Blog Update Feb 2015
Treatment
Points: We got lots of proof of concept supporting delivery of magical goals. It is time to go the last mile on economic significance.
- Development velocity
- Extreme Manufacturing
- Single day builds. This is significant. We know of no other company or production mechanism that can produce a comlete heavy machine
Script
50 icons - with 4 year update across them
It's been quite a ride over the last 4 years. We introduced the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS) on the world stage at TED in 2011:
TED Talk
The promise stands: developing the distributed, open source economy. Solving problems faster than they are created.
Critics of the open source economy point out that Open source is a system of development that doesn't have the requisite positive feedback loops needed to build a viable economic system. John Robb Critique of Open Source - par. 13. This is a belief held firmly in the economic mainstream - and is a reason why open source efforts suffer significant risk of Pulling a Makerbot.
We've been busy innovating revenue models that can be built upon efficient production, and showing that they are efficient because they are open source. Contributors continue to work in the OSE community to scratch an itch or for pay - to develop products that can be sold.
Efficiency is key to making open source technology viable. In December 2012, we have shown for the first time that one of our heavy machines, the Compressed Earth Block (CEB) Press, can be built in a single day. We combined Modular Design, digital fabrication and swarm build techniques - for a rapid, parallel, Extreme Build. One Day.
Video 2012 Dec 18
The promise of the distributed approach lies in enhancing access to raw productive power. We have learned that our plans are sufficient for someone to download and build machines on their own. In 2011, shortly after the GVCS TED Talk, the first ever independent replication occurred.
James Slade Replication - and link to other replications.
About a dozen other replications followed until the present, and overall 104 GVCS machines were built in total. Most were built at the OSE headquarters in Missouri. Most were heavy products like the brick press, tractors, and MicroHouses - and there were also a few small ones like the Micro Power Cube, CNC Circuit Mill, and 3D Printer.
Graph of machines built - small - link to page
We were supported by the Shuttleworth Foundation in 2012 and 2013. We got the Shuttleworth Disease - because we were funded, we cranked out prototypes, but not products. We discovered that the foundation model is inherently nonn-scalable to world transformation. We believe that we can scale the open hardware movement to the next trillion dollar economy by earnings, not by foundation funding. Our foundation money ran out in 2014. Building upon our Extreme Manufacturing techniques, we put the pedal to the metal. We developed a social production model that includes revenue from production (sale of a machine) and workshop fees. This model involves immersion skill training + production in one event. When we produced the brick press last year, we cleared $10k from a weekend workshop - and had fun while we were at it. This model relies on the premise that we know how to build machines in a single day - so that we can produce an immersive experience around a build.
Picture - scott et al with joy pressing the brick.
The brick press is important because it can potentially be the start of a killer app. If we can produce high performance open source houses at a fraction of commercial costs using on-site material as our building block, then we have entered a $100B market in the USA alone.
In 2014, we built several MicroHouses.
Image - swarm build, MH 2
The last one featured a design-build collab with about 100 people, where we finished a 800 sf addition, with CEB walls, in-ground hydronic heat, and modular construction for under $20k. We built the shell and complete roof with insulation in the 5 days of the workshop.
Techniques for Building a House in 1 Day exist, and that's where we are taking our hybrid CEB/carpentry techniques.
Our next step involves taking the CEB Press the last, last step: a Distributive Enterprise (DE) model. We will be publishing not only the machine designs that have been tested over the past year, but a model of production that allows anybody to build the machine (or have it built) anywhere in the world. This will be a test case for distributed open source manufacturing applied to heavy equipment. The main challenge will probably be adapting builds to local supply chains, which will require developing an open supply chain database. We will publish both the quick-build digital fabrication version of the brick press, and the older version - to facilitate production wherever access to CNC cutting is not available. See CEB Press Genealogy.
CEB Press III - product release pic
We estimate that the exisiting market for automated brick presses is about 1000 per year. We expect that our work will lead to market creation after full deployment of open source hybrid CEB construction techniques. OSE's concept is to distribute production such that the entire demand can be met by a network of producers, as opposed to OSE trying to meet the entire market demand. Our goal is bigger: creating an open source production ecosystem to regenerate the planet. For the brick press, OSE will test (dogfood) its own production model, while other entrepreneurs are encouraged to start their own enterprises. We will also be developing training and a quality control certification process. We propose that the volume of production can be met more efficiently via distributed production. This is important, for example, if an entire region needs to be rebuilt after a catastrophe, then the distributed effort can deliver 1000 machines on a week's time scale. This would be impossible for a single manufacturer. By developing the CEB DE we would like to test the practicality of the distributed production model.
Because we think that such a model can be applied to many consumer products and production machines, from cars to houses to organic food, we think that it's simply inevitable that open source distributed production will dominate the global economy. The missing link at present is access to open source product designs and access to localized, open source production infrastructures. The distributed nature of solar energy as the fundamental fuel and feedstock of civilization works in our favor.
To develop the CEB Press disributive enterprise model, we will host Design Sprints to develop all the aspects of the DE from machine documentation to market research and everything in between. If possible, we will start addressing the hybrid CEB designs. If you'd like to participate, please fill out the Tech Team Culturing Survey to receive the Design Sprint invitation. We will try a new Design Sprint protocol, where participation is based on commitment to specific tasks of a carefully crafted collaboration architecture. Previously, we held the design sprints without knowing who will show up. Design Sprint tasks include engineering, concept design, enterprise development, documentation, explainer videos, and many others intertwined into a meaningful whole. We welcome all self-starter super-cooperators to join. Our goal for this year is to host mega Design Sprints and Hackathons where a high level of coordination is achieved for a few hundred participants.