Spring 2012

Update, March 19.

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We’re beginning Scrum for hardware development – back to our workshop this week. We are developing a novel, open source, rapid development method – to be known as Extreme Manufacturing. As people are repopulating Factor e Farm after a winter slumber and HabLab living accommodations are nearly finished, we have a few interesting developments.

• The Wikispeed collaboration is progressing, as introduced in the last post. The Seattle team led by Joe Justice started building our 114 mpg, open source, street legal car.  I am hoping to be driving this car within a month, and it may well be the last car I ever buy because its radical hypermodularity allows one to maintain, modify, and fix it as needed. Collaborate: contact info at wikispeed dot com
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• We are finally producing a Master Plan for Factor e Farm – with the assistance of Jerome Ostenkowski (leading permaculture designer in North America) and John Motloch (author of Introduction to Landscape Design). This will provide solid grounding for regenerative land use, starting with a ground-truthed topology map. Collaborate: We need equipment operators for Dedicated Project Visits – to run our bulldozer into the ground on berming and pond creation.
• As a Shuttleworth Foundation Fellow – I have the honor of meeting other exciting world-changes. Dr. Paul Gardner-Stephen happens to be working on open source cell phone mesh telephony in his Serval Project. We are planning to collaborate on a Kickstarter to produce an open source cell phone.  We are planning to add an Arduino to the cell phone, which allows the Arduino to be real-time for inputs and outpups. Outside of providing communication in areas without cell phone towers, such an open source cell phone will allow for control of CNC machines, CEB Presses, or other automation of GVCS tools as needed. Collaborate: a script writer and information architect for our Kickstarter campaign could help.
• Mark Hatch of Techshop, whom I met at TED Long Beach, is offering several free memberships to GVCS developers in our new collaboration. We plan to prototype more Team Wikispeed cars in weekend workshops. Collaborate: Do you want to organize a weekend build event in the Detroit or Menlo Park locations?
• One of the highlights of TED Long Beach includes meeting Chris Traub of Strategic Executive Search, who is offering to help with developing a clear presentation on the next steps of the GVCS. In general, the message is broadening to Extreme Manufacturing, increasing innovation 100-fold, and the emergency of the open source economy as a viable economic option. Collaborate: speech writers and script writers welcome. We will develop strategic communications to attract developers.
• One foundation is offering a donation on the scale of a million dollars to accelerate development of the open sorce economy, with the GVCS as the test case for developing Extreme Manufacturing techniques. We’re working on it. Collaborate: Join Aaron’s resource development team.
• I am applying for the Draper Richards Kaplan Foundation grant for social entrepreneurs, in order to build a process for scaling open source product development. Aaron is working on resource development to bring in the $5M price ticket of the GVCS + documentation. Collaborate: mine the above Foundation’s entrepreneur list for potential strategic collaborators.
• We have 4 students and their mechanics teacher coming from the American Farm School in Greece on July 1. Collaborate: We will be looking for organic volunteers as soon as we find a Factor e Farm Manager to oversee the agriculture operations.
• Scrum – check out the scrumy.com example on Aaron’s page. It’s radically simple but useful.