358 replies to this topic

[bacopa]

William Shatner may be a better choice. Plus I like him better.

Wow, I would be so excited to speak to him.

I believe Shatner, and I might be wrong, spoke at a Transvision conference a while back. Can anyone verify this? So he may well be all about the cause already, although, if he is, he certainly hasn't mentioned it on any talk shows.

I'd be curious to see if I'm right or wrong about this one.

[bacopa]

If you go with higher profile celebrities then I would use the criteria of finding those that have made mention or immortality or cryonics or not wanting to die, and things like that first, like Shatner. It might take many hours of clever googling, but I think you would be able to find a variety of shining gems of candidates that way.

Or you can continue with the school boards and get a better letter for the next round, or we or I can recruit somebody to continue the school boards on the side.

Or you can find an a through z listing of science professors for an ending aging book send out, or an a through z listing of english professors for a lifequest book send out. We have life quest, we would need to come up with $ for ending aging books.

Or you can target low level under the radar vip's of any sort, you wouldnt need to find those with mention of not wanting to die and stuff like that, because lower level vip's are the kind of people that want to stay active, want to stay connected, seen, they still have some more connections, and they are more likely to take any kind of publicity they can.

I whole heartedly agree that mid to higher level celebs we should go with those who have expressed interest in this stuff. So now I'm questioning whether to even bother with Matt Damon, Brad Pitt etc. In fact I'm thinking it would be a waste of time, as they would not go on our update, but maybe if we sent them an H+ book they MAY express interest, along with a letter I mean.

We can continue the school boards on the side, with a particular emphasis on colleges and uni's as Morganator, and Vgamer1 both agreed that they would be more receptive to this stuff.

I think we should NOT go randomly through lists of professors, and instead target one's some of us know, or if you know at least some specifics about these professors.

Don't think immortality and cryonics will do much for their publicity...sorry, we have to find celebs, as you said, who are interested in the cause.

[bacopa]

ok, so I vote to contact Jarice Hanson the chair of the Comm dep. at UMass Amherst.

for the celeb, unless I'm wrong about Shatner speaking at Transvision, then we should do some research into low to mid level celebs who either 1) have expressed interest in the cause or 2) are of at least a free thinking variety.

as for high school lists, go ahead, we can continue to do this, along with, targeting college's and uni's. Although my vote is to strategically picking college's and uni's that seem progressive, and open to radical sciences. But this could include MIT, Harvard etc. As this is not B.S. stuff we're talking about here.

In fact I recently joined a humanist group at Harvard University and the contact there told me most humanists are interested in transhumanism. So perhaps we could get the head of Harvard humanist chapter to speak...that would be a shoe in I bet. This would fit right in with Cyberbrains idea of collaborating with like minded groups.

So sometime this week I think we should have a meeting via Skype, gtalk, or imminst.chat with Portal, Vgamer, and Morgenator to further solidify who we wish to pick.

Edited by dfowler, 30 September 2009 - 01:53 AM.

[bacopa]

Ok Portal, I hear you and you know our thinking on Alabama high schools too. But I'm still ok with contacting as many schools, be it high schools, or whatever, if you sincerely think that's a tappable market.

I wrote down the info you gave for the meetings and I'll be sure to have one per week via Skype, gtalk, or even at imminst chat room.

I guess I can just copy paste the quoted letter and paste it to a word document.

Now we have to decide which schools we are going to send letters to.

Morganator has agreed to talk on the phones, I believe, and I'll stay on top of this one.

I recommend UMass and some other college's and uni's for Oct.

I know what you mean but what negates your Alabama arguement is that we are going down the whole list. This isnt about Alabama school boards, this is about covering every single one of them from A to Z.

Before each meeting, send out a cc to all the people that we have found to be interested in this project and invite them to it. Invite Ben and Shannon too.

Dont print out that Alabama school board letter. Like I wrote, I am sending them out. I already sent them out.

If you want to target universities then I would suggest looking for a listing of a through z english departments for the lifequest book, which we have here, or if you want to try to get funds for ending aging books then look for an a through z listing of science departments or clubs or something like that. I would try to find an a through z though so you can keep track of it as you hit every one on the list over time.

Vgamer is in for the phones, Morganator hasnt even came on board yet, Im just hoping they will.

I'm not remembering who Ben is right now, maybe I'm just drawing a blank. Right now it's you, me Vgamer1, maybe Morgenator, and Shannon.

I'll look for English or Philosophy departments in college's and uni's. I've already begun a search. However you only have 100 LifeQuests books, can you get more free?

My opinion is that in order to do this right we need to send a copy of Ending Aging to show we are all about science. So it is my recomendation that first priority in targeting uni's and college's is selectivley picking one's who we think would be interested in what we have to say. Then we can send them a copy of Ending Aging paid from the treasure chest.

If you DO get several more hundred copies of LifeQuest free then I would be happy to randomly or selectivley pick English and Philosophy uni level departments.

Since, however, you don't presently have that many books, I vote for this round we target specific college science and or philosophy and English depts. and send a copy of Endng Aging and LifeQuest maybe.

I will copy this into October goals where it belongs.

[bacopa]

It seems that along with going down the A through Z list of high schools, we can do at least more than one college/uni for this round. I'm not crazy about randomly going down a list because we only have so many LifeQuest books, and even if Portal can get more I think that would be more appropriate for high schools.

My recommendation for targting college's and universities, would be to selectively find science departments at these schools or even philosophy departments, since Transhumanism is a philiosophy as well. After selecting which schools to pick, we can then send them a copy of Ending Aging, and another book like imminst's own SCOD book. I'm particularly excited about contacting my ex prof, and the president of the Harvard Humanist Society.

I could also contact Cornell's science/philosophy depts, and Skidmore's, as dad went to Cornell, and I started off at Skidmore.

Obviously this could give me an in. So volunteers, by all means if you have any sort of connection to your college's then please tell us about it.

The rest I'll work on and, as always, would appreciate any suggestions for college level departments that you guys could think of.

Cyberbrain, I'm sorry that I didn't clearly agknowledge that you are on this team too now.

Edited by dfowler, 30 September 2009 - 03:14 AM.

[brokenportal]

I'm not remembering who Ben is right now, maybe I'm just drawing a blank. Right now it's you, me Vgamer1, maybe Morgenator, and Shannon.

I'll look for English or Philosophy departments in college's and uni's. I've already begun a search. However you only have 100 LifeQuests books, can you get more free?

My opinion is that in order to do this right we need to send a copy of Ending Aging to show we are all about science. So it is my recomendation that first priority in targeting uni's and college's is selectivley picking one's who we think would be interested in what we have to say. Then we can send them a copy of Ending Aging paid from the treasure chest.

If you DO get several more hundred copies of LifeQuest free then I would be happy to randomly or selectivley pick English and Philosophy uni level departments.

Since, however, you don't presently have that many books, I vote for this round we target specific college science and or philosophy and English depts. and send a copy of Endng Aging and LifeQuest maybe.

I will copy this into October goals where it belongs.

Ben offered to help a while ago in one of these vip topics. Try to find a through z listings of those university departments from across the US, so the shipping is with in our range.

Fowler, if you want to use just Ending Aging then thats fine, but your going to have to get on the ball then and make sure you have the money secured for it. If you can afford 3 copies of Ending Aging this month then there you go. You still have to send me Maher and Dawkins addresses. I know you didnt have the ability to last week, but send them now as soon as you can. Do you know when youll be able to send me those addresses? Wait, didnt you send the letters to them? What addresses did you send the letters to? Send me those addresses so I can send those books out. Ill do it as soon as you send them to me.

What is just as important as getting good letters written and getting Ending Aging sent out more often is that we get results tallied up for this team. We have to keep results coming in, and the bigger the results the better. This will generate more confidence in people for this team, and we need that on many levels.

I have 100 copies of LifeQuest. We dont need more copies right now. We need to disseminate these before we get more. I sent out 18 letters to school boards in Alabama. I sent only a letter to 15 of them, and I sent a copy of LifeQuest and the letter to the other 3. So at this rate, we could do about 30 rounds, 30 months, of this before we run out of books. If a school requests more books like we have suggested to them in the letter, then we'll try to secure a funding source to order 30 more to be shipped directly to them at that point. If we cant do that then we'll send them 30 of these. If we dont have 30 of these left then we'll wait till we get a funding source, however long that may be. I can save the money for it.

[brokenportal]

William Shatner
Janice Hanson
Head of Harvard Humanist Chapter

Your the project leader of this team. If you agree with those three then lets lock in right now. Can you get the addresses for those three and put them in here? When can you have those three addresses put in here?

How about if we start in on universities more fully when/if we can find an A through Z listing of English department (or similar) contacts, and science department (or similar) contacts. I would avoid philosophy departments because their very nature is to just "ya but this" "ya but that" everything.

As for school boards, lets put those on the side for now, until we can recruit another person for this team to focus in on just that.

I had said that any lower level celebrities should do, but on second thought, if we go with any of those in the future, lets try to google for ones in that category who have mentioned immortality or not wanting to die or something like that first too.

[brokenportal]

We did the 20 school board contacts for this months goals. It is all done now.

This months goals are complete.

Topic now closed. Keep up the good work VIP Outreach Team.

Now on to October.

[bacopa]

William Shatner
Janice Hanson
Head of Harvard Humanist Chapter

Your the project leader of this team. If you agree with those three then lets lock in right now. Can you get the addresses for those three and put them in here? When can you have those three addresses put in here?

How about if we start in on universities more fully when/if we can find an A through Z listing of English department (or similar) contacts, and science department (or similar) contacts. I would avoid philosophy departments because their very nature is to just "ya but this" "ya but that" everything.

As for school boards, lets put those on the side for now, until we can recruit another person for this team to focus in on just that.

I had said that any lower level celebrities should do, but on second thought, if we go with any of those in the future, lets try to google for ones in that category who have mentioned immortality or not wanting to die or something like that first too.

Portal, I'll google William Shatner and Transvision, cause I thought he was a keynote speaker there.
I'll input Jarice Hanson's contact info into Wiki
I'll also input president of Havard Humanist Association into Wiki

It will be done by tomorrow afternoon.

If Shatner is already on board, then of course I'd like to go with another Celeb, maybe Seth Green or David Duchovany as they are both affilliated with scifi shows, and my hunch is they'd be good for this round.

I'll keep you posted.

[brokenportal]

What do you mean in the wiki? Is there a wiki page for this team? I forget. Why dont we just use the forum? We can keep their addresses here in a topic.

If I were you I would stick with Shatner, but its up to whoever you get in by the end of the first week, or sooner, the sooner the better. Shatner may be on board with transhumanism, but we dont know about indefinite life extension. And even if he is on board with indefinite life extension, hes not on board at imminst or sens or mf yet that I know of. You could tailor a letter to try to get him to come to the forum, to come on a show, to possibly get in on skype meetings, etc...

[bacopa]

What do you mean in the wiki? Is there a wiki page for this team? I forget. Why dont we just use the forum? We can keep their addresses here in a topic.

If I were you I would stick with Shatner, but its up to whoever you get in by the end of the first week, or sooner, the sooner the better. Shatner may be on board with transhumanism, but we dont know about indefinite life extension. And even if he is on board with indefinite life extension, hes not on board at imminst or sens or mf yet that I know of. You could tailor a letter to try to get him to come to the forum, to come on a show, to possibly get in on skype meetings, etc...

Ok, yes VIP has a wiki found at the main VIP page in VIP Outreach.

It has been confirmed that Shatner did speak at Transvision 07 I believe. I'm sure he already knows about indefinite life extension, cryonics, and the like. But we could ask him to chat with us on the Sunday Evening update.

So I inputed Seth Green's snail mail, and supposed phone number in the imminst wiki.
I also inputed Jarice Hanson's email into the wiki
and I inputed the contact for the Harvard Humanist site in there as well. By directing our questions to this general contact address at HHA, we will then be able to target the key or key leaders of this association.

I would like to keep the addresses inputed in the Wiki here at imminst because that's what we've been doing all along.

So maybe for this month we'll also include Shatner, as it couldn't hurt, but seeing as he is already familiar with H+ causes I'd like to get others input on this one. But sure, I'll put him in the wiki

[bacopa]

I'm not to keen on the idea of going down a list A through Z of Uni's and college's until we have secured strong funding for books like Ending Aging, and I'm against using LifeQuest for higher education, as I just don't think it would work well, and is better suited to high schools.

So, I'm going to continue to research and contact college's/uni's that we here at imminst think would be privy to the cause, and any personal affiliation with these schools is even better.

So for this month UMass, and Harvard Humanist, and if anyone wants to throw in their personal favorites then I will work paying for copies of Ending Aging with anyone who is willing to help me with them.

[Logan]

I'm in for making phone calls to publicists, agents, and managers of celebrities/hollywood actors.

[Vgamer1]

OK, Devon. I said I'd do this, so here it is...

I'm volunteering to speak to William Shatner when we get his contact information. Shatner was in the Transcendent Man trailer

I'm also a big fan!

I'm writing up brainstorming ideas now in a google doc. I want to be well-prepared before I talk to him, with notes, scripts, etc.

Devon, PM me or otherwise contact me with updates on how close you are to actually reaching him. Lifespeed

[bacopa]

OK, Devon. I said I'd do this, so here it is...

I'm volunteering to speak to William Shatner when we get his contact information. Shatner was in the Transcendent Man trailer

I'm also a big fan!

I'm writing up brainstorming ideas now in a google doc. I want to be well-prepared before I talk to him, with notes, scripts, etc.

Devon, PM me or otherwise contact me with updates on how close you are to actually reaching him. Lifespeed

Ok I sent you a PM...let's you me and Portal discuss this tomorrow, being Tuesday the 6th or Wed, 7th.

Also we should have our first meeting deciding on this months VIP picks tomorrow.

[brokenportal]

August is complete. Im adding this capper here in late, and closing this topic.

We sent letters out to Larry King,

Richard Dawkins,

and Bill Maher.



We also sent Dawkins and Maher each a copy of Ending Aging. Im not sure what the status on what might have been sent out to Larry King is.

[bacopa]

Quick update: I sent an email out to my Communications Proff, Jarice Hanson. I briefly talked about what we are about and asked her nicely if she would like to chat on our show.

Next is Harvard Humanist Chapter

[bacopa]

I contacted Harvard Humanist Group via their contact email. I will find out soon if this is the best one to contact, or if there are other specific people I should be attempting to contact.

So I have contacted two people/groups thus far for this month. Vgamer1 is focusing on writing a letter to William Shatner. We can do this eveyone, and make this a reality!

[bacopa]

I'm realizing that we should have enough time for at least one other VIP and maybe more? I was thinking mid level VIP's for this one. Someone mentioned Tony Robbins, I think he might be a good mid to high level VIP that we could contact. Also maybe Seth Green and anyone have any other suggestions? Again the key, of course, is if their managers, publicists, or agents read the letter and think the VIP will be interested. So far we have heard nothing back from anyone.

I'm also still waiting to hear about anyone that would like to participate with me in signing up for Contact Any Celeb. It's expensive like $27.00 a month but includes email, phone and snail male. I'll even pay for 2/3'ds of it!

[Vgamer1]

First draft of the letter to Shatner is done:

http://www.imminst.o...o...c=33768&hl=

[Jenn]

One professor who might help out is Felicia Nimue Ackerman, professor of philosophy at Brown University. In these two letters to the NY Times, she openly supports life extension:

http://www.nytimes.c.../...nyt&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.c...TTERS.html?_r=1

She also teaches a class called Philosophical Issues About Human Longevity.

[bacopa]

One professor who might help out is Felicia Nimue Ackerman, professor of philosophy at Brown University. In these two letters to the NY Times, she openly supports life extension:

http://www.nytimes.c.../...nyt&emc=rss
http://www.nytimes.c...TTERS.html?_r=1

She also teaches a class called Philosophical Issues About Human Longevity.

Thank you very much Jenn, do you know how I could get her email address? Could I just go to Brown's website and find it there or do you have it?

[Jenn]

Her email is on the Brown website. It is Felicia_Ackerman@Brown.edu

[bacopa]

Ok this really sounds like a good pick for this month. I see that she supports life extension even if a person isn't in great health. I'll contact her I think.

[brokenportal]

We need to get Jarice and the Humanist president some snail mails and books too. Also preferably give them each a call, but we can settle on at least snail mails with books for now. Email just doesnt stand enough of a chance of cutting through the stacks of spam that everybody gets by the hundreds in their emails, and getting through.

[bacopa]

We need to get Jarice and the Humanist president some snail mails and books too. Also preferably give them each a call, but we can settle on at least snail mails with books for now. Email just doesnt stand enough of a chance of cutting through the stacks of spam that everybody gets by the hundreds in their emails, and getting through.

Um, I tend to think that emails are better for people like these. With HHA, I'll try to find the individuals that work there, so I'll send more out. I'll be happy to send some snail mails, but I'm just not sure they will respond, but I could have a go at it anyway.

[brokenportal]

Email is just so quick and doesnt stand nearly the same chance of getting through. A person spots 1 peice of mail out of 3 more easily than they do 1 email in 40.

Do you want to include a call with emails then? We can write that in to the guidelines if you think its a good idea. We could also consider setting it so that if the team does emailing for any given months primary goals that that goal goes up time 3. So say we just sent out emails to vips one month, we would then need to send out at least nine. Id much rather see you go with snail mails and calls with email as a supplement though. Although, you can set the tempo. Let me know how you want it set.

[bacopa]

From now on with every celebrity at least, we will call, email if we can find it, and snail mail them. This new site give numbers to managers, publicists, and agents, and usually every celeb has all three, sometimes with multiple agents. So this is an exciting opportunity to impress their agents. So we need people who are good on the phones.

Finally, on a non-sequitor, I think imminst should change it's name since everyone I've told I volunteer for Immortality Institute thought it was a joke, or that it was some cult! So I certainly vote to change the name. I think that could attract interested celebs more and other VIP's.

[bacopa]

Well it's the end of Oct. and we got Prof Ackerman to do a show. We also sent letters out to William Shatner, Jarice Hanson, and Harvard Humanist Association. I've been a busy with work plus I've been sick so I haven't called Harvard Humanist Association. Of course I will do this asap.

So for the beginning of September we should tie up loose ends for October goals as well as work on at least 3 more VIP's for this new month. I will start a September goals section.

[bacopa]

For November we are going to pick 3 new VIP's for the month, and if we have time we can always do more. Last month we targeted William Shatner, Jarice Hanson, Harvard Humanist Association, and Brown Prof Ackerman, and she agreed to do our show!

For this month we already have like at least 20 celeb contacts, but they are mostly very high profile, so we need a few more mid range, and even low profile ones. I still plan on calling Harvard Humanist Association in attempts to get one of them to do a show, and that's the only thing from last month I haven't done yet.

Here is the schedule for this month:


first week, pick Vip's
second week, write letters
third week, edit and send
fourth week, call and miscellenious

If there is a better system to implement for this month then I will, of course, consider that. Last month Vgamer1 started two threads one on his Shatner letter and another on VIP's he thinks we should target. We received a lot of responses on both threads, and we may have picked up at least one new volunteer.

If you'd like to volunteer for this project please sign up here. http://www.imminst.o...ect-t32784.html We need letter writers, people who will talk on the phone to managers, publicists, and agents, and people to edit other people's letters.

Edited by brokenportal, 23 November 2009 - 01:51 AM.