I would like to share today’s letter to our True Fans with the greater world. It provides the latest insights on the Factor e Farm experiment.
Dear True Fans and Supporters,
First of all, thank you all for your unwavering support. You have all demonstrated commitment to our work by putting your money and your time into moving us forward. Your support is essential to a baseline level of funding for our work at Factor e Farm.
I’d like to announce a conference call for this Friday, 11 AM GMT -6 (Chicago and Kansas City – USA time). If you’d like to participate, please refer to the conference call procedure and policy – http://openfarmtech.org/index.php?title=Conference_Call_Policy . This will be a weekly call, and it is our second to date.
The topics are several, focusing around the exciting prospects of perhaps the most important day of Factor e Farm to date on Nov, 1, 2009 – product release of the modular, high performance, open source CEB Press – The Liberator. Here are the items for discussion.
Initial product release – a Beta Version 1.0 – will include a manual machine, with a large, tractor-loaded hopper and grate, that can produce between 5-7 bricks per minute. The power source is external and modular, and so it the Arduino-based controller for automatic control. Both are not included in the initial release, but will be offered as modules in further releases. Product Release means formulating the hardware license, and associated enterprise, PR, and marketing strategies. This also provides a chance to refine OSE Specifications – for branding our products in a groundbreaking way. We are prividing thought leadership and practice on the creation of post-scarcity economics. (more…)
An OSE presence has been established on many popular social networking sites, and we are now looking for someone to manage them and direct outreach and community development. They are all updated with ping.fm. We welcome everyone to direct people to whichever of these sites you think can help spread the word about OSE. Remember, we’re looking for people interested in building the world’s first replicable self-sufficient technology for ecology permaculture ecovillage!
We are carrying on fiery discussion on an integrated strategy towards the world’s first replicable, open source, global village. We started an OSE Development Network for True Fans and dedicated collaborators at the Global Swadeshi forum. A diagram is below, and you can go to the wiki for further explanation of the diagram.
People, we’re going through some major organizational development at Factor e Farm. We’re struggling with an approach and method for delivering the open source village. The Factor e Live Distillations are complete – though I will publish another summary and call to action in the near future – once we settle on a core organizational approach. We are starting an organized marketing campaign for the 1000 True Fans.
To begin with, we can say that our problem statement is not easy. We’re aiming to build an open source village prototype, with a population of 30 real people. We’re trying to reinvent a viable route to civilization, for tribes or towns. With unprecedented prosperity. Within two years. With no money.
One may say that there are some challenges on our path. (more…)
This episode covers the basic economic model of Factor e Farm. It is Community Supported Production (CSP) with two parts: Manufacturing (CSM) and Agriculture (CSA). It is permaculture and permafacture in one. We’re a replicable, vertically integrated, open source, community-supported flexible fabrication model – for short. View on. Transcript is found below the video.
And when you’re done viewing, support our work by subscribing to be a True Fan – at 33 cents per day for the next two years, or $10/month.
It’s been over a year since we started the openfarmtech.org wiki, with Vinay’s assistance. This wiki turned out to be a messy hairball in terms of organization. It’s time to clean it up, and move forward on the collaborative social infrastructure for developing the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). We’ve got Nathan from effortlesseconomy.com here, and one of his goals is to improve our collaborative effectiveness. Today’s Distillation video aims to start that discussion.
Here is an overview of our virtual collaboration infrastructure. We are beginning with a facelift on the Main Page of the wiki – where we are currently updating it to reflect the overview, status, and ways to collaborate. The wiki is the main technical development tool. We have had a Development Work Template there from the very beginning, but it was never adopted widely for its intended use as a general outline for product development. We are returning to it as the core of technical development, so please revisit that page for a longer explanation of how it is to be applied.
Besides the Development Work Template – we have 3 other main pages that people should visit to provide meaningful new contribution to the wiki. The first is Project Status, to be updated on a weekly basis for active projects. The second is Red Pages – those outstanding questions to be answered that keep us from moving forward on any given technology. And, there is the Collaborators page – where we gather information about people and what information they are willing to share freely towards GVCS success. This could be a very potent tool – as there are technical details and reviews that should be going on actively for each project – which is difficult to do if you don’t have a list of technical experts or reviewers. The Collaborators page is aimed at filling this gap.
Add the Factor e Farm physical facility and experimental collaboratory, plus, the First World Conference on Open Source Ecology (see video below). That’s a start.
Now, here are three things that we ask of you. First, what are all the other existing collaboration platforms suitable for physical product development? We know some, like Science for Humanity, ThinkCycle, Global Swadeshi, etc. Some are technical, some are more social. We are compiling a list of these here, so please add any other resources, and help us formulate a strategy for leveraging these towards GVCS completion.
Second, who can volunteer to be a third-party reporter on the progress of Factor e Farm and the GVCS? We have a great Drupal platform that can serve as a project news outlet, among other things, where people can subscribe to news in various formats. To date, we have neglected this platform because of time constraints. It would be really useful to have ongoing news updates. For example, did you know that the First World Conference on Open Source Ecology has already started? Did you know that Nathan Cravens from effortlesseconomy.com just joined the Factor e Team? Did you know that Joseph Zarr, one of our True Fans, is coming today for a week stay, to work on collaboration with the Global Village Institute at The Farm ecovillage, among others? Did you know that Ted, one of our local friends in Kansas City, is applying for the TED Fellows program on my behalf? Did you know that we’ve refined the 3D design on the torch table, and are getting ready to build solar micro-huts with CEB? These are all nuggets worth sharing – and you see that we can never keep up with communicating all that is going on here – so help us by becoming a Factorefarm.org reporter. The requirement is simply to check in with us – phone would be best – we can give you a quick lowdown on the up-and-up – and you repackage that and publish it at factorefarm.org as a syndicated news feed for anyone who subscribes to these news. This would also allow for syndication at other venues. We’d like to start pointing people to factorefarm.org as the one-stop-shop news source on our work.
Third, we are collating a list of Collaborators on the wiki. If you are reading this, you are probably a collaborator who has useful feedback or technical expertise on one or more of the 40 GVCS technologies. Write your name down at the page – and list your areas of expertise that you are willing to share freely with others working on the GVCS, and give us or list your contact information. We will then organize the page with different topics, such as ‘technical reviewers,’ ‘social technology,’ Fab Lab, etc. We will also list the Collaborators under the different projects categories. See instructions on how to make entries, and how to work with Categories. Feel free to add your biography as well. You can see mine in the biographies category.
At best, the Collaborators category could be a great research tool – where any question in the GVCS development process could be answered readily by tapping experts, and where designs can be reviewed effectively by these people. Just search for the expertise needed, talk to the expert, and get an answer in minutes instead of days of research. This could be an extremely potent rapid learning and development tool. So please sign in, and encourage others to do the same.
As the social infrastructure evolves, we’ll provide updates. For now, see the video on the Open Collaboration Method. The transcript is below. (Addendum: see Vinay’s video comment on some of the wiki content, after the transcript)
It has been almost a month since we started the Factor e Live Distillations series and the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign. We have gathered 24 True Fans so far. We have 2 more episodes to go – on the open source product development collaboration process, and on the economic model for open production. We will then summarize the series in the final episode – as a call for action. We will then begin a concerted marketing effort for the 1000 True Fans campaign, with a goal of gathering the 1000 True Fans within 6 months. The countdown is on. We have 702 days left to complete the basic pieces of the Global Village Construction Set.
Today’s episode outlines our work on the Solar Power Generator. This is our solar thermal concentrator – which uses linear reflectors to power a simple steam engine for making electricity. This was formerly called the Solar Turbine – because we thought, erroneously, that the Tesla turbine should be the heat engine of choice.
We outline a program necessary to deliver $1/watt solar electricity with this system. The experts scream that this is impossible on the small scale. We agree with them wholeheartedly – if we use the same assumptions as they are. Our assumptions are different, however. We are phrasing the problem simply by stating a set of conditions that have to be met to achieve this cost prediction. We are applying the conditions to a particular system design, and calculating costs and performances based on available components and industry standards. We are then making conclusions on the required costs of each component – as applied to the overall system – to make the overall cost prediction a reality.
Our question reduces to this: are the predicted costs achievable? Absolutely, if we base the analysis on materials cost and digital fabrication techniques. Are we going to achieve these? This questions boils down to – are you going to help make this happen – and can we gather the necessary collaboration?
This puts the validity of digital fabrication, open souce design, and open collaboration to a real test. Are the grand promises of a Mini-China on a Desktop fiction, or are they real? We’ll know much more after Open Solar 2, the second convergence on solar power at Factor e Farm, Aug. 1-31, 2009.
The enabling feature that we have working for us in this project is the feasibility of cheap electronic controls for many of the components. The entire project requires zero invention – just the integration of a number of particular components into a very particular package. It’s all based on proven technique, and the project boils down to opensourcing various components for cost reduction. Is this going to be easy? Short answer is no, and the long answer is that it depends on how you look at it. From an open source mindset, it means collecting the necessary components for a very important problem. From the proprietary mindset, it means solving a bunch of engineering issues with questionable reward. Enough said.
Our work in general is aimed at building the infrastructure for real-life Global Villages – which you can replicate in whole or in part. You can also see our earlier presentation on the Global Village Construction Set. To support this work, join the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign – by committing to $10 per month for 24 months. Here is the PayPal subscription button, where you can use either PayPal, credit card, or bank account to commit to the subscription.
See the wiki for a transcript of this video. The transcript offers additional pictures, links, and explanation beyond what’s found in the video, so be sure to review the transcript if you are interested in learning all that we know so far. Perhaps the first place to go for clearing up many questions is the Open Solar 2 Frequently Asked Questions. We are taking this project seriously because of its potential, and we understand that the proposition is extremely forward-thinking. As such, we ask you to post informed critique on any explicit points of our work – either after this blog post or on our wiki.
We are convinced that what we are proposing is doable. The question is, are we all willing to create the infrastructure to make low-cost fabrication of the solar generator a reality? We know that mass production could make such system feasible. Could it also be done via a community supported manufacturing model? We think so. Solar power is too important to continue in its obscurity. We also tend to think that Factor e Farm will be the world’s first, replicable community supported manufacturing operation. May 1, 2009 will show this with the CEB press as the first product – update on this process forthcoming. On to the video.
In today’s episode, we discuss the OSE program for agriculture. What did we learn so far, and how can we apply this to creating local food systems? We are proposing the integration of perennial agriculture, living gene bank, open source equipment, and agroecology – or what we call open source agroecology - towards a replicable package of providing healthy, local food for everybody. We propose community supported production as a means of linking the urban and rural landscapes in a mutual inter-independence for providing food, biofuels, lumber, and other products. Can this become a viable and mainstreamable model for providing needs from local resources? What items of local production can be included in this? If our program is insufficient, what are we missing?
Note that we are also offering our first plant propagation workshop on Saturday, Feb. 28, 2009. You will learn to propagate raspberries, apples, peaches, pears, and plums. You can even take the plants home with you, and you will use an open source v-grafting tool in the process.
Moreover, we are starting a community-supported gene bank as part of our community-supported production enterprise model. You can read more information than is mentioned in the video by reading the extended transcript below.
Our work in general is aimed at building the infrastructure for real-life Global Villages – which you can replicate in whole or in part. You can also see our earlier presentation on the Global Village Construction Set. To support this work, join the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign – by committing to $10 per month for 24 months. Here is the PayPal subscription button, where you can use either PayPal, credit card, or bank account to commit to the subscription.
Today’s Factor e Live Distillations focuses on Personal Fabrication. We discuss our goals of establishing a robust and replicable, high-performance flexible fabrication facility for producing just about anything – while relying largely on local resources – and while participating as a producer in a global market economy.
This post is a good overview of the type of tools that are already available – today – and which could be put together into a high-power, digital fabrication package – the Open Source Fab Lab. While the tools are already available and significant development has already been done, their integration into a meaningful productive ecology is the remaining task – in terms of providing a useful toolset for Global Village construction. The Personal Fabrication package is perhaps the most important piece of the Global Village Construction Set – in that these tools are used to create supporting hardware and machinery – for tasks ranging from agriculture to wireless communications. We hope that this presentation will help you see for yourself the kinds of applications and power that is already available to anyone who chooses to use these tools, as a step towards taking advantage of these tools. As was said about one particular example of the available technologies – the 3D printer called RepRap – “Think of RepRap as a China on your desktop.”
- Chris DiBona, Open Source Programs Manager, Google Inc., 8 April 2008.
Our work in general is aimed at building the infrastructure for real-life Global Villages – which you can replicate in whole or in part. You can also see our earlier presentation on the Global Village Construction Set. To support this work, join the 1000 True Fans – 1000 Global Villages campaign – by committing to $10 per month for 24 months. Here is the PayPal subscription button, where you can use either PayPal, credit card, or bank account to commit to the subscription.
Here is the transcript and supporting links for this video. (more…)
We are farmer scientists - working to develop a world class research center for decentralization technologies using open source permaculture and technology to work together for providing basic needs and self replicating the entire operation at the cost of scrap metal. We seek societal transformation through interconnected self-sufficient villages and homes. This is a stepping stone to transcending survival and evolving to freedom. Factor e Farm is the land-based facility where we put this theory, Open Source Ecology, into practice. More
The mind-blowing thing about this project is that anybody who wants to start a similar community can do so virtually for free on the outskirts of many cities in the United States… I say to all those who are actually taking up this opportunity, all the power to you. The idea is, if you can generate the money to create the system, you will reap the benefits forever. — Camilla Padgitt-Coles, Arthur Magazine
