JANIE LEASK: Good morning. We're going to go ahead and get started. I know there's a number of people still yet to come, but out of respect for those of you who did arrive on time this morning we're going to go ahead and get started. My name is Janie Leask. I'm manager of community relations for Alyeska Pipeline Service Company. On behalf of the board and membership of Commonwealth North I would like to welcome you to this morning's forum.

A couple of announcements before we get started with -- regarding cell phones, our favorite topic. For those of you who do have cell phones would you please ensure that they are on silent out of respect to your fellow members here and guests.

And on your table there are some question cards. Please feel free to write your questions on the card and hold them up and a staff member will collect them and bring them to the head table.

This morning we are very pleased to have as our guest Richard Wiese who is president of the Explorers Club. And Richard will be discussing strategic partnering in the 21st century. And, Richard, your presentation is extremely timely for our organization because Commonwealth North currently has an internal study group that is analyzing the long-term financial and programatic issues that impact our organization. We want to ensure that Commonwealth North as we move forward for the next 25 years continues to thrive and continues to make meaningful policy recommendations for the state of Alaska. And we feel this internal study group is very key to that whole effort.

Our study group is exploring several partnering alternatives for our board and membership to continue. And I would be remiss if I didn't mention at this time that Commonwealth North is a nonprofit organization. We're constantly seeking underwriters to help fund our internal study groups and to get them out to the general public for dissemination. And so if those of you who are in today's audience either as individuals or representatives of your corporation have any flexible year end funding or could do an early 2005 pledge we would greatly appreciate it to help get the recommendations of the study group out to the general public. And please see either Duane or Tana if you're able to assist us.

In a moment I'm going to ask Mead Treadwell to more formally introduce our guest speaker this morning, but first I'd like to introduce the rest of our head table.

So from your left and my right we have Jamie Linxwiler. And Jamie is with the law firm of Guess & Rudd. He is past president and board member of Commonwealth North. He's chair of a previous partnering study and co-chair of the internal study that I just mentioned called Commonwealth North the Next 25 Years.

Next to Jamie is Governor Walter J. Hickel, twice Governor of the State of Alaska, former Secretary of the Interior, and a co-founder of Commonwealth North.

Next to the Governor is Jan Fredericks. Jan is the state director of the University of Alaska Anchorage Small Business Development Center. She is treasurer and a board member of Commonwealth North, and is also co-chairing our internal study group along with Jamie Linxwiler.

Next to Jan is Mead Treadwell to whom we owe a huge thanks, Mead, for helping coordinate Richard's visit with us, so thank you very much on behalf of our membership. Mead is the CEO of Venture Ad Astra, I hope I pronounced that right. In addition, he is also commissioner with the U.S. Arctic Research Commission, a senior fellow with the Institute of the North and a long-time active member and a board member of Commonwealth North.

In addition to our head table we have some guests here this morning. I'd like to mention that here at the reserve tables in the front row we have several members of the Explorers Club, Alaskan members of the Explorers Club. And Mead will tell you a little bit about them during his remarks. So without further ado I'd like to invite Mead to the podium to introduce this morning's guest speaker, Richard Wiese. Mead.

MEAD TREADWELL: Janie, thanks, you got your Latin right this morning.

Traditionally your program committee at Commonwealth North likes to celebrate this season by bringing us a speaker's whose work and life is inspirational to raise us all, to take us further. Our speaker not only qualifies that way as an individual but also is a leader of a movement. There's a worldwide organization with 3,000 members based in New York City called the Explorers Club. The clubhouse known as the Lowell Thomas Building is an amazing place where a red blooded Alaskan can feel at home in the big city. It's not just the polar bear or the Narwhal tusks in the trophy room or the Machetanz pictures on the wall, it's the people who are there because they believe like the pioneers who live here that all mankind is better off if we keep reaching to learn what's out there, who's out there, what languages are they speaking, how can we preserve bio diversity, what can we know about the earth and the surrounding planets.

The out there began in the club's history with a group of arctic explorers. Today the club has a number of members in Alaska, some of whom are here this morning. These members include our co-founder Wally Hickel, our former Lieutenant Governor Lowell Thomas, Jr., Dominique Cunningham-Reed, Bob Jacobs, Vance Martin, who's an honorary Alaskan these days. He's here with the Wild Foundation planning a meeting of the World Wilderness Congress next fall. Mark Milliken, Charlie McAlpine, John Devins, Carolyn Muegge-Vaughn, Mike Gordon, who's summitted all seven summits, and a couple of folks who are not members but I urge them to belong, including Joe Fredston, who's rode Alaska's Arctic Coast and Chris Hodel who swam Cook Inlet this summer.

Now last spring at the Explorers' annual dinner in New York we began with appetizers of tarantula tempura and alligator pasta. We did not have the recently thawed mammoth, the meat from Alaska that was served at an earlier annual dinner. But on the roster were some of the great names of exploration in the 20th Century, Sir Edmund Hillary, Buzz Aldrin, Sylvia Earle, Don Walsh, and two of the clubs' oldest members Brad Washburn who mapped Mount McKinley and Everest and Norman Vaughn who's 99th birthday we will celebrate this coming Sunday night. See Carolyn for tickets by the way.

We had barely set down for the main course at the Waldorf Astoria when our speaker came into the ballroom on horseback. And everything was fine until he rode up onto the rostrum and the New York Times story on your table will tell what happened there.

Now Richard Wiese is the youngest president in the Explorers Club in a 98 year history. He's an emmy winning television journalist and an independent documentary film producer who recently spent two years hosting a daily live internationally broadcast science show called Earth and Science in London, England. Wiese has also been an investigative reporter and correspondent on such television programs as Beyond 2000, a Fox network production; Extreme Adventure, part of the discovery channel, and Now It Can Be Told which ran from 1992 to 1993. He's conducted field research and film documentaries during the eruptions of Mount Etna in Sicily, Popocatepetl.....

MR. WIESE: Popocatepetl.

MR. TREADWELL: Thank you. In Mexico, and Pueblo Supre Hills (ph) in Montserrat. He's an experienced weather analyst having been a weather anchor from New York's WWOR TV and Fox News channel. Richard is passionate about ice climbing, mountaineering, and scuba diving. He helped lead students on an ice expedition to Antarctica in 2002. Was head guide of the Kilimanjaro clan of a dozen people. In 2003 soloed the active volcano in Tanzania for a geological sampling, was part of a conservation team radio collaring jaguars in Mexico. This week he'll be mushing with Martin Buser and Jeff King. Earlier this month he made a quick trip to India. Richard, the club looks out for Alaska and the arctic and brings along new explorers to keep pioneering. And thank you for being with us.