Interviews


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:


Categories: Interviews, Open Source Economic Development, Presentations

[2] Comments

We are starting biweekly OSE Global Conference Calls – beginning Wednesday, October, 14, at 11:00 AM GMT-6 (Central USA time zone). Why? Because we are nearing critical decision forks in this open source project. Read on.

These are exciting times as we near product release for the high-performance, open source, Compressed Earch Brick (CEB) press. Just as a heads up, we’re getting interviewed by Time Magazine next Tuesday, and we have a 2 hour interview with the Venus Project next Monday night, which has quite a global following in the form of the Zeitgeist Movement.

Along the lines of Product Release – we will be releasing CEB Press Beta Version 1.0 – with as much development as we can accomplish by November 1, 2009. (more…)

Categories: Collaboration Platform, Collaborators, Compressed Earth Block Press, Global Village Construction Set, Interviews, Open Source Economic Development, Open Source Product Development Pipeline, Organizational Development, Post-scarcity, Viral Village

[11] Comments

Inga and I have fused since she arrived to translate at one of the events on the trip through Austria. Meet Inga. She’ll be joining us at Factor e Farm, and this is growing to be a bigger story than expected.

Right now, we are begining an open source architecture process for building Inga’s House. A showcase of comfortable living. Local materials. We’ve got a contact for arched CEB roofs – we’ll see if we can pull them in. We’ll use Andrius’ method of organizing around a person – and Inga is project leader. We cater to her needs through global collaboration.

Here is the design process beginning – Franz, Marcin, Inga, Dustin, Michaela – as instigator, stakeholder, leader, architect, translation – respectively. See our initial planning session:

This fits into the context of Solar Village.

See further coverage of the Austrian adventure (in German) in Transition Austria.

Categories: Interviews, Open Collaboration, Open Source Ecology, People

[11] Comments

Last week, Frank Aragona from Agricultural Innovations published a podcast interview regarding some of our work at Factor e Farm. Agricultural Innovations is a research and consulting organization involved with biodiversity, fair trade, community supportecd agriculture, permaculture, and appropriate technology, among others areas.  Its aim is to promote cutting edge practices in all of these areas. Click on the picture below to hear the podcast:

Categories: Global Swadeshi, Global Village Construction Set, Interviews

[9] Comments