Dear Friam Colleagues,
I am writing to ask you to support the Santa Fe Complex. The Complex is Santa
Fes new center for education and innovation in the applied complexity
sciences. For Friam members within commuting distance to Santa Fe, it can be a
workplace where you come to share your skills and knowledge with your
colleagues and with the community. While you are getting your work done at the
Complex, you can also attend workshops and presentations from members of New
Mexicos complexity community and beyond. For those of you outside of New
Mexico, it can be your home a way from home during a visit to the Santa Fe.
Make the sfComplex your base of operations during a visit to the Santa Fe
Institute or to one of the nearby national laboratories. Or you might make it
your office during a work vacation, or a place to hide out from the kids during
a family vacation. For those of you who live too distant to visit,
www.sfcomplex.org can be a virtual meeting place, where you can join projects,
discussions, and workshops and download presentations and performances over the
internet as they occur.
Friam members in Santa Fe have been contemplating such an initiative for nearly
decade. The complexity workers of Santa Fe, and the many social, natural, and
physical scientists who have retired here, live amongst three world-class
centers of scientific an science and computational expertise. Yet, until now,
we have had no place to collaborate, to share our insights with the general
public and to welcome our colleagues from around the world. .
All that is changing. Last year, a unique building became
available in downtown Santa Fe. Formerly a workshop for refurbishing rail
cars, the main hall of this building has a vaulted ceiling with clerestories
that allow light to spill down on its adobe walls. In the few weeks that it
has been in use, the facility has already proved itself an elegant open-plan
workspace that can be adapted quickly for lectures, performances, workshops,
and exhibits. (See the descriptions of events and picture gallery at
www.sfcomplex.org/. Along with shade trees, plantings, ample parking and a
smaller office building, this hall forms a pleasant campus just at the edge of
the Rail Yard Park, soon to be Santa Fes new center for arts and culture.
From the Complex, one can walk anywhere in the Rail Yard, to Santa Fes
historic plaza, or to the terminus of The RailRunner, the new Commuter Rail
line that will carry passengers to Albuquerque, only an hour or so to the
South.
We need your help getting this project started. You can make tax
deductible donations at http://www.sfcomplex.org/zen-cart/. There are many
ways to contribute. If you live nearby, we hope you will become an Affiliate
of the sfComplex. Much of the costs of maintaining this facility will be
contributed by Affiliates, people who work here, regular visitors who will
donate a thousand dollars a year, share in the collaborative work environment
of the complex, and participate in its educational activities. We have other
forms of affiliation, some less expensive, for people who live out of the area
and come here rarely, and others more expensive, for people who will be working
here more intensively. (Please see our schedule soon at
www.sfcomplex.org/donations.) A small amount of conventional office space
will also available. One way or another, we hope that many of you will bring
your work to the sfComplex
Sponsors are also urgently needed. We are working on foundation
support, but until our recruitment of affiliates and educational programs are
fully established, donations from individuals like you will be absolutely
necessary to get the sfComplex up and running. Sponsors can be confident that
they will be supporting an organization that will benefit education, art,
public policy, and science by focusing the enormous human resources available
for complexity thinking in Santa Fe.
.
Whichever means you choose, please give us your support now. The
City has offered us 29,000 dollars to help get our operations started, but we
must match that with $20,000 in donations by July 1. Your sponsorship or
affiliation could decide whether a center for complexity research, education,
and practice will thrive here in the City of Santa Fe.
All the best in your work,
Nick Thompson
Emeritus Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
For the Santa Fe Complex
P.S. This fundraising effort is just getting under way, and I am no expert at
it. The website could be a bit cranky at first. Please, if you have
questions, comments and suggestions, write me, [EMAIL PROTECTED], or the
Complexs Executive Director, Don Begley ([EMAIL PROTECTED]), or Steve Guerin,
who is the Chairman of our Board ([EMAIL PROTECTED]) . Thanks. n
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