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Funding Successful
This project successfully raised its funding goal on September 28, 2011.
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Every dollar counts. Everyone who contributes will get their name listed in the credits section the website and in the mobile apps we create.
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The above + A limited edition zine containing pictures and details of 25 of the most common flowers of Detroit, an effective identification guide for Southeastern Michiganders in the field or an informative micro-fieldbook for national and international friends.
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All above + Spread the word in style - $50 gets you one Wildflowers of Detroit silkscreened tshirt! Original artwork by Gwen McKay: http://tinyurl.com/4262hnd
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All above + 3 handmade recycled paper, hand silk screened, seed embedded postcards. Send a special message to your friend, and then they can plant it! Postcards look like this: http://tinyurl.com/3k2m5fx
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All above + Receive an embroidered WinterRoot hoodie, letting everyone know that you are part of the team. Left breast reads 'WinterRoot - Vision Tech for Counter Tech' and is embroidered in electric turquoise thread. Check the layout here: http://tinyurl.com/3w7ahak
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Love this idea?!?!!!!?????!!? Take the plunge and donate $1,000 or more and we will implement a sister project based in YOUR town / city / global village. We will provide mobile apps, MMS service, and a custom website including unlimited hosting forever. Help us help you show everyone the value of the wild spaces, nooks and crannies, all around us. (and yes for anyone willing to take it this far, you'll get all the above rewards as well)
Project By
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WinterRoot is a technology collaborative started by Southeast Michigan natives and centered in Detroit for a solid 7 years, now operating from Oakland, CA. WinterRoot develops software that bridges ecologically aware practice together with dynamic information systems. We work on both commercial and noncommercial projects, including Wild Edibles - an iPhone foraging application with Wildman Steve Brill, Lattice - an open source graph database API being built on Kohana PHP, and hosting a series of community alternative energy skill shares. Our projects aim to combine principles of permaculture, renewable energy, and information systems into self reinforcing structures.
This Open Software project has an interesting potential to map in space AND time.
The basic principal is a geo-tagged photo (of whatever your group's subject is) taken by you, then uploaded to your site that has a 'receiving' map on it. The photo is dated and placed. Now a year later another photo might upload to that exact same spot (by having the same latitude-longitude coordinates "geo-tagging") that would show a change in action, effect, outcome in that spot.
It can be used on a state level, neighborhood, city, country side or county level. Whatever you decide as your boundaries.
It's designed to be directed by the community - the constituents. The mapping is done by the people affected, rather than the other way around.
The software is also 'of the people.' There will be apps built for smart phones but ALSO for basic phones that can text and include a photo. As well, you could be phone-less and it will work - upload a digital camera photo. A camera's photo would have to be assigned an approximate latitude-longitude position to get it onto the map.
The phone applications, and the how to build the 'receiving' map would be part of Open Software of the Wildflowers of Detroit project that will be made publicly available once the project is funded at Kickstarter. Leave it to Detroiters to build something that is 'of the people.' The worker capital.
Join in for future potential.
Caveat: this was written by someone who is not part of building the software. How your input lands on the map, and what is part of the Open Software package is my estimation, but the bottom up control seems an inherently strong part of the plan, and speaks to the politic of these creators.
Alley Culture Seed Exchange asked us to post this commentary:::
Chicago is already experiencing and responding to climate change. One of the ways
they are tracking it is through the species of plants that are showing up. They now
figure their climate is becoming similar to southern Illinois. Wildflowers of
Detroit put into use now in Detroit will place a ground reading, and as these
changes move through the plants and trees, we will have a tracked by date map of
this change. It will also show the types of vegetation that are finding the change
tolerable. Chicago is finding certain species are going to be comfortable here and
others are not. In this case, northern oaks and pines will less tolerate the change,
where as Sweet Gum, a southern tree would begin to grow well. Watching our fields
can give a forecast for future street tree species to be planted.
janet atarian (sp)
http://www.cbc.ca/dispatches/
This week.. How an American city in the grip of climate change is trying to cool
its streets, one alley at a time.
http://podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/dispatches_20110922_25346.mp3