2011 has been quite an eventful year for me. I spent the first few weeks of January in and out of hospitals, but my health improved significantly as the year progressed. I launched my Facebook page in January, and in February Professor Joseph Blasi was named the inaugural holder of the J. Robert Beyster Professorship of Employee Ownership at Rutgers’ School of Management and Labor Relations.

I was proud to play a role in the opening of the new UC San Diego Sulpizio Cardiovascular Center in March — the same month I was joined in the CONNECT Hall of Fame by my good friend Gene Ray, founder of Titan Corporation.

In April the FED conducted a national student essay contest on the topic of Creating Wealth by Sharing Wealth, and more than 430 graduate and undergraduate students participated from across the nation. In April I learned that the ocean sampling work we have been conducting from my boat Solutions led to the publication of an article in Nature titled “Evolution and metabolic significance of the urea cycle in photosynthetic diatoms.”

The 2011 Beyster Fellowship Symposium took place in June, and in August I visited the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. I met with Craig Venter and his team at Cave Street in September to discuss their progress on the 2009-2010 Research Voyage of the Sorcerer II Expedition, and at the end of October I made a memorable trip to the University of Michigan to visit the College of Engineering and attend the homecoming football game.

In November I had the great honor of being inducted into the Greater Washington Government Contractor Hall of Fame, and I visited the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library. In December we submitted the manuscript for my book with Mike Daniels on Network Solutions to our publisher, and I had a relaxing and warm Christmas here in La Jolla. I hope your year was as eventful and enjoyable as mine was.

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For those of you interested in the topic of employee ownership, the Proceedings of the 2011 Beyster Fellowship Symposium are now available [PDF]. I was impressed by the large group of talented people who attended the Symposium, and I am looking forward to attending the next one.

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I will probably have a very quiet New Year’s Eve. However you choose to celebrate the event, I hope you have a successful New Year.

– Bob

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