I like your conference ambitions. There are a few people that are on the ball with imminst conferences, but a few more, like you, can help go a long ways. I like the idea of focusing in on raising money.
We do a lot of this in the forum, but we need to beef these discussions up, and I think probably need to do a lot more discussion on these types of things in the forum before moving on to potentially really big conferences. This would, like Mind alludes to, align pretty well with a 2010 general Imminst conference.
In your email list correspondence you posted there, Elliot@GRG says,
“A major part of the problem is that we lack a cohesive education and PR plan to build on. We have too many non-profit organizations in this field but, they work separately and do not pull together cohesively. Hence, very little is being accomplished in needed fund raising. And, there is no Masterplan or Mission which can be articulated to the Public in general and potential financial sponsors , in particular.”
One way that some of us are trying to tie all of us together more is to get as many of us life extension organizations as we can to share forum space at imminst under some version of a “Longevity Communities Network” title. Agevivo, jdkasinsky and I, plus a few others, through Longecity.com are developing some of those possibilities and collaborations now. So far one decent thing is that theres the Longevity Dividend for articulating this, but Im not sure that its aggressive and pointed enough for Advocacy & Research for Unlimited Lifespans.
There are a few plans, and master plans around covering various aspects of the cause, and in different stages of development.
The Max Life Foundation has their Manhattan Beach project coming along and continuing to develop, which encompasses support of other science projects like those working through the Methuselah Foundation. The Manhattan Beach project aims to attract philanthropists and investors to many of the projects that are most directly related to having the potential to advance indefinite life extension research. Some of us have been shopping around and from what I can see so far, Max Life seems like the best place to support from that angle on it, funding the research. I don’t have the most in-depth grasp on it, but most of us around here trust and support its main guy, Dave Kekich and know how committed and serious about this cause he is. If you look through this link http://www.maxlife.org/pdfs/mbp.pdf it looks like its components are coming together well. Page 27 is an example of how they are already moving into the realm of creating financial scenerios and packages for investors to consider. I suspect that the options and all of the rest of the plan already have further more detailed options and representatives set up or setting up for this.
They seem though to mainly be working to get funding for a set of projects that are already in place including things in the nanotech field, SENS, Organovo, (maybe AFAR?) and others. This doesn’t seem to leave enough room to help foster the growth of more peer reviewed and workable strategies to help create indefinite life extension and fight aging.
The following plan though encompasses those two things from our angle. This budding plan to inform the world is working to see if it can help us transition up through levels, one level at a time. Right now the fundraisers section and the take action system in the plan are aiming to facilitate larger incoming of donations, and to facilitate larger crowds of registered users, members, groups, projects, teams and just more people in general. We have places like Max Life in this equation, this fundraiser system has them as an option. There are a lot of pieces to this plan, like 24 hour info center for one, that help strengthen everything. At this time everything is looking pretty good to have these two pieces set up in the coming year or two. When that is done this plan proposes to prime the system with a healthy expenditure on advertising for Imminst with things like google ads, maybe a publicist, billboards, and whatever else we meet and work out and agree on at that stage.
That in turn should be able to help get us some more media appearances, and a much larger inflow of registered users and members, and consequently a larger inflow of donations, volunteer hours, and people to crowdsource with. The money will allow us to continue to hire more people in a variety of areas at that level. Right now we have around 50k, but at that level we would have more, maybe 200k, with which our options would expand and we can do a lot more. For example better and better publicists, engineer, and marketing companies in a variety of areas like this: http://mgive.com/Pricing.aspx
In addition to helping support major philanthropy and investment drives in the research like Max Life does, this plan aims to help facilitate the development of more strategies for places like Max Life to help attract investors for.
So please do help keep this plan to inform the world developing. Hopefully you can get in on helping to spear head the Imminst 2010 conference, and we could line up an agenda about this plan to inform the world off of the progress we make by the time of this conference, and we can invite people to it with this agenda in mind. For example maybe a few philanthropists that are in to this cause in at least some capacity that we could get to sit in and give feedback. We can put extra work into inviting and encouraging head people from all the longevity communities that we can, and so forth. I would expect to get at least 5 to 10 such people in addition to our regulars and I think you could make this kind of headway your looking for in this way.
I had heard of Max Life, but was unaware of it's very impressive Manhattan Project, outline. It seems to encompass most all aspects of anti-aging, and includes the indefinite lifespan time frame we all want. It's perfect that the plan focuses on genomics, including gene therapies, tissue and organ regeneration, stem cells, and the stem cell signaling which sounds like it could very well work out in a relatively timely timeframe, and there is lots of press, already, on tissue and organ regeneration. Emphasis on nanomedicine, genome re-engineering, and AGI, as well as SENS make it one of the best, if not the best proposals I have ever read. I see that they want to reverse aging by 2029, using Aubery's escape Velocity hypothesis. It's a bold proposal, and I would like to see how they are going to fund-raise, for this proposed project.
I don't see why their funding of some projects like Organavo "already in place" would negate funding for peer reviewed indefinite life extension projects, since that is their main point of focus.
As for the Davos conference proposal, I think it's an essential step towards funding for SENS, and MaxLife, and obviously if we can get as many anti-aging NPO's together for a conference, the brain power itself will surely bring about some great ideas for a fund-raising event.
the Longevity Communities Network I've said before, is a great idea, but I missed your point on how the Longevity dividend "articulates" what's going on with the LCN proposal? Maybe you can explain that to me.
I think the most important thing, besides much increased funding for SENS, and other orgs with agressive plans, is your "plan to inform the world." I have to come clean and say, bluntly, in my experience with VIP Outreach, I simply don't think email/snail mail will get through to the bigger celebs, obviously one potentially key way to help inform the world. But that is another discussion that we can have in private, and/or at Outreach.
When imminst does get money for advertising, maybe from your fundraising ideas, and take action, we can start to really "inform the world," through billboards, print, tv, you name it! The tricky part is getting the money, and I think it's essential for us to keep on developing a bigger and bigger membership at imminst/longecity. 15,000 registered users, and 7000 members, someone quoted me, and it's great, but perhaps the internetworking team could take it up a notch and get more people on board.
I am very excited with the name change, and the LCN idea, seemingly well underway.
Back to the conference idea. I think, replying to your point about we could do it all online, a conference is much better at getting people really invigorated and excited about the cause, and no I have not been to any, for reasons I've explained, but I know that a live, in person event simply having that person to person energy, imho, is really worth it, over a more casual online kind of thing, but, I could be wrong.
As the OP's post quoted, the anti-aging orgs really need a very talented PR person who could imo, maybe liason with different media, as well as, being exceptional at knowing how to attract wealthy philanthropists, and this should be a multi-person kind of project, imo.
I have always like the dedicated science section idea, and invite only, would ensure that the best of the best are working on problems they would be well trained in how to deal with.
In terms of funding for orgs like SENS, I liked Florin's idea about aligning with disease specific orgs, like the American Cancer Society, but Aubrey didn't think that idea would work, for some reason. I wonder if imminst could develop a section that would either be part of the invite only science section, or, it's own thing, focusing on disease specific problems of aging? It would be amazing if we could start attracting some big name orgs that focus on specifically one or two diseases.
Edited by dfowler, 22 September 2010 - 07:03 AM.
This topic is locked
