About the Invitation to ETI: PI's Memo to Signatories, October 2005

Memo to Signatories, October 2005
from Principal Investigator H. Paul Shuch

Dear Signatories to the Invitation to ETI,

I am pleased to announce some exciting changes to our web-based SETI project over the past couple of months, starting with a realignment of our leadership team. Prof. Allen Tough, our project's founder, has expressed a desire to relinquish some of the day-to-day responsibilities of administering the Invitation, in order to concentrate on related research into the nature of ETI.

In August, Allen promoted himself to the newly created position of Chief Scientist for the Invitation to ETI, and appointed me Principal Investigator (as well as Webmaster), to handle some of the more mundane aspects of administering the project. Scarlett Wang continues as Project Manager, as well as serving as Allen's research assistant. This new structure is detailed on our website at http://www.ieti.org/news/leadersh.htm; we hope it will lead to improved efficiencies, and ultimately to the success of our Invitation in facilitating contact with ETI.

You will notice from the website that the group issuing the Invitation is growing persistently toward its ultimate size of 100 humans. You may also note that the participants' official title has been changed, from the Advisory Board that you once comprised, to a group of Signatories, a term that better reflects your role as co-issuers of the Invitation. Please feel free to reveal yourselves as Signatories to the Invitation to ETI in your personal and professional correspondence.

Because actual ETI contact is likely to generate public interest beyond our imagining, we expect significant website congestion, should we ever receive credible evidence of extraterrestrial intelligence. To keep the news conduit flowing under conditions of potential saturation, we have increased our News Mirror sites to seven, hosted on different servers around the world. Please take a moment to visit http://ieti.org/news, and familiarize yourselves with the URLs of the various Mirrors linked near the bottom of the page, so that if you ever find our main domain unreachable, you will know where to turn for the latest news of our exciting project.

Many of you have not updated in some time your biographical sketches on the IETI website. Please feel free to send any such updates directly to me at paul_at_ieti_dot_org. Straight ASCII text in the body of an email is preferred. Our target length is 250 words or briefer. In addition, if your photo is not yet posted to your introductory page, I encourage you to send me (as an email attachment) a JPG or GIF, on the order of 150 pixels wide or greater (I will resize the file to fit our website constraints).

Finally, while I will endeavor not to clutter up your in-box with needless chatter, it is my intention to send you an informal update about once every three months (or more often, should we happen to achieve a credible Contact). Please be sure Allen, Scarlett, and I all have your latest email address at all times. Thanks for your cooperation.

I am grateful to you all for making our eclectic group a powerful force in the SETI community, and I stand ready to answer any questions you may have about the Invitation to ETI, SETI in general, or anything else of a related nature that strikes your fancy. Remember, the best way to reach me is by email to paul @ ieti.org; said alias forwards to my Blackberry, which accompanies me on my various travels.

Yours for ETI contact,
Paul

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