Factor E Farm Blog

Here is a followup from Brad Masi from the Oberlin lecture tour, who videotaped an interview and the Oberlin lecture. These are decent overviews of the latest progress, and the 30 minute Oberlin lecture shows a good flavor of our present status.

I’ve taken a few steps to keep us stewing on the open source ecology ideas that Marcin presented and how we might begin to form some collaborative networks between Cleveland, Oberlin, and elsewhere to enact some of these ideas in the region.

Now that we’ve had a few days to reflect and assimilate some of the information from the Cleveland and Oberlin sessions, take a few minutes in the next few days to do the following to keep in touch and keep the ideas flowing:

1) WATCH REFRESHER VIDEO!  I put together a short refresher video of open-source ecology following an interview with Marcin in Oberlin. Click here to check it out and re-aquaint yourself to some of the Open Source Ecology (OSE) concepts. Feel free to post the link on your facebook page to share the ideas with your friends.

2) FILL OUT THIS SURVEY! To gauge interest and encourage further discussion, after watching the refresher video, click here to fill out this brief survey on NEOFoodWeb of your ideas and interests in OSE so that we can get a better sense of what skills and knowledge people can contribute to OSE efforts.

3) JOIN OSE AFFINITY GROUP! I put together an “affinity group” for Open Source Ecology on www.neofoodweb.org . I put together NEOFoodWeb as a part of a regional local foods assessment that we just completed for Northeast Ohio. An affinity group is a regional group of individuals interested in working collaboratively to advance a particular aspect of the local food economy in Northeast Ohio. We can use the affinity group to facilitate discussions and share information about OSE. Click here to join the food web. When you log into your account, you can select for affinity group preference, scroll toward the bottom of the list for “supporting businesses” and select “Open Source Ecology”. I have posted a forum discussion there to start conversation on next steps for OSE activities. For those of you that are already members of the NEOFoodWeb, we are going to enable people to sign up for multiple affinity groups, although it might take a day or two to get this set-up. Share your thoughts in the forum on next steps!

4) INVITE YOUR FRIENDS! Invite your friends to participate in this discussion. I have posted Marcin’s full talk at Oberlin College here. Feel free to share this link to any of your friends that couldn’t make the presentations, but might find this topic of interest. Encourage them to join the affinity group and fill out the survey as well!

We are currently at 211 True Fans. Thanks for all of your support, and if you would like subscribe, please do so here:

Standard : $10.00USD – monthly Gold : $20.00USD – monthly Gold Extra : $30.00USD – monthly Platinum : $50.00USD – monthly Angel : $100.00USD – monthly

Here is a followup from Brad Masi from the Oberlin lecture tour, who videotaped an interview and the Oberlin lecture. These are decent overviews of the latest progress, and the 30 minute Oberlin lecture shows a good flavor of our present status. I've taken a few steps to keep us stewing on the open source ...

[2] Comments

We are currently reorganizing the work of Open Source Ecology to rapid parallel development of the remaining 50 technologies of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). Our goal is to have the entire set ready for replication within 2 years, and we think we can do that with a $2.4M budget over that time. The  next stop in this adventure took me to Cleveland, to a presentation on the GVCS and further networking opportunities, organized by Glenn Gall, one of our True Fans.

Cleveland, Ohio, is an interesting place. Home of robber barrons of yesteryear, today Cleveland features 35% unemployment, and steel mills that are still in operation. I’m thinking immediately – what if a value-added steel mill were re-invented – where steel production is followed by flexible fabrication of tractors, cars, and renewable energy systems, and countless other items of high economic significance? That’s one possible application for the GVCS tools for reinventing local production.

(more…)

We are currently reorganizing the work of Open Source Ecology to rapid parallel development of the remaining 50 technologies of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). Our goal is to have the entire set ready for replication within 2 years, and we think we can do that with a $2.4M budget over ...

[3] Comments

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 ...

[3] Comments

We are producing an application for the Buckminster Fuller Challenge this year. The Buckminster Fuller Challenge from Buckminster Fuller Institute on Vimeo. Brandin Watson, one of our collaborators, has volunteered to take the lead on writing the application for us. Here are his words: As was briefly mentioned in a previous post, we will be entering into ...

[2] Comments

Here is an update on the first set of pips from Hexahatch v2.0.
Here is an update on the other peeps of Factor e Farm. In a few days, Sean and I will begin full fabrication documentation video on the next copy of The Liberator open source CEB press, where the funding basket for it is filling as we speak.

Open Source People from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

Here is an update on the first set of pips from Hexahatch v2.0. Here is an update on the other peeps of Factor e Farm. In a few days, Sean and I will begin full fabrication documentation video on the next copy of The Liberator open source CEB press, where the funding basket for it ...

[6] Comments

One perk of life at Factor e Farm is that you run into some really interesting people. Liora and Andrew Langford, co-founders of Gaia University and also True Fans, visited yesterday.

We covered lots of ground on collaboration between OSE and Gaia U. First, I should explain what Gaia University is about, because its uniqueness is not evident from the website.

Gaia University is an international school-without-walls with about 100 students. This means that education occurs not on a physical campus, but wherever the student chooses. There are mentors and the school is accredited. Gaia offers Bachelor’s and Master’s programs, and it is also introducing their Ph.D. program this year. Gaia has the capacity to provide credit for applied work and studies. There are other low-residency programs, such as Goddard College and Union Institute in the USA.

The unique features are threefold. (more…)

One perk of life at Factor e Farm is that you run into some really interesting people. Liora and Andrew Langford, co-founders of Gaia University and also True Fans, visited yesterday. We covered lots of ground on collaboration between OSE and Gaia U. First, I should explain what Gaia University is about, because its uniqueness ...

[3] Comments

We are now officially using Open+Pario as our project management and design repository for Open Source Ecology. The most active project at present is the CEB press, and we are beginning project management of the Open Source Induction Furnace. Anybody can view any of the projects – including design files, technical discussions, etc. The content is entirely transparent and open to the greater community.

If you want to get involved in any of the projects,  you can  sign up  as a Project Member by registering and joining  a given project. (more…)

We are now officially using Open+Pario as our project management and design repository for Open Source Ecology. The most active project at present is the CEB press, and we are beginning project management of the Open Source Induction Furnace. Anybody can view any of the projects - including design files, technical discussions, etc. The ...

[2] Comments

William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He’s coming from across the big pond – from the United Kingdom – and we are planning for a 3 month stay.

William is not a novice to creative dexterity – he’s involved in repair and demolition of industrial chimney stacks and natural draught cooling towers – at heights. See for yourself:

He has experience with various tools, welding brickwork, ropework, woodwork, and general shop.  He’s traveled the world, studied Romance languages, taught English in Chile, and is certified to teach high ropes courses. He is now showing great interest in the deeper message of post-scarcity, resilient community creation.

We discussed the following tentative plan, with both of us working in the shop and as needed:

May – Work on finishing or building Sawmill/LifeTrac II/MicroTrac II/ anciliary implements for construction – all in preparation for building.

June – begin building autonomous, zero energy housing with solar space. Experiment with CEB floors, CEB masonry stove and chimney, stabilized bricks, stabilized reject lime bricks, stabilized brick walkway and driveway, stabilized retaining walls, and others. We plan on winter food garden and sprouting in the solar space. If progress on the steam engine goes well, we’ll aim to install combined heat and power on the masonry stove.

July – continue building until comfortable accommodations for the winter are ready for several people.

We’re looking at building zero energy homes that look tentatively like this:

(Credits: Aigars Bruvelis in Blender)

Here is a CEB floor example from Abe at Vela Creations:

See more of his photos here.

Other than this, William is learning Kdenlive on Linux for movie editing, as well as and QCad for CAD work. These are staple tools now at Factor e Farm. William will begin preparing some of the technical drawings for the sawmill, so we can collaborate on making that happen over distance until his arrival.

We do want to consider bringing in additional help from the CEB general contractor, Floyd (see last blog post). We will consider hosting a CEB workshop if progress is good. If the CEB fabrication is going well – there could be resources generated to really get things moving forward, and continue to build more structures. I think now is the beginning of really settling into the land – and getting the place to look half-way presentable. We’re open to all kinds of ideas, such as the proposed CEB vault construction and others – but we’d need other people to get involved to push those projects forward. Otherwise, we’re sticking to basics and all types of experiments in the process.

William Cleaver will be joining us at Factor e Farm on May 1 for a Dedicated Project Visit. He's coming from across the big pond - from the United Kingdom - and we are planning for a 3 month stay. William is not a novice to creative dexterity - he's involved in repair and demolition ...

[14] Comments

Hats off to our collaborators from Poland for open-sourcing a manual, dual-block CEB press. It is in the pre-alpha v0.1 release stage.

Open Source MANUAL CEB PRESS beta I from Cohabitat Platform on Vimeo.

You can download the existing CAD files here. The files are in Polish, so they still need to be translated for the broader audience.

Meet your developers from the Co-Habitat Platform: Pawel Sroczynski and Remik Karbowiak. These guys are pretty good. They also developed a model open source, prefab, straw-bale house design, and they will be buildng it this year at a budget of $7k. I always thought that straw bale is too exotic in practice because of the huge labor requirements, but these guys are showing otherwise with OpenSTRAW:

Here is the building sequence. Click on the following images to enlarge:

Both the manual CEB press and the straw bale work are a major contribution to open source economic development – and to humanity. See their website for more information.  Congratulations to the Co-Habitat team. We’d like to add the manual CEB press to the Factor e Farm product line as soon as the machine is tested in the field, and we may end up building some straw bale here after all.

Hats off to our collaborators from Poland for open-sourcing a manual, dual-block CEB press. It is in the pre-alpha v0.1 release stage. Open Source MANUAL CEB PRESS beta I from Cohabitat Platform on Vimeo. You can download the existing CAD files here. The files are in Polish, so they still need to be translated for the ...

[6] Comments

Thanks to Jonas, Bojana, Rikard, Karl, Henrik, Mathias Friman, and all the others behind the scenes – who all combined for a pretty fiery Free Society Conference for 2009. You can see the Live website for the conference here, and the program here. Between the two sites, you will find the uploaded presentations (such as ours), and the videos of all the presentations should be getting posted soon.

Group photo of presenters and organizers (source)

The difference in this presentation compared to our previous work at Oekonux or Linz Counterculture Fair was that half of it was dedicated to discussion of the social contract for a post-scarcity community. This contract is up for complete review and and improvement – so please read it and rip it up here. The essential question in our case is how to attract dedicated developers who want to invest deeply into making post-scarcity living a reality.

It is not possible to mention all that went on but the highlights. On my talk – people had many questions afterwards for at least 45 minutes, so the concepts of building post-scarcity communities with existing technology are well-received. We already have a couple more True Fans signed up from the conference. Combined with new interest from the Product Release, we have 6 new True Fans since Nov. 1, and an overall total of 50.

We sparked great discussion on the open source fab lab, in that hackerspaces worldwide are well-positioned to collaborate on at least some of the pieces necessary. The concept of Industry 2.0 is really taking off – ie., the combination of fabrication literacy, global design efforts shared by computer, and local production via open source fab labs. (more…)

Thanks to Jonas, Bojana, Rikard, Karl, Henrik, Mathias Friman, and all the others behind the scenes - who all combined for a pretty fiery Free Society Conference for 2009. You can see the Live website for the conference here, and the program here. Between the two sites, you will find the uploaded presentations (such ...

[3] Comments