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Kickstarter Update: The Context

Dear Supporters, thanks for your explosive support on our Global Village Construction Set Kickstarter Campaign, we have reached our goal of $40k, with 15 days left. There is also no sign of slowing down, so pass this on to your friends:

 

Update on final result:

I have been asked several times now regarding the greater context of the GVCS, in terms of the resources required to complete the 50 GVCS tools. I am now a Senior TED Fellow, and combined with my present application for the Shuttleworth Fellowship, I aim to secure the necessary resources and propel this project to completion on schedule by year-end 2012. That is, with support of many caring people like yourselves, who continue to pour their energy into the project through all of its trials – and a total amount of resources as follows.

The plan for the first quarter of 2012 is outlined in my Shuttleworth Fellows application video:

Shuttleworth Fellowship – Personal Introduction from Open Source Ecology on Vimeo.

In a nutshell, $540k in my hands by January 1, 2012 starts a parallel development process of 13 further prototypes for beta product release by April 1, 2012. The rest follows at a similar pace on a quarterly basis.

With the releases of the first quarter, we will be in an improved position for bootstrap earnings via production at Factor e Farm, and we will be well-positioned for further resources coming into the project, without us having to solicit for them, as is truly beginning to happen now. For example, there are are 3 individuals who offered 5 figure donations as a result of this Kickstarter.

The total price for the base kernel of 50 prototypes is $2M by year-end 2012, not including documentation, not including the development of a fully-featured, open source CAD/CAM package. The former is another $2M to do correctly, and the latter is $800k to hire 12 full time programmers – to deliver these also by year-end 2012.

That’s a brief overview, and I will be posting a construction update video today or tomorrow.

Thanks for your support, and today we aim to press 10,000 bricks. Gotta run.

6 Comments

  1. Herm

    ginormously amazing! Cant I just come and help you on the farm?

  2. RMoore

    Hi Marcin,

    On the subject of Open Source CAD/CAM, have you seen FreeCAD? http://sourceforge.net/apps/mediawiki/free-cad/index.php?title=Main_Page

    I think it would be wise to utilise what has been accomplished in this project rather than starting from scratch. (This project needs developers)

  3. Marcin
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