Back in August, James Burk approached our Management Committee with an interesting proposal. James is is the Mars Society’s current IT Director and was our Vice President & Webmaster back when The Moon Society was founded in 2000. James proposed that we begin working with The Mars Society, and another organization called The Mars Foundation, to form an official Governing Council over the Marspedia.org wiki. Marspedia was originally started by The Moon Society back in 2007 along with Lunarpedia.org and some other space and science fiction-related wikis.

We accepted James’ proposal and appointed one of our board members, James Gholston, to be our official representative on the new Governing Council. Burk and Gholston worked with Bruce Mackenzie from The Mars Foundation to write official Bylaws for Marspedia, to formalize our working relationship with these other space advocacy groups. At a meeting in October, the Council was formed with former Mars Society Executive Director Susan Holden Martin as Chair, and Burk as Vice Chair. Gholston was joined on the Council by our current Webmaster Rosalie Dieteman and also by Mike Delaney. Several officers from The Mars Society also joined the Council including Lucinda Offer (Executive Director), Carie Fay (Administrative Director), Michael Stoltz (Media & Public Relations), and Nicole Willett (Education Director). The Mars Society also began a major PR push to recruit volunteers and ask for content submissions via Facebook, LinkedIn, and their e-mail Newsletter.