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 companies 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 to scratch an itch or for pay to develop products that can be sold.
Efficiency is a prerequisite to economic significance. 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, the first ever independent replication - ref occurred.
James Slade Replication - and link to other replications.
About a dozen other replications followed until the present, and overall 104 GVCS machines or products were built in total. Most were built at the OSE headquarters in Missouri. Most were heavy product like the brick press, tractors, and MicroHouses - and also a few small ones like the Micro Power Cube or 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. The foundation model is inherently non scalable to world transformation. We believe that we can scale to the trillion dollar open source economy by earning our way, not by foundations. Our foundation money ran out in 2014, so we had to turn to earning as a way to scale. Building upon Extreme Manufacturing techniques, we put the pedal to the metal: immersion, hands-on skill training + production in one event. We developed a social production model that includes revenue from production (sale of a machine) and workshop fees. When we produced the brick press last year, we cleared $10k from a weekend workshop - and had decent fun as a team of 24 participants. 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 can potentially be 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.
In 2014, we built several MicroHouses.
Image - swarm build, MH 2
The last one featured a design-build collab with about 100 people, and we produced a fully featured, 800 sf addition, with CEB walls, in-ground hydronic heat, and modular construction for under $25k. We built the shell and roof 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.
Building upon these results, we are taking the CEB Press the last step: a Distributive Enterprise model. We will be publishing not only the final designs, but a model of production that allows anybody to build the machine (or have it built) anywhere in the world that industrial supply chains allow one to do so. This will be a test case and an explicit effort of open source distributed manufacturing. To do this, the main challenge will be adapting to local conditions and supply chains. To succeed, we will publish both the quick-build digital fabrication version, and resuscitate the manual fabrication version wherever access to CNC cutting is not avaialable. We will do market research and publish all the results. In our usual fashion, we will host Design Sprints to enhance collaboration, so fill out the Tech Team Culturing Survey to join those. We will try a new Design Sprint protocol, where participation is based on commitment to specific tasks outlined prior to the Design Sprint.