Rev Up Change Win Powers Documentation Initiative

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.