Factor e Farm Blog

Greetings,

My name is Jacob Dalton, and I’m about to hit the road for Missouri. Along with Brad Lewis and Aaron Makaruk, I’ve been developing a True Fans microfunding web application. This week I’m going to Factor e Farm for a Dedicated Project Visit with the goal of releasing the True Fans application before Christmas.

We’re not the first to try and build such an application—previous work on the wiki has informed ours. We’ve listened to those that went before us, we’ve made some adjustments, and now it’s time share that work with the community for feedback and input.

So what is this application? What does it do? Take a look:

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Greetings, My name is Jacob Dalton, and I'm about to hit the road for Missouri. Along with Brad Lewis and Aaron Makaruk, I've been developing a True Fans microfunding web application. This week I'm going to Factor e Farm for a Dedicated Project Visit with the goal of releasing the True Fans application before Christmas. We're ...

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We are planning to improve the True Fans campaign through implementing the 5 motivators of giving as shared by Taylor Conroy in his TED talk:

• Group mentality – as a True Fan you can share with everybody why you support OSE in your Recognition page as video and text. You will be able to see the videos and texts of all other True Fans. Your friends who are also True Fans will be shown on your Recognition page. Your photo and that of other True Fans will be randomly shown in all pages so that everybody can view your Recognition page. If you are new True Fan, you will be shown as such on the main True Fans page and your Recognition Page will be shared in the OSE social network – Facebook and Twitter.
• Tangible Outcome – by becoming a True Fan you are supporting and boosting tangible outcomes like: 8 prototypes finished, on-site participants exploding, remote collaboration exploding, production of high quality documentation, trainings of people able to replicate the machines. Side effects of your contribution are formation of new ecological low-cost open source construction businesses, True Fans exploding, website hits exploding, media attention exploding.
• Microgiving – you, your friends and thousands of other people are contributing a small amount of money, $10 per month = 33 cents per day, which moves the project immensely forward and creates more tangible outcomes.
• Personal connection – you can invite your friends personally with a video and text message to support the project.
• Recognition – you will have your own Recognition Page where you can share with everybody why you support OSE in a video and text. You will receive an OSE embeddable badge linking to your Recognition page which you can embed in your website. Your OSE badge will be visualized with all other OSE badges on the website.

You can see the flow of interactions in the following illustration.

More details can be found in the Microfunding Proposal on the Wiki.

For the successful completion of this project we need 3-4 web developers ready to commit to this Dedicated Remote Collaboration. Experience with PHP frameworks is very desirable. Please add yourself to the Team and if you have any questions or need more details send email to Nikolay Georgiev.

We are planning to improve the True Fans campaign through implementing the 5 motivators of giving as shared by Taylor Conroy in his TED talk: Group mentality - as a True Fan you can share with everybody why you support OSE in your Recognition page as video and text. You will be able to see ...

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Hello everyone! I’m Chris Fornof, the newest member of the awesomeness that is Open Source Ecology! We've been busy!

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We have been supported 100% by crowd funding, and one month ago we announced the doubling campaign for the 1000 True Fans subscription program. We are now at 132 True Fans, as of Sep. 13, 2010, or a 32% increase over the month:

The red dot marks the announcement of the Doubling Campaign one month ago. This is inspiring growth – as we have gained as much support over one month as we did over almost a year when we first started the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign at the beginning of 2009. Help us build a better future – subscribe to the 1000 True Fans.

One way of phrasing our goals is:

What if technology could be tapped to deliver on the promise of unprecedented quality of life, with 2 hours spend on ‘making a living’, and the rest of one’s time liberated for pursuing one’s true passions? Furthermore, what if this could be done without any compromise, personal or geopolitical?

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We have been supported 100% by crowd funding, and one month ago we announced the doubling campaign for the 1000 True Fans subscription program. We are now at 132 True Fans, as of Sep. 13, 2010, or a 32% increase over the month: The red dot marks the announcement of the Doubling Campaign one month ...

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Adam Mitchell, one of our new True Fans, will be joining us at Factor e Farm for a one month Dedicated Project Visit on October 18. At that time, we’ll be towards the end of CEB construction, and we will also be working on developing our True Fans and supporters network. We are discussing ways to get our True Fans more involved. Check out Adam’s comments on his vision for collaboration:

True Fan Introduction from Adam Mitchell on Vimeo.

As the Truest of Fans, here is my own introduction. It’s a decent and juicy overview of ongoing work, and there are some personal comments as well.

Marcin’s Personal Introduction to the True Fans from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

Who will be the next True Fan or or other respondent – to do a video response, to introduce themselves, or to pump in some inspiring comments? We will gladly consider blogging your video if appropriate.

Adam Mitchell, one of our new True Fans, will be joining us at Factor e Farm for a one month Dedicated Project Visit on October 18. At that time, we'll be towards the end of CEB construction, and we will also be working on developing our True Fans and supporters network. We are ...

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We are pleased to announce that we have reached 100 True Fans in our 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign. Are we at a tipping point, thanks to all of the support we have been getting? You can read some testimonials from existing True Fans here.

We are working on a 2-minute Explainer Video for the Global Village Construction Set – for purposes of recruiting more True Fans, for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge application, for Kickstarter, and for a general purpose media blitz in the near future. There has been an increasing number of quality collaboration offers, so things are clearly picking up. There are exciting updates on the ground as well, as in the last post.

We would like to announce our True Fans Doubling Campaign. We would like to double our True Fans support base within 30 days.

To achieve this – we are asking each of our True Fans to commit 1 hour of time to this task over the next 30 days.  We’re asking all of our audiences to do the same. Please talk to your friends  – and invite them to subscribe to the True Fans. We can double our population if only 100 people succeed in pulling in a friend. A web search of people blogging about our work may also be a good place to find supporters. We have two related pages on the wiki: Links to Our Work, and In the News – so feel free to put up other links there as well.

We have also had demand for True Fans membership at a higher rate of support than the basic $10/month subscription. As such, we are introducing the True Fans Gold and True Fans Platinum subscriptions – at $20 and $50 per month, respectively. We will be counting these as 2 and 5 True Fans equivalents in our tally of True Fan numbers. This subscription button is featured here on the blog for the first time – with all the three choices – and you can also go to the Support page on the wiki.

Here is a graph of our True Fan numbers. The recent increase is noteworthy. Will this increase be temporary, or are we going to continue climbing?

Help us by passing this on to your friends and telling them more about us.
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We are pleased to announce that we have reached 100 True Fans in our 1000 True Fans - 1000 Global Villages campaign. Are we at a tipping point, thanks to all of the support we have been getting? You can read some testimonials from existing True Fans here. We are working on a 2-minute Explainer ...

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We are hot on the pursuit of a powerful 2-minute Explainer Video about the GVCS, which may be used not only to clarify the concept in general, but which may also assist in: (1), our application to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; (2), recruiting of 1000 True Fans; (3) Kickstarter, and others. We have the support of Encyclopedia Pictura in this venture. (more…)

We are hot on the pursuit of a powerful 2-minute Explainer Video about the GVCS, which may be used not only to clarify the concept in general, but which may also assist in: (1), our application to the Buckminster Fuller Challenge; (2), recruiting of 1000 True Fans; (3) Kickstarter, and others. We have the ...

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Dear True Fans,

Thank you all for supporting us in our initial stages of open source economic development – as we move forward with the Full Product Release for The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We are now over 2 years into the CEB development, where we produced Prototype 1 at the end of 2007.

We have achieved a 16 bricks per minute production rate with The Liberator, which exceeded our expectations significantly. We have completed compressive strength testing, and are shipping the machine out the door to Maureen today after a final flurry of documentation. We have a high power machine on our hands, and it’s a great opportunity to promote our strategy – bootstrap-financing further research and development.

It appears that we are on a threshold where we can now take our budgets from the current $1500/month level into the five digit realm – which would allow us to scale our progress. We have much more on the drawing board than we are able to build. (more…)

Dear True Fans, Thank you all for supporting us in our initial stages of open source economic development - as we move forward with the Full Product Release for The Liberator, the open source CEB press. We are now over 2 years into the CEB development, where we produced Prototype 1 at the end of ...

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We will be doing a 3 minute promotional video for the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign this summer, and a 15 minute documentary on OSE this fall. Sean Church – a student at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Film Program – will be taking this on as part of his studies. He visited us recently, began taking footage, and we copied all of our old footage for him. We are planning time lapse photography in the mix. This looks like a great opportunity to distribute our message in a more professional way.

You can see these photos on Flickr, and the wiki page on the documentary work is here.

Regarding the True Fans campaign, we started it a year ago aiming for a 1000 True Fans withing 6 months. A year later, we’re at 70 subscribers – slightly below our goal. (more…)

We will be doing a 3 minute promotional video for the 1000 True Fans - 1000 Global Villages campaign this summer, and a 15 minute documentary on OSE this fall. Sean Church - a student at the University of Missouri, Kansas City, Film Program - will be taking this on as part of his ...

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We are currently in the phase of fabrication optimization for the high performance, open source, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. This is our route to financial bootstrapping of the research and development efforts. We are looking for people interested in Dedicated Project Visits on flexible fabrication.

Flexible fabrication is a blend of a generally-equipped workshop with the hands of a multi-skilled fabricator. Flexible fabrication in the digital age implies the assist of digital fabrication. To take full advantage of available modern technology, the skilled digital craftsperson has to gain proficiency in the entire process chain from open source design and collaboration, CAD, build, electronics, programming, and other skills as needed.

From the standpoint of resilient communities and the neosubsistence lifestyle, the technology is not the end-all but merely a step to sustainable living. (more…)

We are currently in the phase of fabrication optimization for the high performance, open source, Compressed Earth Brick (CEB) press. This is our route to financial bootstrapping of the research and development efforts. We are looking for people interested in Dedicated Project Visits on flexible fabrication. Flexible fabrication is a blend of a generally-equipped workshop ...

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