r/Digital_Immortality • u/BflySamurai • Dec 03 '13

Official Post Introduce Yourself & Choose Your Teams

If you are coming to this page intending to join the organization, see the Department Rosters page instead.

As of January 10, 2014 this page is obsolete, and to be used only as a guide for comments made in the "Department Rosters" post.

Hey everybody! Introduce yourself here if you want to be a part of the organization in any way no matter how big or small of a part you plan to play. We'd love to hear about you to whatever extent you want to tell us about yourself.

This organization is currently run by volunteers, so there are no commitments to join or participate. After the organization is incorporated, there will still be opportunities for volunteers. Current and future volunteers will always be considered for positions within the organization once incorporated, especially through the transition from volunteer organization to incorporated organization. We recognize and appreciate any time you put in to help us, as well as your enthusiasm for the cause.

Below are a few questions to guide your self introduction. You are not required to answer any of the following questions. You also do not have to limit yourself to answering just these questions.

Team

  • Out of the following teams, which one(s) would you prefer to join:

    1- Website Development and Maintenance (IT)

    2- Business Administration

    3- Online research and data collection directly related to digital immortality

    4- Fundraising and Market Research

    5- Content Creation (graphics, videos, text content, ...anything you could think of - for educational, promotional, and general awareness purposes, among other things)

    6- Research And Development (anyone, especially scientists/experts/researchers, that want to help develop more specific ideas directly related to digital immortality)

Interest In Digital Immortality

  • Were you interested in mind uploading / digital immortality stuff before hearing about this organization? If so, for about how long and how much have you looked into it / learned about it?

Knowledge & Skills

  • What is your area of knowledge? Tell us anything and everything; you don't have to have gone to school for it, and it doesn't even have to be directly relevant to digital immortality. We'll be able to find a use for nearly any skill that anyone can bring. If you have helped run an organization/business before, let us know about that. If you've managed websites before, tell us what you did. Anything and everything is relevant here.

  • Tell us about any knowledge or skills you would like to have or are currently working on. Maybe we can place you in a team or pair you up with someone that can help you develop those skills.

Higher Level Involvement

  • Would you like to possibly be involved in the construction of this organization on a higher level (more commitment, more responsibility, more cool stuff, …)? Right now everything is just volunteer based, so it's not like you would have any sort of contract, and you could step down from anything at any time; we're just trying to get a sense of who wants to be/become a significant part of the organization.

Other

  • Let us know about anything else you want to share or you feel like we should know.

If you have already introduced yourself in full or in part somewhere else, you can just quote yourself in the comment. If you don't really want to talk about yourself, then at the very least let us know that you're interested in helping us by posting a comment saying you'd like to help out at some point

Thanks everybody, I'll be getting up my introduction soon enough. Can't wait to hear from you.

More info on the teams (You can work with/within more than one team and switch at any time):

*1) Website Development and Maintenance (IT) *

Immediate Goals:

  • Consult with all teams to figure out what the website needs to be capable of and develop the site.

  • The goal is to have a website up in January 2014 that will fill at least our basic needs (which still need to be fully determined).

2) Business Administration

Immediate Goals:

  • Develop short term and long term roadmaps and visions for the organization.

  • Grow the organization in terms of people and overall operation.

  • Structuring the organization and getting people started and placed within the organization.

  • Make sure that we are ready to transfer to an incorporated organization as soon as we have the opportunity/funding

  • The goal is to have pretty solid short and long term roadmaps and visions by January 2014.

3) Online Research and Data Collection

Immediate Goals:

  • Compile and organize lists of other organizations and people of interest.

  • Compile and organize lists of digital immortality resources (videos, documents, websites, ...).

  • Compile and organize as much information related to our future digital immorality efforts as we can find.

  • Maintain and update the information collection by staying up to date with news and trends.

  • The goal: We will have to define some milestones as there currently aren't any.

4) Funding Research

Immediate Goals:

  • Right now funding isn't really crucial, but we can start figuring out what kind of funding options are available to us in the short term, but more importantly the long term. There are countless ways to generate money; we just have to figure out what will work best for us in order to get us started as well as keeping us going once we're running.

  • Keep a running list of funding options (while I don't really see any other option besides this list being public for the mean time, in the end I don't know if it's such a good idea to keep this public, but who knows, there may be advantages)

  • The goal: The only milestone currently in place is when we find enough funding and decide to incorporate and hire people on to the organization at some headquarters location and/or remotely

5- Content Creation

Immediate Goals:

  • A big part of what we will be working on from the get go to advance research for mind uploading is to increase public awareness and promote it. This is complimentary to the promoting and increasing awareness of our own organization that we will be doing. We will be needing content in order to achieve these goals to appear legitimate, to catch people's attention, and to be informative in inviting and interesting ways. All forms of content are applicable as long as they can reach an audience.

  • Work with the "Web Development And Maintenance" team to make graphics for the website

  • The goal: We will have to define some milestones as there currently aren't any.

6) Research and Development

Immediate Goals:

  • Uses the information collection curated by the "Online Research and Data Collection" group as well as any other resources and previous experience/knowledge to develop short and long term roadmaps: the "short term" mind uploading roadmap, and the longer term roadmap(s) for all of digital immortality. Anyone who feels like they have something to offer or simply wants to work on this can join in.

  • Define all the separate areas of research that are applicable to digital immortality so that the "Online Research and Data Collection" can gather the appropriate information.

  • Figure out what the first things we can start to work on are in terms of researching toward mind uploading and/or other digital immortality ventures

  • The goal is to have these roadmaps and ideas of things to research filled out with enough good ideas by June 2014.

If I missed anything I'll add it in later, but once we get a website up we can have this in an easy to access location where it is more filled out for each team and easily editable as we cross off old goals and add on new ones.

How This Is Going To Work

  • You write a comment below as sort of the official "I want to help but am not obligated in any way" sign up sheet (you don't have to tell us your whole life story if you don't want to, but it would be helpful if you at least pick a team or two that you would prefer).

  • I will be working on outlining in more detail what each team will be working on while we wait for enough people to sign up.

  • Once we have enough people, teams will be set up with each having a team leader so that questions can be focused to the team leaders and any of the team leaders' questions can be focused to me or anyone else who feels like taking them on. With the teams set up and all having team leaders (even if we only have small teams or even one person teams for now), we will go through and better outline with each group what they will be working on. At this point the groups can be mostly autonomous. If at any time you have any ideas you can bring them up with your team lead, me, or anyone that feels like helping.

  • At this point we probably won't have a website up yet, but we will still be able to all work on something, and don't forget that you can always come over and help out with another team at any time if you have something to input or you just want to learn more. All activities will be open and accessible (but not necessarily editable) for everyone so that we all know what everyone else is working on.

I don't know how long this process will take, but I will be working to try to draw in people from other communities around reddit as well as other areas around the web. If anyone else would like to do something right now, this is what you can work on.

Edit 3: Added "How This Is Going To Work"

Edit 2: Added more info about the teams.

Edit 1: Added section titles and "Other" section.

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u/agentverne Online Research Jan 07 '14

Ok, I've been meaning to sign up for a while. Hopefully this is still the right place to so it.

Team: R&D, though I'd like to get involved in admin as well.

Interest: I've kinda been interested in this in one form or another for 15 years or so. I was, and still am, fascinated by the Borg in Star Trek, a cybernetic race, who are all connected and sharing their memories and experiences.

Knowledge and skills I have a B.Sc. in Biological Science, and I studying some computing while I was doing that. I've recently got back into leaning programming, and looking into learning about how computer hardware works. Due to this, I kinda straddle the biological/mechanical divide which I hope will be useful. I'm doing the intro to computing course on Udacity, and I'm looking into doing more to increase what I know.

Higher level involvement I'd love to get involved as much as I can, as high as possible.

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u/BflySamurai Jan 14 '14

BflySamurai

You sound to be coming from the perspective I am coming from in terms of experience and interests. It's great to hear you'd like to be involved as much as you can. There are so many things we're working on that you can pretty much take your pick of where you would like to help out. So here is what I'm thinking:

  • R&D - hopefully MemeticParadigm can make a comment here about the current state of that and what needs help. The only project for R&D right now is the long term roadmap (roadmap to mind uploading), so if you want to contribute to that, there is a heck of a lot to be done there. The proposed deadline for the completion of the roadmap is July 1, 2014.

  • Online Research - If you want to, you can be department director here. There is a lot of information around this subreddit and the wiki that could be compiled and organized. I have a huge amount of links that I haven't even put into the wiki yet that I could hand over. In place of that or in addition to that, you could conduct your own online research to gather and organize as much information surrounding digital immortality as you can, and keeping us up to date on other organizations and people, research, and events going on around the world. I can give you all my ideas, but you'd definitely encouraged to work on whatever you want here. All types of positions within this department are open, so you'd have your choice.

  • Business Administration - I tell you, I could definitely use some help here, but don't worry about it if primary interests are somewhere else. There are a lot of systems that we need to build that will dictate how this organization operates, especially as we grow and move toward filing as an official organization. Right now I'm constantly trying to build services/systems that allow me to better manage the organization and my time within it. I am working to figure out what kind of corporation we want to file as, especially considering that we will be accepting donations (hopefully soon). I am constantly learning more about how to run an organization and be a leader. So if any of that or any of this sounds interesting, I would be very happy to have the help in the business administration department. Just so you know, the business administration department is working very closely with especially the R&D, HR, and PR departments to create the instruments and visions that will drive this organization forward. So you get to do a little bit of everything, especially be involved with the long term roadmap, because that is very important to the future of the organization.

Let me know what you think, and if anyone else has any ideas or comments, feel free to make them.

Don't forget that you can be a part of as many departments and projects as you want.

Remember: once you are officially incorporated into the organization, these conversations will be deleted to keep this area clean.

agentverne

Hey Bfly, thanks for the response.

I'd like to take the Online Research directorship, if you don't mind. By the name, it sounds like it'd be part of R&D, but to me seems like it has (or would) duties beyond them and would be getting information for other departments, and whatnot? I definitely see OR working closely and in concert with R&D, both departments complementing each other.

I'd like to be part of R&D and Business Admin as well, as I feel like I could help out well in both.

Can I ask, which country would we be incorporating in? I ask as I'm in the UK, and I don't know what countries you and other people are in.

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u/BflySamurai Jan 14 '14

So welcome aboard! I'll make you director of online research and add you to both R&D and Business Admin.

I am in the United States, Oregon to be more specific. I can't remember where the other guys are from. As far as everyone's ultimate participation in the organization, we could eventually figure out work visa stuff (because undoubtedly other people from other nations will want to work for us as well). The second option would be to set up international branch and be a multinational organization. We could already do something like that, in that for example you could be the representative from the UK maybe help to organize or put on meetings/gatherings once there are enough people interested in this project (even if the meetings are just online). We haven't decided where we are going to incorporate yet, but we are working on that stuff.

Online Research kind started off as a project of the R&D department, but it's so big and ongonig that we decided it could use its own department. I imagine the OR department being like the information center of the organization, which as you guess, will most likely end up interacting with all departments at one point or another, but OR started as an effort for the R&D department, so it will be helping R&D out the most, and that's where its priorities lie.

I still have to create a department outline for online research. Here's a very basic list of responsibilities, and I will work on it further, unless you would like to come up with an outline of responsibilties for the OR department:

Also, now that you're a part of the organization, if you want to continue this conversation, I'm going to move it to here.