you'd also find good images for other sections of the site. Some minimal graphic design experience (2D photoshop work) desired, so you can combine quotes and images nicely. A different volunteer would write the code to actually rotate in the images you find.

Site Publicity Associate

You would manage our blogroll, try to get reciprocal links, and try to grow blog/website traffic by posting blog entries to relevant places (forums, link-sharing sites) and emailing them to prominent bloggers (when appropriate). One part of this could be to start a blog of your own covering news about seasteading-relevant technologies, something like Blue Economy, which would try to grow independently and link to the main site frequently. You'd also analyze our search traffic, figure out how we were getting it and how we could get more, that sort of thing. SEO/blogging/promotion experience is a plus. This could be sliced into multiple projects if you only want to take on part of it.

Improve Book Beta Webpage (Perl/Python programmer)

(Someone took this on but I haven't heard from them in months, so it is probably available)

The Book Beta is generated using Scrivener and MultiMarkDown. The MMD outputs a single large XHTML file. Since it is XHTML, it is cleanly structured (book hierarchy is reflected in H1, H2... hierarchy), and should be easy to parse. We want it split into sections, with TOCs/headers/footers added, and forward/back/up/down links. Much like the Book Alpha, but going 1-2 levels deeper in splitting (sections, not just chapters). This script will become part of our pipeline for the "live" version of the book - it will continuously evolve in Scrivener, and periodically get exported to HTML and PDF for printing.

Socials / GTGs

2008 Conference Coordinator(s)

(Filled by crasch)

We could use more help with the conference - contact conference@seasteading.org and Chris will find projects for you!

Bay Area Seasteading Socials Coordinator

Work with Patri & Joe to schedule, organize, and run monthly GTGs in the SF Bay Area. These are used for pitching seasteading, updating people, networking, getting volunteers, etc.

Ephemerisle

Ephemerisle is a sort of Burning Man-like festival to be held in international waters. We're thinking about July 4th, 2009, off San Diego / LA for the first one. We'll need lots of volunteers! We'll do initial planning in a session at our first annual conference, so if you are interested, please come.

General

Volunteer Coordinator

(Filled by jhogan)

With Patri, identify TSI projects that can be helped / implemented by volunteers, prioritize them, find people to take them on, and manage/monitor progress.

Establish Membership Program

We'd like to start a membership program where people pay annual dues in return for schwag, recognition, and other perks. You'd help us define, operate, and grow the program. Experience designing/running such things is a plus. (If not, we have a book you can learn from).

People:

fredaron - I'll read the book
Thorizan - As will I. I'd like to do what I can to help here. This looks like a great endeavor.

Marketing Associate

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. We're looking for someone with experience designing inspiring/sticky marketing, preferably with small non-profits, to help us. We'd use this messaging places like: the website, in talks, in interviews, in the book, etc. Basically, work with Patri to make seasteading sound cool and awesome, rather than weird and scary :). And to appeal to a broad audience, not just crazy libertarians.

julias will help out with this some.

Schwagster

Handle seastead-themed merchandise. Work with volunteer designers to make designs, sell them in online stores, etc.

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 :).

Australia
- Temujin - perhaps regional ambassador for Australia and/or Asia. I should be able to handle translation to Chinese.
Brazil
- João Leite - I live in Brazil and I have experience with public speaking, I speak Portuguese (native), English, Spanish (fluent) and German (advanced).
Denmark
- lasse-birk-olesen- I can currently go to all of Denmark, Southern Sweden, and Northern Germany and evangelize in Danish and English, orally and in writing. I have experience in speaking to an audience.
Finland
- ajtaka
Italy
- Pippolo
Netherlands
- eelco, Joep
New Zealand
- ferrouswheel
France
- jesrad
United Kingdom
- NoDachi - Located in the Midlands, can be a regional correspondent or researcher. Can offer floor space if needed ;)
Venezuela / Mexico
- njquintero - I am able to manage a regional group and organize conferences.

Research

Establish Research Program

We're looking for someone with academic experience in fields like oceanography / offshore engineering / marine science fields to help us hire a full-time Chief Scientist. You would help us write the job req, post it to appropriate places, and evaluate potential candidates. There might also be the opportunity for an ongoing role in assisting the CS in finding grant opportunities and performing research.

Establish Scientific Advisory Board

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.

Research Maritime Law

We have a volunteer experienced w/ international maritime law (helped negotiate the UN Law of Sea treaty under Reagan), and we need someone to coordinate with him on research and interpret his answers. You'd work with Patri to help define the questions that we need answered, and then work with Ray (and possibly do some research on your own) to answer them. The result would be published on the site, and might also be suitable for publication in a legal journal, or use as a thesis - at least one past Masters Thesis has covered a similar topic http://www.seasteading.org/seastead.org/localres/misc-articles/kardol1999.html.

Some legal experience is necessary - a law student or currently practicing lawyer would be ideal.

zavislak - I'll have the ability to do independent research for law school credit during the next two years. I'll see what I can come up with on my own, but if you have any suggestions about particular topics, let me know!

Turn Book into PDF for printing

(Done by DanB)

Web Research