Factor E Farm Blog

We’re launching an online crowd-funding campaign today to complete our feature documentary film that delves deep into the revolutionary action of Open Source Ecology!  The goal is to raise enough funds to complete the editing of the film over the summer so we can bring it to you by December 2012.

http://www.indiegogo.com/youaregodmovie?a=454890

Please share this link all over the blogosphere and through social networking like twitter and facebook, and consider making a contribution to make this project a reality.

This filmmaker appreciates it and so will future audiences hungry for sustainable change.

Cheers,

- Ian Midgley

We're launching an online crowd-funding campaign today to complete our feature documentary film that delves deep into the revolutionary action of Open Source Ecology!  The goal is to raise enough funds to complete the editing of the film over the summer so we can bring it to you by December 2012. http://www.indiegogo.com/youaregodmovie?a=454890 Please share this link ...

No Comments

I apologize for the lack of frequent reporting as we are going through 'growing pains.' We are busy recruiting for this whole ecology of positions. We had a large number of interviews (30+ recorded on our YouTube channel) and are going at it strong. I am working on the 2 year plan, with a highlight of bootstrap-funding ...

No Comments

Scaling the OSE organization has left me in some of the most grueling time over the last 2 months. This is because we’re innovating on about 20 points at a time – a critical formative stage of the project and I am taking a crash course in social entrepreneurship scaling. So we’re starting with a 2 Year Plan, to be released in 10 days, as we build out the team. Brianna and Jose are at Factor e Farm, Aaron is working full time remotely as Development Director, Yoonseo is arriving May 9, and you can see 20+ recent video interviews for a preview of who may be joining us. We’re building the team, and here are the evolving role descriptions - email aaron at opensourceecology dot org to set up an interview. We need a team, and we foresee a solid development core managing a larger number of apprentices, while bootstrap funding this with production earnings. This involves a carefully-orchestrated team ecology leveraging generation of education materials, training newcomers, workshop work, agriculture, and construction –  building the substance of an open source civilization as we go along. It’s also time to rumble the tractors for waterworks and agriculture, and build a simplified OSE Microhouse in under a week for less than $5k. We’re looking for a Farm Director, Construction Director (Floyd is currently our Construction Manager, finishing HabLab), and Production Director.

(more…)

Scaling the OSE organization has left me in some of the most grueling time over the last 2 months. This is because we're innovating on about 20 points at a time - a critical formative stage of the project and I am taking a crash course in social entrepreneurship scaling. So we're starting with ...

1 Comment

Ian Midgley’s trailer is out on his documentary, You Are God. Check it out – it’s moving.

Ian Midgley's trailer is out on his documentary, You Are God. Check it out - it's moving.

1 Comment

Andrew Bateman will be joining us Monday, April 16 – as the Factor e Farm Documenter. This will help us provide more regular reporting on Open Source Ecology work happening worldwide and at Factor e Farm.

 

.
.
Andrew’s work plan is shown on the wiki. Welcome to Andrew. If you have ideas or comments, you can email him at batebag at gmail dot com.

Andrew Bateman will be joining us Monday, April 16 - as the Factor e Farm Documenter. This will help us provide more regular reporting on Open Source Ecology work happening worldwide and at Factor e Farm.   . . Andrew's work plan is shown on the wiki. Welcome to Andrew. If you have ideas or comments, you can ...

1 Comment

We are proud to announce the beta release of an the Extreme Manufacturing platform for Open Source Ecology. We are now testing the platform.

Extreme Manufacturing (XM) is an open source hardware development methodology based on the principles of Extreme Programming in the field of software. XM focuses open source design and collaboration, and the revenue model is Distributive Enterprise. Extreme Manufacturing is lean in all respects, while retaining sufficient structure to anable scalability. The platform is currently in development. Joe Justice of Team Wikispeed and I have coined the term. We’re here to change the paradigm of how things are made – by unleashing economic collaboration and eliminating competitive waste. My fundamental motivation stems  from a conclusion that the rate of innovation could increase significantly – if open collaboration were the norm for doing business.

We are taking baby steps to arrive at the open source economy. The XM Platform is our first attempt to take all that we learned over the last 5 years about open hardware development – and shake our techniques down for extreme results – extreme development velocity while retaining strict standards of quality control. We are aiming for parallel development of 25 GVCS tools by July 1 – on a 3 month prototyping cycle – to deliver the complete set of 50 GVCS tools by year-end 2012. Our goal is to develop a scalable platform, such that a new process for developing any product or service can be organized on a week time scale. Moreover, this platform may be adapted to any product or service  - such as organizational development of Factor e Farm or OSE. My personal prediction is that this method will scale to a 2% market penetration of all global production by 2018. I am referring to any enterprises started via XM techniques – such as GVCS products, which span a wide range of productive sectors. The assumption is that if sufficient rigor and resources are allocated to the development of a product via open source methods – such a product naturally surpasses the quality and service of any ‘competitors’.

Here is  a brief introduction to the method by Aaron (see script):

.

As quoted from the video: (more…)

We are proud to announce the beta release of an the Extreme Manufacturing platform for Open Source Ecology. We are now testing the platform. Extreme Manufacturing (XM) is an open source hardware development methodology based on the principles of Extreme Programming in the field of software. XM focuses open source design and collaboration, and the revenue model is Distributive ...

[7] Comments

Update, March 19.

.

We’re beginning Scrum for hardware development – back to our workshop this week. We are developing a novel, open source, rapid development method – to be known as Extreme Manufacturing. As people are repopulating Factor e Farm after a winter slumber and HabLab living accommodations are nearly finished, we have a few interesting developments. (more…)

Update, March 19. . We're beginning Scrum for hardware development - back to our workshop this week. We are developing a novel, open source, rapid development method - to be known as Extreme Manufacturing. As people are repopulating Factor e Farm after a winter slumber and HabLab living accommodations are nearly finished, we have a few interesting developments. The Wikispeed collaboration ...

[3] Comments

Enabling Emerging Markets to Manufacture Their Own Ultra-efficient Transportation, WIKISPEED and Open Source Ecology Announce Partnership in Open-Hardware Movement

Seattle, WA, and Maysville, MO, USA (March 7, 2012)

The open-hardware movement got a tremendous boost today when WIKISPEED, an innovative automotive company building modular, high-performance cars using agile design principles, and Open Source Ecology (OSE), a group committed to providing free plans and processes necessary for building the global economy, announced that they are teaming up to revolutionize transportation in the developing world.

Taking on traditional, proprietary manufacturing R & D, the two companies aim to create an open-source product-development methodology that would allow communities around the world to quickly develop their own machinery and processes to support themselves, removing a dependency on industrialized nations for costly solutions.

OSE CEO Marcin Jakubowski is developing the Global Village Construction Set, identifying essential machines that are  required to build and maintain an entire economy. Jakubowski’s work includes publishing the blueprints for each piece of equipment and making the plans available for free via the Internet.

Above: Open Source Ecology is developing the Global Village Construction Set, the minimum set of tools and machinery for any community to produce and maintain a modern infrastructure in its entirety.

For his part, Joe Justice, founder and team lead of WIKISPEED, has pioneered the use of agile rapid-delivery processes (the same method used by leading software companies) for physical manufacturing and complex problem solving. This application has been highly successful, allowing Justice to design and build a high-performance modular car that gets 100 mpg and meets all U.S. safety standards, using a globally distributed team of volunteers, in just three months.

Above: The Roadster is only one of WIKISPEED’s modular, configurable cars.

(more…)

Enabling Emerging Markets to Manufacture Their Own Ultra-efficient Transportation, WIKISPEED and Open Source Ecology Announce Partnership in Open-Hardware Movement Seattle, WA, and Maysville, MO, USA (March 7, 2012) The open-hardware movement got a tremendous boost today when WIKISPEED, an innovative automotive company building modular, high-performance cars using agile design principles, and Open Source Ecology (OSE), a ...

[9] Comments

OSE was featured on National Public Radio today. Listen to the story.

Yesterday, we were also featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.

This has resulted in 11 new True Fans subscriptions today, which is the most for any single day so far, for a total count of about 540 True Fans. (more…)

OSE was featured on National Public Radio today. Listen to the story. Yesterday, we were also featured on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. This has resulted in 11 new True Fans subscriptions today, which is the most for any single day so far, for a total count of about 540 True Fans. We are scaling the project. We ...

Comments Off

My name is Aaron Makaruk, and I am working full time as an on-contingency Resource Developer for Open Source Ecology. We are busy raising money, building technology across the country, and laying the foundation for the open source economy. As our organizational development and recruiting strategy shifts into high gear, we want you to give us feedback on how to do it better.

The link takes you to a survey – Community Needs Assessment. This is a good chance to provide input on what you want to see from OSE to make the project better, and what you can offer to make that happen.

Check back soon for a followup on what we learned from the survey in the Survey Results. The survey results are transparent, so feel free to skip any questions you don’t want to answer. 

If you fill in your city/state/country in the survey and put a 1 in the following question, your location will show up on this map. The best way to view the survey results is to use the ‘File’ menu to download the spreadsheet as a PDF. We will report back with a summary report next week.

Update – 03/03/12: we published a report that includes all of the community responses and our analysis of the major indications from the feedback. This is the easiest way to view the survey responses. Thanks to everyone for taking the time to fill out the survey – this is a good source of information about who else is interested in your local community.

My name is Aaron Makaruk, and I am working full time as an on-contingency Resource Developer for Open Source Ecology. We are busy raising money, building technology across the country, and laying the foundation for the open source economy. As our organizational development and recruiting strategy shifts into high gear, we want you to ...

[6] Comments