Dear Readers – as a result of the California Tour, the project is exploding with growth. I am back in California for the winter to regroup and reorganize. Until April 1, I am keeping the fire with collaborators at the Trout Gulch Forest Village in Aptos, California. This is a magical place that I like to call Factor e West.
California from Marcin Jakubowski on Vimeo.
We are presently working on Proposal 2012 to complete the Global Village Construction Set in 2 years with a $2.4M budget. To do so, we are building the team. Isaiah Saxon joined our core team as our Media Advisor. He’s a leader at Trout Gulch, ground-breaking film director by trade, creator of the GVCS in 2 Minutes video, and his latest contribution is a design of a clear and simple website and front face for the GVCS work:
We are looking for web developers to build the website. Contact us if you can help. You can find further notes on the website design here.
We are branding the project clearly as development of the GVCS – while not confusing this matter with the development of communities or social networks based on access to the GVCS – which is the next step in the process. The website, a longer explainer video, plus a well-refined presentation, are in the works, as we prepare for a funding campaign that may include: (1), crowd funding via Kickstarter and Beex; (2), non-profit sector investors; (3), True Fans, (4) continued public presentations; and (5), earnings from equipment orders.
Floyd Earl Smith, from Transition San Francisco, joined our team as Product Manager. His background is as a technical writer, author, and product manager. While I will lead Project Management, Floyd will focus on the documentation of development towards replicability.
Luis Diaz is joining the core team to set up our non-profit organization infrastructure and other details of enterprise form. We finally have a dedicated person who can establish and maintain tax-exempt organization status. This means that we can put forth an earnest recruitment call for a resource development professional.
The bottom line is $2.4M in 2 years, massive parallel development, and the GVCS is done in 2 years. You can see the updated list of technologies (now numbering 50) in the GVCS Technologies section of Proposal 2012. If you think you can help, contact us. The main effort until April 1, 2011 is writing the proposal, cleaning up our media presence, building a parallel development team, and upgrading the organizational infrastructure to handle an increased level of support. After April 1, we plan on getting back to the dungeon to fill equipment orders, as deployment of our machines in the field is part of the feasibility-proof of the GVCS-concept. This time around, we plan to add digital fabrication assist for LifeTrac with a CNC torch table.
I like that you have now settled on a concrete idea for the web presence. The Open Ecology site was too confusing mainly because it had so many concepts/ideas going on. I think you are heading into the right direction now!
I also hope you report some more about the Trout Gulch village.
There’s a Steampunk convention in San Diego in May, 2011 http://www.gaslightgathering.org Maybe there will be interest in real new steam engine applications.
This is all fantastic news.
And April 1 is my birthday! 🙂
Smiles,
Josef.
Just read the Proposal 2012 document. Brilliant! I love it.
One thing I’m missing though: A stove! There’s an oven, but how do I make my eggs or cook meat?
What about a toilet? Buy off-the-shelf?
The mechanical/shop parts seem pretty figured out. I think huge parts are missing on another vital aspect of human life, food! You should contact someone like Joel Salatin or the people of Growing Power. They have permaculture all figured out and you could just open-source it and make it available to everyone.
Cooking food: gasifier provides gas on-demand from pelletized biomass. All that’s needed is a stove-top.
Food: Nursery is part of Open Source Agroecology product ecology. This involves genetic stock, open source ag equipment, open source food processing equipment.
Context for village needs will become more clear once the Product Ecologies section is filled in. This involves direct use of the 50 technologies plus direct derivatives of these.
Wow, the Trout Gulch drawings are amazingly beautiful!:
http://encyclopediapictura.com/troutgulch/
Is Isaiah the author or someone else?
Very nice website design plan!
That’s exactly what is needed for quick introduction for the people who don’t know about this.
Still need a site?
[…] is from September this year: and we have generated $173k in December from Kickstarter, crowds, and foundations. There is no evidence of funding deceleration. If you give nonprofit sector donations, please […]