Notes from December 6, 2001 meeting. John, Jonathan, Gerry, Shannon, Kelly, and Dave attended. 1. We compared the TMS-SD merchandise purchased on cafepress.com. The t-shirts, sweatshirt, hats, and mugs all looked great. The quality of the tote bags and mousepads was inconsistent. The website address was very faint on Dave's order and the Mars picture on Shannon's totebag had a visible shadow. Gerry promised to upload a new picture to address the problem. 2. Shannon reported on her good fortune in being picked for the Mars Desert Research Station's shakedown run during the Christmas and New Years weeks. She said the duties will be just to make sure the habitat is properly operating and to do science recons of the surrounding terrain. She said she was looking forward to "being a biologist" for those two weeks. She promised to keep a diary for posting on the chapter's website. 3. We discussed our plans for our tour as Mission Control from mid-February to mid-March. Kelly reported that the Mars Society gave us the green light to design an experiment. Dave has contacted CalSpace at UCSD about that. We also discussed whether cocoa (chocolate) could grow in the MDRS greenhouse, perhaps with a tie-in to Mars candy company. 4. Gerry and John reported on Wednesday night's outreach at the Fleet Science Center. Gerry had his powerpoint presentation about water on Mars running. They talked to a number of people about Mars and the Mars Society and got varying reactions. People seemed most interested when told about specific projects run by the Mars Society and our chapter. 5. Jonathan promised to look into a speaker he has a contact with from the Smithsonian, who is an avid Mars enthusiast. Gerry said that the Fleet is willing to work with us in presenting speakers. 6. We tentatively decided to have a presence of some kind at ConDor on February 22-24, 2002. We also started making plans for next year's ComicCon. Our goal is to run two panel discussions with different themes: one more hard-science oriented and the other more artistically and science-fiction oriented. There was talk about trying to establish an on-line link to Flashline at the Con or to MDRS at ConDor. 7. Gerry also asked that people think about ways to improve the website and other outreach ventures. 8. We also discussed funding and organization of the chapter. 9. We decided to have Mars Movie Night on Friday, December 21 at 7 pm at Gerry's studio. This month's movie is Robinson Crusoe on Mars. Bring your dates, if you got 'em, and beverages to go with the popcorn Gerry will provide. 10. We concluded with two videos provided by Jonathan and Gerry. One about the founding convention of the Mars Society. The other was a silent video showing some of the construction and preparation by NASA of Mars Global Surveyor and Mars Odyssey for launch.
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