Extraordinary fourth Oekonux conference marks milestone for P2P movement
That’s the title of Michel Bauwens’ post on the P2P Foundation blog regarding the recent conference, where I discussed our program for building the world’s first, replicable, open source, off-grid, Global Village. Read the rest of Michel’s...
Open Source Development Pipeline Continues to Flow
How does one reinvent corporate R&D by using open source methods? We missed a couple of details in yesterday’s hairy diagram and explanation. Now it should all be clear: Now a couple of words on the above.
Steam Dreams
I’m in the process of designing a simple 3kW steam engine for both a combined heat-and-power gasifier system and our solar power generator system. I can’t help but think about the future possibility of small-scale steam power for both stationary...
Open Source CEB Press Production Run Results
We have demonstrated a production rate of 4 bricks per minute in our first test production runs. We ran the CEB machine with 3 people, low-medium throttle on LifeTrac, about 12 gallon per minute hydraulic flow, a hydraulic pressure of 2200 psi, and a...
CEB Proposal – Community Supported Manufacturing
We have released v0.1 of the OSE CEB Proposal, which is a summary of our product release plan for the CEB press. This helps put the entire CEB project in perspective to supporters. The abstract reads: Herein we provide a short overview of the Open Source...
The Bell Tolls for PV
– Guest post by Benjamin Gatti from our Solar Turbine Google Group. This post features an eye-opening perspective on photovoltaic (PV) panels. The claim is: it is very unlikely that PV will ever be cheap. Personally, I’ve been following PV...
On Organizational Form: Questioning the Unquestioned
I started the concept of Open Source Ecology back in 2003 when I was finishing grad school. Then we started a non-profit corporation in the state of Wisconsin, by name of Open Source Ecology, Inc (OSE Inc), later that year. Our initial site – see...
My First Day of Independence
Hello. My name is Morwa. I’m the black baby wether of the Factor e Farm family. I was born on the fourth of July, or thereabouts. I’m your pop political observer of the obvious. This is my first Day of Independence. America has come far since...
CEB Infrastructure
In order to build with the Compressed Earth Block press, and in order to produce these machines at Factor e, we need a certain level of infrastructure. Here is what we are doing: Say you want to fabricate CEB presses. Start with a facility: CEB walls...
A Prickly Journey
A reality check is a bitter sweet pill. The sweetness comes from the truth and the bitterness is in the swallowing. This week I received a letter from an inventor. An inventor who loves the world but sleeps on a couch. When I asked him about collaborating,...
