RECAP OF THE PAST MONTH: SUCCESSFUL OUTREACH!

The June meeting began with a recap of events since the last meeting, including the two talks at the Reuben Fleet Science Center presented by Gerry, Shannon, Dave, Jonathan, and John, the subsequent talk before the Shelter Island Rotary Club by Dave, Gerry and John, Stars in the Park with Gerry and John, and Dave's two radio interviews, one in for a scifi show in Kansas and the other on public radio in Dallas.

May was a very busy and successful month in terms of preaching to people beyond the usual space-advocacy community.

The Weekend Talks at the Fleet Science Center was free to anybody who already was at the center so we had some walk-in guests in addition to the guests who planned to attend. The Eyes on the Universe lecture was a ticketed event.

The Shelter Island Rotary audience consisted of a bunch of old military vets, who were really interested in our topic but knew nothing about it until our presentation.

The radio interviews got the message out to a mass audience in two different parts of the county, promoting not only the Mars Society and the concept of sending humans to Mars, but also promoting our own chapter's efforts, which sends out the message that regular people can do something to advance human space exploration here and now.

UPCOMING EVENTS

Comic-Con Guests and programming

Discussion eventually switched to upcoming events.

Our next major endeavor is Comic-Con. We will have two presentations and a table in the main hall again. Our first presentation will be on Friday and will be the usual MDRS program presented by our chapter members, but with the most recent information. San Diego provided two crew members to the Habitat, as well as provided a month of Mission Support.

The Sunday program will be our distinguished guests panel. This year's panel includes Star Trek star Nichelle Nichols, her companion and Rockwell guy Jim Meechan, "Robinson Crusoe on Mars" actor Victor "Friday" Lundin, columnist John Carter McKnight, and Malin space scientist Dr. Michael Caplinger.

The table at the Comic-Con will have our usual display but with updates to the images. We will try to make the table so it can be left unattended, but it would help ENORMOUSLY if people would agree to staff the table at times. Last year, during times the table was staffed, interaction with passersby prompted more people to look at our table and take informational flyers from the table. It would really help if we could get several volunteers to staff the table in shifts, even if it's only for an hour or so. The table will feature a 3-foot diameter helium balloon painted like Mars.

Our ongoing activities include Patrick and Gerry working on putting a rover together. They have the chassis and are working on the body. They hope to have the rover completed by August (and Mars Opposition).

The Spacesuit Team Assembles

We talked more about building our own analog space suit and designated a volunteer task force to get it done. Gerry has already some bought material for the helmet and backpack. Gerry gave Tim photos of the suit to show to a seamstress so we can get an idea what she would need to get it built. Gerry, Tim, and John volunteered to work on getting the space suit built. Bill Estep, who was not present, was volunteered to be on the task force because somebody at the meeting said he once mentioned some interest.

John has agreed to buy an inexpensive "hazmat" coverall out of a catalog that looks pretty much like a spacesuit as an alternative, or addition, to the canvas pressure suit like they use at MDRS and Flashline. It's under $10 so the risk that it won't be usable was deemed acceptable for the cost.

GOALS AND OBJECTIVES

General Discussion and "Subgroup" Goals

We've been discussing goals at the last several meetings but have not really agreed on any, other than to keep doing what we've been doing. The "PR subcommittee" has adopted one goal of having at least one PR placement about us in some kind of media somewhere on this planet (Earth) each month. A modest goal, but a goal nonetheless. The "rover team" has apparently adopted a goal of assembling the rover by August. The "spacesuit team" has now assembled with a goal of putting together a suit. A tentative but probably unrealistic goal is to have the suit completed by the time of the Comic-Con.

Despite the goals of these subgroups, our chapter has not adopted any chapter goals. We began the discussion for that in earnest at this meeting. The first topic we discussed was recruitment.

Recruitment Goals

An implied goal of all our PR activities has been to recruit members for the chapter. However, we have not done much at any event to close the deal on new members. We've been bringing water to the horses and letting them drink but we haven't saddled too many, to mangle a metaphor. We decided to work on some techniques to recruit members at the outreach events.

The first tangible suggestion is to have a sign-up sheet for informational emails at every event. Until now, we've directed interested people to our website and the mailgroup but this has required them to make the effort to find out more about us once they get online. With an email mailing list, we can proactively keep interested people informed of our regular activities thereby increasing the likelihood of more attendance and participation. Patrick volunteered to put together the sign-up sheet.

Patrick also volunteered to contact Mars Society HQ on a regular basis for names of any new Mars Society members who live in Southern California so we can contact those persons and invite them to attend our events and meetings. It has been our experience that new local Mars Society members are not always told by the Mars Society about our chapter's existence.

We already pass out 1/2 price membership sign-up forms at our events but we've been reluctant to actually sign people up at the events, presumably because nobody likes to ask somebody else for money.

Recruitment is an ongoing concern, so anybody is welcome to suggest ideas on how we can increase membership without being annoyingly aggressive about it. Ideas are also welcome on how we can increase participation by existing members. Post your ideas to our mailgroup or show up at the next meeting and discuss them there.

The Library has Come In

... but library books are still out and need to come home.

Jeff recently retrieved the chapter's library from Kelly and the library is now home at our meeting location. However, many of the books in the library remain checked out to members, and have been checked out for almost two years now. Please look for the Mars library books you might still have in your possession and bring them back with you when you attend the next chapter event, or make arrangements to return them.

Mars San Diego Web Store

Gerry said Cafe Press might be cutting off our web store. If anybody wants to buy something from the store, go ahead and do it. Buying items could help the store remain open. Gifts for our Comic-Con panelists will be purchased soon. The MARS SAN DIEGO WEB STORE is here.

NEXT MEETINGS

July 2nd is the next Stars in the Park.

July 10th is the next Monthly Meeting.

July 17-20th is Comic-Con International 2003.

July 25thth is the next Mars Movie Night - "Abbot and Costello Go To Mars" (1953).

Hope to see you all then.

-Dave Rankin