The Santa Fe Complex needs your help.

[Nick Thompson]

Dear Friam Colleagues,
 
I am writing to ask you to support the Santa Fe Complex.  The Complex is Santa Fe?s 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 Mexico?s 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 Fe?s new center for arts and culture.  From the Complex, one can walk anywhere in the Rail Yard, to Santa Fe?s 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, nthompson at clarku.edu, or the Complex?s Executive Director, Don Begley (don at sfcomplex.org), or Steve Guerin, who is the Chairman of our Board (steve at redfish.com) .  Thanks.  n    
 
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[Marcus G. Daniels]

Hey Nick,

An outsider's first take.. I left work early today and headed down Agua
Fria for a look see. I must say it is impressive what you all have done
with that area and that building.  The facility was buzzing at 7pm and
people of all ages were around.   A cool and different sort of feel..  
Could definitely see having workshops or meetings there.

Nice work!

Marcus