Thu 3 Nov 2011
Posted by Marcin
I am applying for the Shuttleworth Foundation fellowship. If successful, this brings in $360k of resources to the project by March, 2012. Listen to this personal intro for the Fellowship, discussing the concept of Distributive Enterprise:
Thu 15 Sep 2011
Posted by Marcin
Dear True Fans and Supporters, the emergency construction crowd funding is a major success – $19.7k of $20k as of 2 PM, Sep. 15, 2011, a little under 7 days from emergency campaign start (the ChipIn at $5,209 as of this time reflects only a part of the donations)
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We hired for bulldozing and excavation for next Thursday, as our open source bulldozer is not developed yet. The dimensional sawmill, two soil pulverizers, plus tractor loader-mounted cement mixer are being built. Power Cubes are being finished. Roof trusses and a sample stringers for the workshop have been built. The site is partly cleared with a LifeTrac box blade, and corners are marked. See OSE Shop 2011 for more.
Sun 4 Sep 2011
Posted by Marcin
Dear True Fans and Supporters, we have fallen into a general video and documentation blackhole over the last 4 months. People are asking for news. We haven’t been idle:
Dear True Fans and Supporters from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.
You can read the transcript here. I am promising a weekly update as we are going on the final countdown towards the Rollout Plan for the Global Village Construction Set.
To reach the documentation blackhole escape velocity, I further report: (more…)
Wed 18 May 2011
Posted by Marcin
Yesterday we received an offer from a potential donor – offering a substantial, yearly donation. This got me thinking about our nonprofit sector strategy, as this offer is within the tax-exempt status of the nonprofit sector. So I wrote up a summary of our current organizational development positioning. Please take the time to read it – it’s an exciting episode of an organization undergoing nonlinear growth on all fronts, and it gives insight both to our status and tribulations. I am also calling out for a collaborator to take on the role of our Nonprofit Director – see the Recruitment Announcement at the end of the above link. We’re looking for a committed individual, capable of taking the initiative to organize this potential goldmine. We’re looking for pioneers to create history.
Mon 16 May 2011
Posted by Marcin
The Open Source CNC Torch Table has achieved first fire and is now cutting parts for the open source tractor:
Open Source CNC Torch Table: First Fire from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo. Sound track is Epic 1 by Joe Post, True Fan.
This is a sample cut through 1/2″ steel. It’s remarkably smooth, prior to cleaning the slag off the edges:
Sun 8 May 2011
Posted by Marcin
Ladies and gentlemen, we have a breakthrough on the Solar Turbine project. We are adopting the Solar Fire concentrator technology as our official solar energy platform. OSE and Solar Fire are entering into partnership – with a single purpose of creating a state-of-art, replicable, open source platform for solar concentrator power applied to electricity, space heating, and process heat. Prototyping done already by Solar Fire indicates that electrical production can be attained by such a system at a $0.5-$1 system materials cost per peak watt – if combined with a modern steam engine as the heat engine. This is about a factor of 10 lower than photovoltaics. See Eerik Wissenz, Solar Fire project leader, introduce the latest successful prototype of 32 square meter solar capture area:
(more…)
Sat 30 Apr 2011
Posted by Marcin
The official trifold brochure for Open Source Ecology is now available:
You can download this in GIMP or Photoshop and jpg format. There are 2 pages, front and back. If you are printing these, make sure that you use the Rockwell font, which is also included in the download.
As you may see in the trifold, we have now reached the 300 True Fan Mark:
As of today, our actual number is 311. So if you like to see this work continue exploding, you can commit to $10 or more per month by subscribing:
Our numbers are showing explosive growth, and there are large numbers of technical contributors continuing to join the project, especially after my TED Talk. We are also joining efforts with Solar Fire – the open source solar concentrator project. Now this is just too much good news for one day, so I will dedicate tomorrow’s blog post to this exciting development. (more…)
Mon 25 Apr 2011
Posted by Marcin
The development behind the scenes has been tremendous since my TED Talk went online. In case you missed it, here is the talk:
Here is an update on some of the developments. (more…)
Thu 14 Apr 2011
Posted by Marcin
My TED Fellows talk is officially online at TED:
You can see our presence on the front page of TED.com today:
Chris Anderson, TED Curator, has even sent me a personal email regarding the talk:
Your project is amazing. Thrilling, actually…It’s people like you who really give me hope for the future.
The feedback so far indicates that the open source economy is an idea worth spreading. I started a discussion on the talk at the TED site – everyone can contribute there.
You can see more pictures of the TED Fellows talks here.
And last – check out the official debut of our new website. Opensourceecology.org is officially up. Look at the Join page and spread the word on how contributors can get involved.
Wed 16 Mar 2011
Posted by Marcin
After an extended winter sabbatical in California, I am back at home at Factor e Farm to continue on-the-ground development of the Global Village Construction Set. Factor e Farm is the place where this development has happened for the last 4 years, and our goal is more than ever to complete the entire Set in 2 years. These are the days after TED – which was a big event because of the positive reception of our work there. See the last few posts. While in California, I stayed with Isaiah Saxon, media director for Open Source Ecology, who is starting a similar effort on the West coast of the USA, the Trout Gulch Forest Village. He is one of our closest supporters, and his assistance on preparing my TED Fellows talk (forthcoming, timed with our Kickster campaign) was priceless. Listen to Isaiah’s role description, involvement, and interest in this work:
