Jan 05 Trustee Ideas

Given what Bob told us about the new opportunities to influence ocean policy, and what Jim Kent said about how marketing works at WHOI, how do we, the trustees, get the public to value the oceans as if their lives depend on it?

Suggestions:

1. Taking into account what happened in the Indian Ocean, get a well-known songwriter and singer to get out a song about the ocean.

2. Re education, Ocean Commission strongly supported iniative in excellence in education - give immediate access to ocean science information to teachers in the classroom. Also, connect all the databases, and convert to useful information.

3. Ocean advocacy - we do not have a trade association or lobbying group thinking of community needs.Need an independent group to advocate for the oceans, funded in part perhaps by WHOI, and leveraging off the resources of other organizations in the community.

4. Make policy makers more aware by using Ocean Institutes to identify research priorities.

5. Medium term:dramatically re-prioritize conference center to help us promote importance of ocean science (2-5 years).Immediately: Dive and Discover on Discovery Channel - get a real-world, non-scientific presenter to do a series (perhaps starting with tsunami) and develop a production relationship to enable appealing science presentations for a wide audience.

6. Build a network of people like Sylvia Earle, who know a piece of the subject (broad subject being the oceans), maybe 10-50 people who have gone beyond the constraints described by Jim Kent. Connect with Ocean Institutes.

7. As sources of support change, so do expectations of WHOI. Need greater attention to concept of water on earth (not just the oceans) connected to life on earth, and how our science illuminates that connection. Also need to understand who our audiences are, and what their needs are, and equip ourselves as Trustees to address those questions. Perhaps need a task force to examine both message and strategy.