Future Builders Academy Application
About the Program
See OSE Curriculum.
Application
STEP 1 - Produce an approximately 5 minute Video of Interest (VOI)- record a video of yourself and publish on a video sharing site. In your video, please identify yourself and answer 4 questions after you Introduce yourself - your name, and location (city or state or both): Describe in your own words - the most interesting aspect of our program that resonates with you or is attractive to you. Tell us what you think makes you a good fit for our first cohort of 24 team members who are focusing on mastering techniques for large scale collaborative design and builds. What are you most proud of yourself for having achieved in your life so far? How long do you think it will take you to gain functional proficiency in 20 different trades-related skills to achieve a full build of a Seed Eco-Home in 5 days with the rest of your cohort? Please provide us with insight about how you draw your conclusions, or if you have no idea, what information is missing for you to make an informed decision? How much time can you commit on site? Can you afford the tuition or would you require earnings from work-study to support your participation? To submit your video, please use our form.
STEP 2 - Written Application (about 1 hour to submit). We will direct you how to do this once we receive your VOI.
STEP 3 - Interview - ½ hour remote video interview. This is about thinking on your feet, no prep required. We may schedule a followup interview if there are outstanding questions.
STEP 4 - Build Test. We hit the ground running by giving you an opportunity to start building practical things right in your application. You will build a sample 4x9 foot wall module (we will provide blueprints after your written application step) - the same framing as we use in our house - consisting of five 2x6 pieces of lumber and a sheet of OSB and document your process. We are doing this to document your build effectiveness, quality of the result, your ability to observe and document build details/take video/and collect build data, ability to follow detailed instructions, and ability to identify and source the correct materials. You can use simple hand tools (hammer and saw) or power tools depending on your preference. You will video your build as a time lapse that you will submit for our review. This video in itself provides baseline data points on one’s learning process, and is characteristic of data collection that we perform on a regular basis.
STEP 5 - On-Site Interview - aka swarm build - you will bring your newly built panel with you so that we actually use your panel in the collaborative build, with you participating in a 24 person crew. We are assuming that candidates have their own transportation to and from our site by car of flight. If you fly out to our site you can ship the panel to our site, but if we mutually agree that the cost is too high, then we can agree to have you take a flight to our site without your module. OSE will cover half of any travel expenses, and will refund the full cost of your module once you bring it on site. In this site interview - we are including problem-solving on the topic of logistics - a common issue that we encounter in design-builds. We will evaluate your ability to negotiate problem-solving regarding practical execution details involved in a swarm build. Once on site - we will all participate in a day of work on constructing a small part of the actual facility that we may be using in the program. We practice what we preach - by engaging you directly in meaningful builds right from the start. So that the more quickly you learn, the faster you become productive and you will rise in responsibility and pay grade in our work. We offer competency-based pay where you develop and measure your proficiency on a regular basis - with a philosophy of ‘set your own pay’ by making collaborative decisions with us - to set learning goals, proficiency objectives, responsibility level - and thus the corresponding pay. This helps us gain insight into methods for build automation and performance tracking as we study peak performance. You will be involved directly in this experimental approach, where everyone including instructors are not only imbibing knowhow, but also contributing to its creation.
That’s it. Based on your ability to communicate, document, collaborate, build and swarm with other team members - we will determine your potential fit. It is an intensive process, but our whole program will be intensive and this will be your first taste. We are investing heavily in your learning infrastructure, and we expect you to give it your full effort so we can all contribute to new paradigms of how civilization works - while expanding our own index of possibility in the process.