Factor E Farm Blog

Here is a report from the Cohabitat Gathering 2011, the first international natural building conference in Poland:

Cohabitat Gathering 2011 from dobraidea on Vimeo.

Here are some interviews, including Pawel Sroczynski, the lead organizer of the Cohabitat Group.

You can see more pictures from the event at my Flickr. Here is another report from the event videographer. The full presentation videos will go online in 2 weeks. You can read my presentation here.

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Here is a report from the Cohabitat Gathering 2011, the first international natural building conference in Poland: Cohabitat Gathering 2011 from dobraidea on Vimeo. Here are some interviews, including Pawel Sroczynski, the lead organizer of the Cohabitat Group. You can see more pictures from the event at my Flickr. Here is another report from the event videographer. ...

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Greetings from Poland. Here is a trailer for tomorrow’s Cohabitat Gathering conference:

Greetings from Poland. Here is a trailer for tomorrow's Cohabitat Gathering conference:

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I will be speaking at the Cohabitat Gathering, a natural building conference in Poland on April 1, 2011. You can read the program here.

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I will be speaking at the Cohabitat Gathering, a natural building conference in Poland on April 1, 2011. You can read the program here. More info: http://cohabitat.net/chgathering-rejestracja-otwarta.html twitter.com/CohabitatGroup facebook.com/CohabitatGroup Organized by: This will be my first time back in my home country sharing our exciting message, and I thank Pawel Sroczynski for organizing the invitation. I look forward to the ...

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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:

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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 ...

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The Oberlin College event went extremely well. My presentation was at the Oberlin College Environmental Center, which features a Living Machine for processing its waste, earth berming for geothermal design, and fruit trees all around. It also happens that Mr. Hall of the famous namesake invented the Hall process for electrolytic refining of aluminum at a party at Oberlin. Moreover, Oberlin is famous as the first college in the united States to admit a black man.

Some highlights of new contacts and collaborations are:

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The Oberlin College event went extremely well. My presentation was at the Oberlin College Environmental Center, which features a Living Machine for processing its waste, earth berming for geothermal design, and fruit trees all around. It also happens that Mr. Hall of the famous namesake invented the Hall process for electrolytic refining of aluminum ...

[4] 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.

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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

Happy New Year!

Over the holidays, I got a chance to meet Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude) in New York City. Juliet teaches at Boston College, and she co-founded the Center for the New American Dream. She wrote about Factor e Farm in her recent book, Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth. She recently got a McArthur Foundation grant to do a case study on Factor e Farm. What I love about Juliet is that her core message is a mouthpiece for the practical work of Factor e Farm. I feel like I am listening to myself speak when I listen to Juliet. Her core message is that we can improve the economic system far beyond its present morasse of inefficiency and artificial scarcity.

Juliet Schor and Plenitude from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.

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Happy New Year! Over the holidays, I got a chance to meet Juliet Schor (author of Plenitude) in New York City. Juliet teaches at Boston College, and she co-founded the Center for the New American Dream. She wrote about Factor e Farm in her recent book, Plenitude: The Economics of True Wealth. She recently got ...

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We have been invited to Seattle, Washingon, USA, to present at OpenUp – a new forum focusing on open source topics. We have dubbed OpenUp as the TED for Open Source in a previous post.  Our thanks go to Thomas Becker, co-founder, for inviting us. Thom has also started Lastwear, the open source clothing company. Join us for the presentation on Tuesday, Otober 19, 2010, if you are in Seattle. It’s at the Maple Leaf Branch at 6:30 PM.

We will be discussing the next step after the Economy in a Box presentation. The Economy in a Box talk overviewed the case for post-scarcity, open source, resilient communities. The presentation summarized how the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) – an advanced industrial economy-in-a-box which may be replicated inexpensively anywhere in the world – provides the key building blocks for creating modern, resilient communities in a bootstrapping fashion. This time around, our presentation is called the Economy in a Box: Reaching Post-Scarcity Escape Velocity. We will push the limits of thinking and practice of how the GVCS can break the feasibility and cost barriers of building communities from the ground up. This presentation will cover a bold program of requirements which would allow replication cost to reach zero. If you don’t want to spend an average of $1M over your lifetime for your cost of living that includes only housing, food, and driving – then you may want to find out about our proposition to Buy Out at the Bottom for about $14k, to live happily ever after. This should be a decent and fun addition to our repertoire of evolutionary infotainment – which we believe is worthwhile because these are not pipe dreams – but realities that we’re substantiating with daily results from Factor e Farm.

We have been invited to Seattle, Washingon, USA, to present at OpenUp - a new forum focusing on open source topics. We have dubbed OpenUp as the TED for Open Source in a previous post.  Our thanks go to Thomas Becker, co-founder, for inviting us. Thom has also started Lastwear, the open source clothing ...

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Our work focuses on the creation of open source, resilient, post-scarcity communities, which rely on resource-based economies as opposed to debt-based funnymoney systems. This has captured the attention of at least one mainstream author. Here is a short video where Juliet Schor – author and Professor of Sociology at Boston College  -  discusses her new book, Plenitude: The New Economics of True Wealth. Factor e Farm is included for about one minute, as an example of the concepts that she is discussing. We are just posting about 3 minutes of her talk, for context regarding her comments about us:

We posted the full video in a former post. We note for our readers that – while Professor Schor states that we are a resilient community – (more…)

Our work focuses on the creation of open source, resilient, post-scarcity communities, which rely on resource-based economies as opposed to debt-based funnymoney systems. This has captured the attention of at least one mainstream author. Here is a short video where Juliet Schor - author and Professor of Sociology at Boston College  -  discusses her ...

[7] Comments

Two weeks ago we presented on the Economy in a Box at Noisebridge in San Francisco, California – organized by the Bay Area Community Exchange. This is the most up to date report on the thinking and progress of Factor e Farm and Open Source Ecology, and is a 30 minutes (plus Q&A) worth watching.  We cover one tactical approach – for the creation of local economies and politics – backed by the substance of local resource use. We cover The Liberator Full Product Release as a case in point for demonstrating open business models. We start with an overview based on the Humanity+ presentation, and end with the Economy in a Box concept.

Marcin Jakubowsi at Noisebridge from East Bay Pictures on Vimeo.

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Two weeks ago we presented on the Economy in a Box at Noisebridge in San Francisco, California - organized by the Bay Area Community Exchange. This is the most up to date report on the thinking and progress of Factor e Farm and Open Source Ecology, and is a 30 minutes (plus Q&A) worth ...

[16] Comments