Factor e Farm Participation Standards

by Marcin Jakubowski, OSE Founder

Introduction

This page defines the standards or expectations for on-site participants at the Factor e Farm experimental facility. This applies to all on-site participants, and especially to Dedicated Project Visitors interested in long-term participation.

These standards focus on the present period from August, 2011, to year-end 2012. This period marks the phase of rapid development, testing, and deployment of the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), with Factor e Farm as the primary stakeholder for this effort. We are currently in a phase of rapid growth, which was a result of wide attention brought to the project by my TED Talk. The explicit goal is completion of the development phase of the GVCS by year-end 2012, with an approximate $4-5M budget. The list below defines a prioritized list of contributions expected from participants, in descending order of importance.

The purpose of this page is to define a basis for clear performance assessment of on-site participants at Factor e Farm. This assessment is expected to be carried out not only by the project founder, but by each member of the Factor e Farm community. Making and receiving assessments of commitments and promises is a part of the open source culture of Factor e Farm, and the intent is team building towards delivering on a shared promise. The shared promise is the creation of the world's first, replicable Post-Scarcity Community.

Development Priorities

The most valued contributions in descending order of development priority:

1. Design and Prototyping - This is our core physical deliverable. This includes physical prototyping, where machine design (CAD) is a prerequisite for prototyping. The importance of this contribution should be clear by definition - of our explicit goal.
2. Documentation- This is our core deliverable in general. Documentation allows for the replication of the GVCS tools and techniques. We are making a distinction between CAD and CAD documentation - in that CAD refers explicitly to the Design and Prototyping process, while CAD Documentation is part of the Documentation process. The latter involves the recording of content such as design, but it does not include the creation of that design.
3. Production - One core value of our products is their economic significance. As proof of this significance, we engage in production of GVCS tools for external markets as a means to bootstrap earnings for further project development. This, in addition to testing at Factor e Farm, is an important step for the validation of the effectiveness and economic significance of our platform.
4. Dogfooding Products - This is the use of GVCS technologies on site at Factor e Farm to test their relevance to the shared promise.
5. Farming - Farming is a part of dogfooding, but is listed as a separate category because of the relevance of healthy food to the health of people. Farming includes all the elements of Open Source Agroecology
6. Construction of the Built Environment - Directs the construction of on-demand housing and facility improvements. This is important to facilitate participation of individuals who require comfortable accommodations.

It should be noted that the direct participants above are also most qualified to promote the project, with functions such as fundraising, standards development, team-building, and others. Direct participants should be most suited for these roles because they have acccess to first-hand knowledge of the practical aspects and constraints of pursuing the shared promise of Factor e Farm.

Dream Team 16

The above priority list sheds further light on the composition of the Factor e Farm development team for 2011-2012. This team has been discussed initially at Dream Team 16. To summarize and build on that discussion, we draw the following revised composition. The key modification of this work in progress is imposing the

• Project director - directs fundraising and deployment priorities
• 2 Project managers - responsible for recruiting telent to the operation and managing deployment, integration, and testing of the technologies. Organizational, design, fabrication, and philosophical skills are required.
• Designers and Prototypers - to handle the development of 50 protopes in about a year requires an ongoing presence of:
  • 6-12 designers (one complete design per month including Bills of Materials, Exploded Part Diagrams, CAE analysis, calculations, complete fabricaion drawings, 3D models, and explanatory animations) - based on 3 months for completing 3 prototypes on a month time scale. These should include 3 machine design/mechanical device engineers, 2 power electronics engineers, electrical engineer (motors/generators), precision machine designer, metallurgist, CAM expert, materials scientist, and roboticist.
  • 6-12 fabricators - Assumes 2-4 week prototyping cycles. Reqiures primarily custom fabricators, 2 CAM experts, and 2 precision machinists. Also document fabrication procedures.
• 4 Farmer Scientists - run agricultural, food processing, earthworking, natural products processing (fuel, wood). Also feed and cook for the population. Key requirement is that these individuals are intimately familiar with field and processing equipment, and have enough custom fabrication experience to maintain and modify equipment as needed.
• 1 Construction Manager. Familiarity with construction and construction eqiupment to lead on-demand construction of housing on time scales of 2 weeks.
• 1 CAD/CAM solution developer - directs a global team of 8 software developers.
• 4 documentors - produce instructional videos, diagrams, spreadsheets, technical writing (user manual), assist with media for fabrication procedures.