Factor e Farm Blog

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I am OSE’s blogging assistant. Marcin recruited me to help with the blog, and my goal is to fill in the gaps to bring to you more of the many developments that are happening at Open Source Ecology.

Ian Midgley, OSE veteran and videographer for the “Christmas Gift to the World” (2011), has been working for the past three years on a documentary featuring Open Source Ecology. The Spark is a film about what drives people to change the world around them in a significant way and about the transformation from being a passive observer to an active participant in the world. Ultimately, it speaks to what all of us can accomplish together. The film follows Ian’s journey across the country, meeting change-makers like Marcin Jakubowski as he transforms OSE from a group of dreamers to a world-class organization and Nat Turner of Our School at Blair Grocery, who is bringing urban farming education to the youth of the hurricane-wracked Lower Ninth Ward of New Orleans.

The film’s first trailer, profiling the two very different projects, led to a result Ian wasn’t expecting. “All of a sudden,” Ian recalls, “Nat Turner in New Orleans was interested in machines and Open Source Ecology, and Marcin was, like, ‘Oh that would be great if we could have some of the kids come up here and learn about building machines.’”

So now the next step in the film is to bring these two powerful projects together! On July 13th, 2013, Open Source Ecology and The Spark team are going to complete the first one-day build of the open source LifeTrac tractor. In an epic convergence, OSE veterans and new power players will come together with Nat Turner and his students from Our School at Blair Grocery to make this happen on-site at Factor e Farm. After the build, the tractor will be donated to Our School at Blair Grocery, making it possible for them to realize their vision of expanding urban farming across the empty lots of the Lower Ninth Ward. Ian sees this collaboration as “an example of how sustainability projects all around the country and all around the world can network and share resources to build stronger projects.”

We need your help to make this happen! Please visit The Spark website and make a tax-free contribution to this initiative. Email this post to everyone who may be interested and share it online through social media. It is entirely Ian’s initiative to fund The Spark, including the tractor itself, entirely with support from the community. He needs to raise an additional $13,200 by June 15th. Large or small, every donation helps. If you can contribute $1000 or more, we invite you to join us at Factor e Farm for the build and to be in the film!

In making The Spark, Ian finds that his own role as filmmaker has been transformed: “By being the bridge between Open Source Ecology and Our School at Blair Grocery, I become a participant in the world around me, not just an observer behind the camera…. Making the film has changed the direction of my life, too.” Watching the cross-pollination happening between OSE and Our School at Blair Grocery has Ian envisioning how to further inspire and facilitate collaborative projects.

What will you do? Great endeavors always begin with The Spark that changes each of us and brings us together. Become an active participant and help to make this amazing convergence happen.

Hi, my name is Lisa, and I am OSE's blogging assistant. Marcin recruited me to help with the blog, and my goal is to fill in the gaps to bring to you more of the many developments that are happening at Open Source Ecology. Ian Midgley, OSE veteran and videographer for the "Christmas Gift to ...

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The Feast and NBCUniversal have announced the results of the Rev Up Change Challenge, and the grand prize winner is … Open Source Ecology! Thanks to all who voted. Literally, we couldn’t have done it without you!

Jerri Chou, Co-Founder of The Feast, recognizes OSE as just the kind of work The Feast was created to encourage and enable:

We’re incredibly excited to award OSE the first prize in The Feast & NBC’s Rev Up Change Challenge. We chose OSE as a finalist because the challenge was exactly designed to offer one group the funding and platform needed to scale their impact.  We felt that OSE’s work represents an ambitious model for driving massive change globally and that this prize would really give them the boost they need – the voters felt the same. We’re excited to not just provide funding, but to drive our community of incredible thought leaders, designers, and makers to really engage in helping OSE refine and grow. Together, we believe we can help take this much farther than we ever could alone.

As Jerri suggests, the funding is invaluable. The prize of $25,000 will help us to develop training materials reflecting best practices in open source documentation. Instructional videos, 3D models, fabrication drawings, and easy-to-follow manuals will help visionary communities to construct and deploy the industrial machines of the Global Village Construction Set. The better the training materials are, the more dreamers will dare to get their hands dirty, flex their skills, and become makers and doers who will lead the transition to a more sustainable, localized, and just way of life.

Winning the Challenge also means that I will have the opportunity to talk about our vision, our progress, and plans for Open Source Ecology at The 2013 Feast Conference in NYC, October  16-18, 2013.  As Kevin Huynh, Executive Program Producer for The Feast explains, the Rev Up Change Challenge is not just about supporting a project with an incredibly valuable chunk of funding: “… having this sort of platform to not only increase quality of your work but also spread your message … is a hugely massive opportunity.”

Check out the  announcement and video from NBCUniversal Media Insider:

The Feast is a remarkable happening. The conference brings together people who care about making the world a better place. They forge creative, collaborative visions for social entrepreneurship ventures; they are visionaries who understand the power of doing things differently and makers who know how to translate great ideas into action. As organizers explain, “Our speakers don’t just speak, they challenge the audience with some of the most important and ambitious challenges in the world. Our attendees don’t just sit back. They roll up their sleeves and create solutions in response.”

Board Member Colby Thomson, who attended The Feast last year on behalf of Open Source Ecology, describes The Feast Conference as a being “like a TED, with presenters and networking, but smaller, community oriented, and focused on social innovation.” A key difference between The Feast and an event like TED, however, is the part about getting things done, then and there: “There are brainstorming, productivity sessions, and working groups in a format similar to the Clinton Global Initiative. Roundtables spend sessions coming up with plausible solutions to problems, so there are productive takeaways.”

I am eager to share what we are doing with conference attendees and to exchange ideas and look for opportunities for synergy in our work and the work of others.

The Feast and NBCUniversal have announced the results of the Rev Up Change Challenge, and the grand prize winner is … Open Source Ecology! Thanks to all who voted. Literally, we couldn’t have done it without you! Jerri Chou, Co-Founder of The Feast, recognizes OSE as just the kind of work The Feast was created ...

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We have batches of good news to share about what’s going on with Open Source Ecology. The most important news of all, as a foundation for everything else, has to be our bringing on board a full-time core team, including our Operations Manager, Katie Whitman; our Product Lead, Gary De Mercurio; our Technical Community Manager, Audrey Rampone; and our Documentation Manager, Rob Kirk.

To have a proper full-time support team for the project is a critical step in the growth of Open Source Ecology’s work. As the project has grown over the last few years and excitement about it has spread, I’ve found myself increasingly mired in details. I began to realize the difference between vision and execution. Those are two different stories, and I am glad that OSE is going deep on the latter – in terms of gathering a team that will allow us to execute on our audacious promises. I look forward to us producing the type of results that we will all be proud of – as we move forward with an ambitious agenda. Our core team’s talents and efforts will multiply the work that we can do together – and will allow me  to concentrate on the vision that inspired the project from the beginning. Moving ahead, I will focus on creating the strategic direction for the project, creating the culture, bringing our team on board, developing partnerships, and securing further support. Now, let’s meet the team. (more…)

We have batches of good news to share about what's going on with Open Source Ecology. The most important news of all, as a foundation for everything else, has to be our bringing on board a full-time core team, including our Operations Manager, Katie Whitman; our Product Lead, Gary De Mercurio; our Technical Community ...

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We’ve been quiet but very busy lately –  and we have a lot of good news to share with you. First, here is Open Source Ecology’s first ever Annual Report for download. Thanks to Aaron Makaruk for doing a great job putting the report together. It shows a good graphical picture of what we’ve accomplished in 2012 – highlighting our busiest and most productive year so far.

We have been busy developing machines and optimizing their production. My favorite highlight is that we have reached a single day production time – for our automated Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) Press. Now we aim to reach this production speed for each of the 50 Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) machines. In my TED Talk, I mentioned that I “built a tractor – in 6 days.” Well, it gets even better. (more…)

We've been quiet but very busy lately -  and we have a lot of good news to share with you. First, here is Open Source Ecology's first ever Annual Report for download. Thanks to Aaron Makaruk for doing a great job putting the report together. It shows a good graphical picture of what we've accomplished in 2012 - highlighting our ...

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It is always immensely encouraging to know that we have supporters world over who are looking for ways to get involved in our mission. Lonnie Ray Atkinson is one such supporter, who personally made and gifted us a song (with accompanying music video by JustUss) about OSE’s work and philosophy. Take a look and do share the video.

Lyrics and Vocals: Lonnie Ray Atkinson
Music Track: ccMixter artist Alex

We invited Lonnie to explain in his own words how he found OSE and what drove him to create this “musical anthem for the DIY and Open Source movement”. (more…)

It is always immensely encouraging to know that we have supporters world over who are looking for ways to get involved in our mission. Lonnie Ray Atkinson is one such supporter, who personally made and gifted us a song (with accompanying music video by JustUss) about OSE’s work and philosophy. Take a look and ...

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We have built our 3,000 square foot living unit – HabLab – in 2012 using bricks from our open source Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. Here is a summary of the process that began in 2011 with the Global Village Construction Set Kickstarter Campaign, and ended in 2012 with water well drilling, water lines, insulation, and finishing. We were able to give LifeTrac about 200 hours of field testing throughout the process.

The Story of HabLab – 2011-2012 from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

This year, we are planning on building one or more OSE Microhouses for on-site staff at Factor e Farm. The Microhouse will probably be a hybrid CEB structure with a WikiHouse roof. We still haven’t delivered on the Natural Building Workshop reward from Kickstarter – so we intend to build the Microhouse this year in part to deliver this reward.  We are busy recruiting the team and revamping for critical 2013 – so we have a solid management structure for delivering on all of our goals.
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We have built our 3,000 square foot living unit - HabLab - in 2012 using bricks from our open source Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. Here is a summary of the process that began in 2011 with the Global Village Construction Set Kickstarter Campaign, and ended in 2012 with water well drilling, water lines, ...

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The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen. We believe that documentation best practices can increase contributions to open source hardware projects significantly. For this reason, we are hosting a collaborative event to arrive at an open source hardware documentation platform based on a set of shared standards.

Open Source Ecology is co-organizing the first event for defining documentation standards for the Open Source Hardware movement – the Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam, April 26-28, 2013, in New York City.

(more…)

The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen. We believe that documentation best practices can increase contributions to open source hardware projects significantly. For this reason, we are hosting a collaborative event to arrive at an open ...

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In 2012, Open Source Ecology board member Colby Thomson spoke at The Feast conference in New York. They recently selected us for the finals round of their competition to win $25,000 and a chance to speak at their 2013 event. The winner is determined by how many votes each project gets, and you can re-vote every 24 hours.

The voting period is now open and ends on March 15th.

Here’s how you can help:

• Vote for OSE as often as you like (once every 24 hrs)
• After you vote, please click the social media buttons that pop up to spread the word
• Invite your friends and family to vote

We need all the help we can get to build the Global Village Construction Set. Thanks for your support, and thank you to Jerri and the team at The Feast for helping our cause.

In 2012, Open Source Ecology board member Colby Thomson spoke at The Feast conference in New York. They recently selected us for the finals round of their competition to win $25,000 and a chance to speak at their 2013 event. The winner is determined by how many votes each project gets, and you can ...

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Those of you who’ve been following OSE over the years know how seriously we take documentation - it’s in keeping with our open-source principles and we believe it moves our work forward, while also being key to independent replication. On our extensive wiki, you will find procedures, fabrication diagrams, Bills of Materials (BOMs) and user manuals for all the machines we’ve built so far. 

And since we’re somewhat partial to the audio-visual medium, we’ve always tried to augment these documents with video instructionals – the latest additions being videos of the assembly procedures of the Power Cube & CEB Press.

Powercube v7 Assembly. from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

Liberator CEB Press v4 Assembly. from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

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Those of you who've been following OSE over the years know how seriously we take documentation - it's in keeping with our open-source principles and we believe it moves our work forward, while also being key to independent replication. On our extensive wiki, you will find procedures, fabrication diagrams, Bills of Materials (BOMs) and user ...

[4] Comments

Emily Aiken, whom I met at the SupporTED Collaboratorium, has been working with me as a mentor on OSE media strategy, and recently organized a strategy charette in LA to move OSE’s offer forward. The participants in the session included:

(in the picture above: from left to right, top to bottom)

Catarina Mota - Founder, OpenMaterials, Phil Hettema – Founder, The Hettema Group, Gus Stone – Creative Director & Designer Paint By Numbers, Rob Kirk - Co-Founder, Digital Ranch, Christen Buchanan – Electrical Engineer JPL, Linda Abrams – President, L.A.Marketing,  Teri Thompson, Social Media Strategist, Graciela Italiano-Thomas, International Education Consultant, Emily Aiken – Founder, The Story Studio, Andy Lipkis – Founder, Tree People, Scott Murray – Murray Farms

One of the major insights to come out of the charette was the One Day concept which is an underlying theme of our work, based on the extreme manufacturing that we are pioneering in the form of One-day Production runs. One day, we will have achieved the open source economy…

Emily Aiken, whom I met at the SupporTED Collaboratorium, has been working with me as a mentor on OSE media strategy, and recently organized a strategy charette in LA to move OSE's offer forward. The participants in the session included: (in the picture above: from left to right, top to bottom) Catarina Mota - Founder, OpenMaterials, ...

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