Let’s kick off this Tuesday update with a quick word from Marcin, OSE’s Executive Director:
As our Operations Manager Katie Whitman joins us officially this week, we are excited to say that OSE 2.0’s core staff is now all on board, even as the 6 in 60 campaign (6 new machines in 60 days) moves forward at turbo speed. Last week’s highlight was a successful sprint with 19 participants and collaboration with VéloCar, on the OSE Wikispeed Car.
This week Katie is getting a sense of current operations, creating a system to develop OSE Protocols, and moving forward with OpenERP, the open source business management program that will help OSE manage projects, tasks, and contacts. She affirms, “Overall, my first week’s highlights pertain to organizing, organizing, organizing, which I love!”
As Product Lead Gary De Mercurio organizes people and materials for the builds ahead, working with OSE’s interns and others to make it all happen, large materials orders are rolling in. Gary swears he’s done a “metric ton of research” this past week into how to squeeze all the essentials of the Wiki Speed car’s engine and power cube into its frame.
Last week OSE Documentation Manager Rob Kirk secured a groundbreaking new video collaboration system through Latakoo. This system will allow remote video collaborators around the world to help document OSE projects. More on that soon! If you work in any capacity with video production, stay tuned—we need you. Rob will be arriving on site Friday in anticipation of upcoming 6 in 60 machine builds.
Open Source Hardware documentation isn’t just about creating a set of assembly instructions that anyone can follow, so that they can build, for example, a LifeTrac tractor. It’s about accelerating innovation to solve problems more effectively and more collaboratively than at any previous time in human history.
Photo Credit: Bilal Ghalib
On April 26-28, more than forty people gathered in New York City for the first-ever Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam, an event inspired by a February meeting among co-organizers Marcin Jakubowski of Open Source Ecology, blogger and strategist Simone Cicero, and Catarina Mota of Open Materials and OSHWA. What emerged from that conversation was the idea of an inclusive, creative conversation – the Doc Jam, sited in New York but widely promoted among the open source hardware community and beyond. (more…)
This is my first blog post as OSE’s new Product Lead – and I’d like to report that we are busy making progress. Our five Dedicated Project Visitors (DPVs) have just arrived a little over a week ago and have been put into the deep end of design work on the 6 in 60 Campaign. We have a week left on structural design of the 6 machines. We have ordered a large shipment of steel, and will begin initial welding and cutting next week. We still need to design the hydraulics and controls – and order the hydraulic components. Check out some of the designs that we’ve been working on:
You can join us. We will be continuing this weekend with our Design Sprints. Download the Sketchup files – Sketchup is free and universally accessible on all platforms including Wine in Linux. If you have a 3D printer – we encourage you to print out the parts, assemble them, and share your videos. Rob Kirk, our Documentation Manager – is preparing a collaborative video editing platform, stay tuned. For the source files, see my work log, Leandra’s Log, Chris DeAngelis Log, Cory Log, Lucas Log, and Jordan Log – and see our Dashboard for status briefs.
Animation demonstration of Sketchup import to the open source Blender animation software care of Piotr Lugowski.
Yesterday, June 4, 2013 – in Washington, DC, the White House honored twelve Crowdfunding “Champions of Change.” We are excited to share with you that one of those recognized was Open Source Ecology’s founder, Marcin Jakubowski.
White House Champions of Change Program
The Champions of Change event focuses “on entrepreneurs who exemplify the promise of crowdfunding to fuel the growth of startups, small businesses, and innovative projects across the Nation,” according to the announcement released by the White House. The goal is recognize those “who are doing extraordinary things to empower and inspire members of their communities.”
In Marcin’s words:
It is a great honor to be recognized for the work of Open Source Ecology – and I am glad to accept this honor on behalf of all those who contributed to this effort. Thanks to all of you who are giving your talents to a cause that will help millions of people in our community – the world.
“The Champions of Change that the White House is honoring today are using crowdfunding to create jobs for our Nation’s veterans, accelerate the deployment of solar energy, revitalize our cities, and expand the frontiers of citizen science,” said Thomas Kalil, Deputy Director for Technology and Innovation for the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. “Crowdfunding is the 21st century equivalent of barn-raising. We can use it to help our neighbors and fellow citizens start a business, enrich our culture, and apply grassroots creativity and imagination to challenges big and small.”
Of course, here at Open Source Ecology, it’s not just funding that is crowdsourced – thanks to the participation of many supporters and dedicated True Fans. Crowd funding is what gave birth to the project after the Founder went broke trying to maintain design-for-obsolescence equipment – as described in his TED Talk. True to the crowd-supported core of the project – vision for the Global Village Construction Set is founded on the belief that people everywhere can contribute solutions to pressing challenges – by tapping the power of open source, accelerated innovation. Marcin’s specific vision for the end of this year is to demonstrate that one of the machines of the Global Village Construction Set can be designed in a single day with 250 contributors in a Design Sprint.
Video link to a YouTube of the live event, and link to Marcin’s blog post at the White House Blog – are forthcoming
I will be presenting this week at the Glimpses Conference on human potential.
In my presentation, I will give a few examples of what people hope to do with the Global Village Construction Set. As such, I am inviting you to submit a picture of yourself with words, or a video – short and sweet – to be included in my presentation. As we go forward – such insights are priceless in terms of helping others appreciate the value of our work. Read on for more context. (more…)
Open Source Ecology is entering a new era – scaling up and laying foundations for major growth in the coming years. After 6 years of starting from raw land – and hosting countless visitors, builds, and prototyping sessions – Factor e Farm was overdue for a major spring cleaning. See the before and after – this is what happened a few weeks ago:
How can Open Source Ecology design and build 6 new machines from the Global Village Construction Set— a microtractor, bulldozer, truck, car, backhoe, and ironworker machine—in just 60 days? Our new video shows you how!
OSE’s Design Sprints
The key to rapid development is OSE’s approach to module-based, open source design – which brings people together to catalyze rapid, efficient collaborative development and production. It’s a design system that OSE is exploring and fine-tuning as it develops the specific machines of the Global Village Construction Set. The acceleration of development that this process aims to create will be as important as are the machines themselves. (more…)
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. (more…)
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.
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 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
I think this is a fascinating project, and one that John Robb has highlighted as an example of the potential for community fabrication. — Jeff Vail, Blog
