Guatemala Log

October 7, 2012

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for the email, I will give you an update on the LifeTRAC Replication first (with some questions) and then clarify a few things about my projects as per your question, please take note.

LIFETRAC REP UPDATE 2: I went to Santa Ana earlier this week and things are moving along nicely. I have attached some pictures, some video and a CAD drawing they did of the new wheel axle they designed. The wheels are all done, and I believe they have beefed up the original design - please review and let us know comments. Basically, it's more robust, because they lathed and encrusted the hydraulic shaft female straight into the axle, so that the male from the hydraulic engine can connect directly (you can see in the video and drawing) - they believe it will provide more traction and strength. After everything is finished, they will of course, undertaked precise and rigorous performance tests, on a variety of tasks and measures (which is related to one of our questions below).

@Tristan: The videos I am enclosing now were taken ad hoc with my flip camera just to give you a feel, though a huge other stream of video has been taken with the videocamera and tripod you see in them. I told them to err on the side of too much footage, so we have tons and tons of the assembly part. In the end, I will make DVDs with all the raw footage and mail it to you, so that you can have it all and pick and choose which was are worth "cutting". There is a lot of assembly video, and there will be some sporadic "interviews" where one of the guys explains a significant mod. Also, this was our first "interview" attempt, so the guys will naturally get looser, more comfortable and succint :)

They will make CAD drawings like the one I am attaching of all the NEW parts, or parts that were modified from your latest documentation. As I mentioned several times, they are keeping detailed track of all BoM, prices, redesigns for part improvements - etc. We will submit these all for you in complete order when we are finished.

I am leaving for London tomorrow for a week to speak at a Sustainability conference and will not be back until October 15th. By then, I expect them to be mostly finished, they were going to make strides on the loader arm, which we have been amply discussing, and the powercube (they have all the parts ready to do). We did have some questions, that I would appreciate if you guys could help us out with.

1) Have you guys built the bent-loader arm? If so, do you have high-quality pictures and/or video of it in operation? 2) Do you have a set of performace tests amd metrics? Things like how high the arm can (ie, loading how high a truck), load capacity, land speed (with and without load), hydraulics performance, etc, etc? Once the guys are finished they are running all these tests, and it would be very useful to have something to compare them with. Ideally, it'd be great so see videos of the performance tests.

Number 1 is the most pressing one, though having both relatively soon would be nice.

Another question: 3. Has anyone replicated the LifeTrac fully-functionally yet? I read on the blog recently that high-school students (great!) replicated the tractor, though were just short of putting some finishing touches to make it functional (bucket, seat, etc). Is anybody else working on it? If so, are we able to share information with them, talk about replication issues, performance tests, etc? 3a. Are there any other replicators in the developing world? Have any GVCS machines been field tested in rural communities outside of eFarm?

Videos: http://youtu.be/7Qk94hWtIlk http://youtu.be/A_oDBwbwDIs http://youtu.be/WffdwyJ1Sqo http://youtu.be/IO7-_I040gc http://youtu.be/OGB4M_sGWQc

MY OWN PROJECTS I believe there is some slight confusion as to my projects. Quetsol is the solar energy company I co-founded 3 years ago that focuses on increasing access to electricity through distributed solar energy for the Base of the Pyramid, some of Guatemala's poorest residents. Quetsol is not now, nor has it ever been, involved in my efforts to disseminate the GVCS in Guatemala. Quetsol is related to my new endeavors, as Quetsol will provide the energy solutions for my sustainable villages, which will be a new group, new company, new structure.

The drive to push GVCS in Guatemala came entirely from myself, in large part motivated by my own personal professional goals. My current project of building a prototype sustainable village for about 30 displaced families is part of a personal aspiration that aims to set a precedent that new settlements can be intelligently designed and built so that they create abundance rather than scarcity, even for those with the scarcest initial means. I am also setting up a construction company that will aim to develop such integral, sustainable housing and infrastructure all over Guatemala - and the working initial prototype village will be instrumental. This first village will serve as the prototype, I am living there for a few years to ensure follow-through and success. I begin building my house in 2 weeks, and plan on building 3 more houses after that, mostly before year's end, in the next 11 weeks. I am working with aprox 30 displaced families on this first village for multiple reasons: a) they have the most to gain b) they will be easier to convince to join this experiment in new housing and c) this will help in demonstrating this can be achieved even by those with the lowest resources. In the future, these sustainable social housing developments will not be limited to displaced people of course, but focused on the BoP in general.

When I learned of OSE, I thought the GVCS would be a great addition to our efforts (as they would any other rural village). Not only could some of the machines aid in village construction, but then later on would provide a productive opportunity for some of our residents. This is still the plan of course, and I look forward to implement as it becomes possible. Construction and everything will begin development using traditional methods very soon and integrate GVCS elements as they become available and replicated down here.

Our partnership with Andres has come to accelerate some of the plans as it pertains to initial GVCS replication in itself, though hasn't changed my plan for "sustainable villages" that much yet. I am very much looking forward to the fact that starting in November, I will be able to try out and test out a fully functional LifeTrac on the construction site of my first village. There will be plenty of Tractor tasks that will need doing, so it will be a great test - and I look forward being able to do all that first hand, with field/construction work that actually matters to me and will allow me to test it fully. Without our partnership with Santa Ana, there is no way I would have replicated a LifeTrac by myself by now (tools, parts, skills, etc, it's hard - esp when it is a secondary component of other full-time projects), and have one up and running near the beginning of construction.

As for my long-term plans with building sustainable villages - I am forming the company now and building the vision on the first prototype village, which we'll then massify. This long-term plan and vision have not changed because of the partnership with Andres. For now, we have yet to run quant performace tests on routine and expected tasks the LifeTRACs will be expected to perform in our communities. The BoP is a tough marketplace: if people cannot easily use a technology to effect, they will simply stop using it, no matter how cool it is - so we need to make sure that it can fulfill their needs and expectations. So, before, I can make any sort of "projection" as to the effect this will have on communities, we will need to measure all the "stats" and fully test it out even the first couple of replications. For that reason, I can't say with any certainty at the moment, that the GVCS will help us build "X more villages in Y time". I CAN say however, that, if demonstrated successful in our field tests - GVCS will feature prominently in the dozens, hopefully hundreds, of villages we (my new company, ConGuate) are planning to build in the next few years. GVCS machines might get fabricated as company assets to be used in construction, villager training and builds on-site to really do tech transfers, build them into the village project costs, set up small-entreprises to fabricate these in large enough villages, etc.

I have faith in GVCS and the potential for this "concept" to bring increased prosperity to rural villages, in Guatemala, and for the BoP all over the world. From everything I have seen about OSE, I am confident you guys will see the task through. This is the primary reason why I have invested time and money to support this so far. In as much as possible, prudently as time permits, I will integrate GVCS into the communities we develop, as well as try to get others to do the same. It all has to start with successful replication first, successful testing, pragmatic and successful training of the people that we hope will use them. In this regard, Andres' partnership has added another scale to the effort - greatly boosting prototyping and replication capacity. I think that for the SPECIFIC individual effort of disseminating GVCS tech, of which I chose to become a volunteer missionary here in Guatemala, Andres' participation is a wonderful opportunity that will allow this mission to spread much deeper and faster. Wide dissemination will all be dependent on robust replications, physical examples, rigorous and extensive field testing in different sites in realistic conditions in our villages/terrain/communities/demographics - which is why we set out to outline a rough work plan for a year in our Collaboration Proposal.

I hope this clears up my intention in disseminating OSE generally and how it fits as a component into my own work. Please feel free to ask any specific follow-up questions, or I'll gladly have a conversion on Skype about this.

Thanks.

September 4, 2012

File:OSE - Guatemala - Ingenio Santa Ana - Collaboratio Proposal.pdf

Hi Aaron,

I am attaching a 3-page outline of how we are proposing to work together. You'll find that it is roughly what we have already discussed, with many details clarified including an estimated timeline for the 1st year, mutual expectations and in general - some simple proposed features of working relationship in order to maximze value for both of us.

Let us know what you think, any and all comments We are already starting to work - we had a great meeting last week at the sugar mill with the engineers that will be in charge of the project and are already digging right in. We plan on building out our first LifeTrac (with all the current available documentation which I believe is Lifetrac IV + wheels + 2-angle loader) by October 1st.

Have a great night,

Manuel

July 30, 2012

Sirs, I am the first Secretary of Food Security of Guatemala. I am an engineer and am very concerned about the issues you raise. I now am the president of a sugar processing plant in Guatemala so we are constantly working and repairing equipment. In Spanish, a sugar processing plant is called a "ingenio" which in Spanish means ingenious. We have more than 60 engineers at my ingenio. We have a collection of: chemical, mechanical, industrial, electrical, systems, computer, agricultural, civil, materials engineers. We have built the sugar industry in Guatemala by buying surplus and obsolete parts of old mills in other countries and tweaked them into production. We are EXTREMELY GOOD at modifying existing tools and machines to make them work for us. In short, we have a ton of academic and practical experience. We also have machinery, tools, etc. We have tons of scrap metal. And now we have your plans.

Five years ago, I was the first secretary of the SESAN (Secretary of Food Security of Guatemala), a cabinet level position during President Berger´s government. Even though I am now running my company, I am extremely concerned about our food insecurity and lack of productivity of our rural farmers. They don´t have the resources to be more productive since they basically only have hand tools.

I saw your initiative in Reader´s Digest and peaked my interest. I am now REALLY interested. I would like to have a chat with you to explore having a laboratory here in Guatemala. I can put it in our sugar mill and I can get the support in time and resources from other sugar mills in our country. Engineers LOVE solving problems and when we are talking about the possiblity of changing lives, they will be in full support.

Pls let me know how we can get some traction in this direction. I am a friend of President Perez Molina and of the US ambassador and the head of USAID here in Guatemala. I am sure we can get a whole lot of support and funding for this initiative.

I don´t want to do it by myself. You have the experience and have a learning curve that should be taken into consideration.

Let me know if this is interesting to you. I am also an Aspen Institute Global Leadership Network Fellow. By the way, you can google my name, you should get some info.

Best regards and awaiting your news, Andres Botran

May 19, 2012

Hi Aaron,

Thanks for following up. My work in Guatemala is going great, though a bit slower than I originally anticipated due to some unexpected work commitments with my company Quetsol, organizing Guatemala City's TEDx and a 3-wk trip overseas. Luckily, all that is finished now and I am entirely focused on moving this forward - though I have been doing a lot of design and administrative work in the meantime which is important and ready to go. In the coming weeks, I will purchase the land (a site has already been selected, pending visiting a couple more options) and begin preparatory work on the property in June/July. The summer months in the US are actually rainy season here in Guatemala, so construction of the first 2 buildings (house and workshop) will proceed as the rain permits in the summer. Also, during the summer, we will be selecting the groups of displaced people with whom we will build the village. This will take some time as we must get to know them and make sure they are fully cognizant of the terms and vision of what they are participating in. Once the group is selected, the will move into the property, on temporary housing, as we collectively build the houses of all 30 of them. The mechanics of which is not yet determined in detail, but the important thing is that people will help build their own houses. Certainly, it would take a very long time to train some of these people first and then begin fabrication of the machines and wait for that before we start building. In any case, these 30 families we will start off with will eventually be the pool from which talent will be drawn to train replicators and create productive opportunities.

In the meantime, now that a site has been selected, I will look for local experienced blacksmiths with the skills necessary to be trained in the fabrication of GVCS pieces. Construction of houses will begin in August/September, as soon as it gets dry enough. Subsequent construction and terraforming will be necessary of course as we build the village up over the next 2 years, so our need for GVCS machines will increase. In any case, I believe that training of the blacksmith and our first attempts at replicating a machine could happen around July/August. For now, I have to rethink which machine we will begin with, as I was originally going to use the CEB press, but the land that will probably be the final site has no clay and is very black organic, and because of the humidity nobody builds with adobe.

When will you guys completely open up Dedicated Visits for potential replicators? It will be hard for me to find a person that is experienced in the trade and can also speak fluent English, though Marcin told me Spanish would be no problem. In any case, I can certainly begin to try replication with him with the CADs and local resources - but at some point, for polishing and best-practices, I would like the lead on this to visit the Farm and get it straight from the source.

Thanks and we will be in touch soon, let me know if you want any further clarification.