Kickstarter

*Apologies - here is the correct link to OSEmail*

http://www.opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSEmail

Hey Kickstarters,

We're very busy over at OSE, and we've started a new update system called OSEmail. It's a weekly update that shares what we're doing at Factor e Farm, progress on the global adoption of our machines, and also sends our latest videos and new designs for the GVCS.

If you're interested, please sign up here.

Best wishes to all,

Marcin.

Dear Backers and Supporters,

The stickers, DVDs, Magnets, and T-Shirts have shipped! If you do not receive your package in the next two weeks (by September 15), please send an e-mail to opensourceeco@gmail.com with your name, address, donation amount, and T-shirt size (if applicable). 

Meanwhile, at Factor E Farm, the summer saw major advancements with the Open Source Ironworker II, Dimensional Sawmill, Hydraulic Trencher, and Cold Saw . As the summer ends, we are vamping up our on-site team with a Master Prototyper and Machine Designer. The search is ongoing. The recruiting contact is recruiting@opensourceecology.org

September is also the month we predict to see the first one-day CEB Press production run. Production Director, Marshall Hilton, will lead a group of 8 as they complete weekly one-day production runs during which the newest revision of the CEB press will be completely fabricated from the ground up. These production runs are one facet of our scaling efforts and are predicted to raise $20k monthly.

As far as building with CEBs on site at Factor E Farm, we are currently planning the construction of a series of MicroHouses:

The MicroHouse will be a (simplified) version of the above image made of CEBs and lumber cut on the dimensional sawmill that will house two to four people and will include integrated greywater management, rainwater collection, and other living systems. 

All the construction, design, and prototyping that happens on site is made possible through the generous support of backers like you. Thank you for your contributions to a sustainable, healthy, open source future!

Dear Backers,

We are very sorry to admit that our stickers and DVDs have still not arrived on site here at Factor E Farm, much to our interns' chagrins. In anticipation of their arrival, a team of us spent the last 24 hours stamping and addressing the ~600 packages only to be let down today by an empty-handed postman.

It is our express priority to mail every package as soon as the rewards arrive.

Thank you for your continued patience and support,

Aidan Williamson

Open Source Ecology Intern

Dear Backers, 

Sincere apologies to all 1384 of you for the delay in reporting - due to severe growing pains. Part of those growing pains was that our documenter did not make it from Canada due to visa issues back in April. As I have a moment to go up for some air – I report that the project is alive and exploding with growth. We moved into HabLab - our double-CEB wall biomass-insulated structure - and have 8 people on site now at Factor e Farm. We will ship the rewards for all but the t-shirt reward tier by June 27. Ian came for a short visit and produced this June update:

Ian is working on a documentary film that includes our work.

The t-shirts should arrive here at Factor e Farm by July 3, so we will ship them within a day from then. We will also have additional Civilization Starter Kit DVDs, stickers, and t-shirts available for sale on our website, where sales for these will be used to recruit a Curator for future versions of the Civilization Starter Kit. We'll be migrating all documentation to the Booktype remixable web publishing platform to facilitate publication of new versions.

The Build Naturally workshop will be announced for late August – early September. We will build an OSE Microhouse in 5 days. This will happen after we build our next version of the CEB press – and finish the last 4 rooms of HabLab. You can see 128 video clips of HabLab progress here, and 203 more clips of workshop construction here + 34 more here.

I will now email the rest of you regarding the Personalized Video Message from the Founder. The honorable mention list of all 1384 backers is on the Kickstarter Supporters page on our wiki.

We will be growing to 16 people on-site by next month - and aim to increase to a community of 30 by end of next year. This reflects a major mid-course correction: we found that scaling the project without a long-term development team is impossible. So we will gather the team, and deploy the GVCS and a community that uses the 50 GVCS tools - by 2015. We will see how close we are to a post-scarcity community at that time.

To get there, we have so far recruited a Farm Director, Construction Director, Production Director, and Executive Assistant. We are now recruiting a Documentation Team of 6 people - please pass this announcement on to your networks. We will then recruit a Fabrication Director and more Project Managers to accelerate development after we document fully the backlog of what we already have available for documenting. This includes the CNC Circuit Mill, Dimensional Sawmill, CNC Torch Table, Ironworker, Heat Exchanger, Open Source Automobile (based on Wikispeed platform), Laser Cutter (based on Lasersaur or other open platform), and 3D Printer (based on Makerbot platform).

Part of the work to be done in tandem with our open hardware development is defining a specification for a professional-level 3D CAD package - as that is one of the major blocks towards creating a scalable, open source product development pipeline. I think that the open source CAD/CAM platform will be a key enabler of decentralized production. I am discussing this issue with Cesar Harada of OpenSailing and Catarina Mota of Open Materials – two other TED Fellows who I am now meeting at the TED Global conference. I am hoping to connect to FabLab leadership soon to assist in moving the FabLab platform into the open source fabrication space. We aim for a Beta release of the open source CAD platform by the end of 2013, and full release by the end of 2014.

Please help us recruit the Documentation Team – and more news coming soon.