Alexander Beiner

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About

June 3, 2025

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5DMT2YqDF0

Marketing May 30 2025

Oseapprent.png - download

On Thu, May 29, 2025 at 10:33 PM Marcin Jakubowski <marcin@opensourceecology.org> wrote:
1. Wider comms strategy - in the early days, I blogged and vlogged machine builds on youtube before anyone else was doing that. I'd like to return to a constant flow of content production. Given that this takes time, ideally we set up an automated workflow. For example, if an AI can parse my wiki edits (MJ Log), a lot of story could emerge there. If I could get back to wordpress (blogged since 2007 if you scroll down on the right hand side) - then between these 2, and possibly a twitter feed, and parse with AI, we could automate content including text and video. I saw this - and wondered if we could do something like this.
 
My initial take on this is that it's a smart impulse but we could execute it differently. Instead of AI, I would suggest hiring a young and inexpensive writer who can collate this using AI, and then interviewing you briefly to write more authentic and topical pieces on a regular basis. We can talk this through in more detail but my reasoning is that you are the center of OSE and there is no substitute for hearing your thoughts right now filtered through human brains and not AI. I can help with this and we can do it well without breaking the bank.
 
Current state: we need to rework the main website completely to make it current (site is >10 year old). Into the website we want to weave in clear ways To Get Involved. This would have to have clarity on the Apprenticeship as our current scaling method of replicable 24 person cohorts. We need a forum (Discourse but they appear to be a toxic community from our interactions with them, embeddable comment software (OS alt to Disqus), and upvote platform (OS alt to Stack Overflow). Ideally all 3 are in 1 platform that is completely embeddable so we can use it in wiki articles, wordpress posts, and our own discussions posted in YouTube.
 
Agreed. It needs an update and a community offering - this isn't my area of expertise but we can provide the assets and brand story you need to make it easy to navigate and beautiful. Have you thought of creating a Substack? That would hit your need for regular content and community in one go, and be a potential revenue stream. I'm consistently ranked in the top 20 Science Substacks and have a lot of experience making it work so can help there. An alternative is something like Mighty Networks where you have a closed community - it has its pros and cons though. We also have to think about how 18-25 year olds are engaging today - they aren't spending much time on websites - but your legacy audience likely would engage - no right or wrong strategy there, we just need to clarify objectives. 
 
The problem statement is, since we are the product on all the social sites - we can not particularly integrate them well with a long term development process as we can assume all of it will go away at some point - that's why we need to control our data and use open source software so our content never dies. Wiki is good for that, but ideally we would have amazing templates in wiki with embedded things like the comments and many other mashup elements. This page is a sample mashup done in our wiki - i think you can see the attempt at 'convergent development' where resources can be accessed immediately. This works just like with our development method - where we use a standard taxonomy templates - where a skilled user will be able to find any of the 50 GVCS machines, any development step, from any version of the product - or about 100,000 items of content - all within a second or so by understanding the taxonomy. This is important for scalable development once we achieve concurrent development teams of hundreds or thousands of people - where design of a new supercomputer or complex device can take only a weekend etc. 
For this, social media, technical development pages, wiki, blog, commenting and upvoting - all feed into a coherent development method. This combines wiki, github, standard product development protocols, concurrent engineering, not to mention convergent research etc.

Absolutely you need to be pulling your content and data in-house - but it's a 'yes and'. You absolutely need to be engaging your audience on Instagram and TikTok to fill the School, because that's where they are. Looking longer term, the strategy should be to engage people on those platforms and incentivise them to give them your email address. Email lists are far more valuable than social followings and so converting from social (where you don't own the data) to email (where you do) is essential. That's one reason I like Substack - it blends both (I bring my email list onto their platform in exchange for the UX, the organic growth and the brand). On that note, what is the size of your email list right now?
 
The end goal is where any product is open source, and if somebody wants a new product, they do not start searching online to find a sustandard version (such as some cheap shit from China or Amazon) but instead they actaully join a team to develop the same from within an open source design/production environment. That's where I see the future - just like shown for a simple example with the classic distributed production video Full Printed.
 
 
 
Now I recognize the above is way over scope. So maybe that is FYI only, and perhaps a more ambitious future collaboration with you. 
 
 I'm all over this - it's a compelling vision. Let's get the school filled first and then we can zoom out - but I'm absolutely on board for wider collaboration. 

 
2. Revenue Model - TLDR; we can produce a house for $120k instead of $180k industry standard - with more features such as 6kW of PV is included + superefficient appliances, and with the 24 crew that we are recruiting, we can site-build one every 5 days instead of typical 5 months. We are aiming to prove 10x improvement on house building economics to solve housing. I can walk you through this in more detail, as this economic core explains the ambitious goals proposed. Note the caveat that all info you read on our media is outdated, as new information comes in daily - while the general opportunities and ambitions only increase. For which reason up-to-date synthesis is required as we launch the Apprenticeship. House is the first revenue model. It is huge (~$5T global market) - but only the beginning and the total addressible market covered by the GVCS is much larger. We can implement all builds in swarm builds as well - we design production engineering for both personal and industrial production. We have done a number of swarm builds of machines, which we could productize - so that people have the option to build and take home with them - or to purchase a turnkey product. This is a tremendous amount of organizational work to execute each build in the swarm context - but it is possible to can and clone these - hence the callout for massive development with All Hands on Deck.
 
This is one of the most powerful stories you have - it's the one we could use to get you on huge podcasts and national / international news if we frame it correctly. 
 
3. All Hands on Deck - In 2018 we promised to finish the GVCS in 10 years, and the promise of finishing by 2028 remains. But we have only 4 years, so it's all hands on deck. Current video and media effort should reflect this. We have been featured in books and media hundreds of times. Now our pitch is not 'read about our cool stuff' but 'quit what you are doing today as we have a job for you' as a student of world change who can engage full time in paid work study - or a job. We have not promoted the jobs route, but I think in order to reach the critical mass of 24 - we may need to simply hire - such as 3x12 (3 days, 12 hour) full time work in construction - with option to study perhaps one day. Or mixture of anywhere from 4-1 to 2-3 of work - study ratio. Things are evolving. With respect to the greater picture of All Hands on Deck, I'm planning the College Tour, where for one a collaborator (Dr. Pearce) at Western University is setting me up to a visiting fellowship to set up OSE Canada. Take a look at how he describes 'innovation acceleration' - he has the university research version of what we are trying to do for the economy. I can also describe at greater length all the green items in the diagram. Bottom line: all hands on deck for 50 GVCS done by 2028, and entire global economy opensourced by around 2038, at a price ticket of $50M and $50B respectively, generating about $50Q (not T) in prosperity based on the concept of ending fossil fuel scarcity to enter into renewable energy abundance. Ie, 100x the wealth from 10,000x more power than we use today. Ie, most poverty and war eradicated.
 
 
This is a good example of where Al and I will work with you to take these facts and integrate them into a communications strategy - there's so much good stuff, the question is ordering it correctly and crafting messages that do it justice.
 
 
4. Facility Design - we have the old workshop, new Rapid Learning Facility is under construction - and a new Alpha first prototype facility. Students will build their own microhouses Olson Kundig cabin-like. The facility of campus is a real prototype village where we build a microcivilization. Microciv means all the infrastructure and institutions will exist in each, such that each facility is built into campus, startup city, whatever it is called. All with open source tech therefore robust, low cost, and replicable. Including manufacturing, education, financial system, governance system - pretty much arriving at the same endpoint as The Network State but starting in physical space, not virtual space. Students are thus directly involved in building a new civilization from scratch, such as literally using dirt and twigs to build a new civilization - which gets into the industrial ecology of machines.
 
"Students are thus directly involved in building a new civilization from scratch" - this is the kind of messaging we need to develop. Young people are hungry for meaning and purpose, we should go big and sell the full OSE / Open Source vision in the film
 
 
5. Industrial Ecology of Machines - I'm refining the concept of proven infrastructure, all run on 100kW of solar PV. This is based on these ~30 of the 50 GVCS tools. Rock crusher and kiln to make gravel and concrete to reduce each house cost by $6k. Sawmill for free lumber. CEB press for block from dirt. Baler for strawcrete and sawdust from osage orange rot-resistent trees for woodcrete. 3D printing (see our STEAM Camp) for exterior trim, electrical boxes, plumbing, driveway pavers, plastic lumber, vinyl siding, and living roofing matrix. CNC torch table and open source welder build the tractors, telehandlers, augers, backhoes, etc. We melt scrap steel to produce metal, rebar, earth anchors, parts.  Biodigester gas is compressed for engine fuel, so we integrate waste system with energy production and orchard fertigation. All done with solar and PV. It's close to delivering the promise of the Open Source Materials Production Facility proposed in the Open Building Institute Kickstarter. Take a look at the whole video. We are even better than that if we show the concept. Only issue is that we are currently purchasing some of the machines, open sourcing others, building ones that we already designed. But not all before the program - some of this happens during the program - so the chicken and egg dilemma is to be resolved for how to communicate ahead of having shown everything in practice. But the big point is that the materials production will decrease costs significantly   - about $40k of the total $60k materials/equipment costs saved. Our goal is to build housing for free. Literally free. By availing low cost rapid learning and equipment infrastructure on an as-a-service basis - which can be implemented as Universal Basic Assets enterprise. The industrial ecology can be the basis of a 1 year program, where the final project is 'design and build another GVCS machine.'
 
 
As above, let's take this and turn it into a story no one can look away from. Probably this sits below the bigger 'join our vision' message once we've hooked them.
 
 
6. Program design - We have to be strategic on populating the program, as it is difficult to find 24 Apprentices or Fellows in a short time.  All Hands on Deck shows (on top) the flow of engagement from a 2 week builder crash course, which flows into 6 more weeks for a 2 month Financial Independence Package where you build and take home with you a modularized 20x32 home in 2 pieces on a trailer. Then we do the 1 year, described in item 5 above. Then the 4 year program. Online infrastructure allows for clear contribution to technical design, starting with a good understanding of collaborative literacy for how exactly to find any single asset of 100,000 items of modular development on the wiki. We build in university, home school, VISTA, Future Farmers of America, tech school, and other feeders inot our program via college tour, podcast tour, and setting our automated brand/communications/content flow.  We set up OSE Chapters, work with Chambers of Commerce to fund facility replications, as we scale the apprenticeship from initial proof of 24, to 10 cohorts at our home site (Kansas City area), and then replications to other locations based on focus areas.  I believe that 100k facilities like this, serving a surrounding population of 100k each, would provide a distributed economic basis. So if people want to engage in further activity, such as innovation and space travel, they can do so even at each location , for example to produce enough rocket fuel from a single acre of photovoltaic hydrogen for a single moonshot per year. Or, they can collaborate more broadly with the global community for more ambitious projects. In short, the time for freedom for all is now, where people check in to self-determination as 'making a living' ceases to be the central preoccupation. We can practice this right at each campus - with Alpha being the experimental facility, including new enterprise. So that the program is also a retirement plan: if you have the knowhow to generate wealth, with access to facility infrastructure even after you graduate - then that is your retirement plan once you make it out of program at age 22. That's a young age to retire.
 
A thought Al had when we were going through this earlier - does it make sense to call it a 'school' or should you be calling it a 'university'? The last thing an 20 year old wants is to go back to school. They want to advance - university and apprenticeship are the two archetypal ways to do that in society so that's something we should be thinking about. 
 
 
7. Video Length. Catarina my partner brought up the issue that for the target 18-24 yo audience - is a single 3-5 minute video the way to go - or do we do much shorter bitesize content? Sounds like the answer is both, in that short clips can be generated from the larger?
 
Catarina is very wise - I had the same thought and you'll see in the proposal a plan for engaging that audience on Instagram and TikTok with short-form content. We still need the full film, and as you mention it will inspire clips, but they'll also be standalone pieces of content designed to drive applications
 
 
8. Outcomes. I have a concern that once you finish your video, our infrastructure - both virtual and physical - does not take full advantage of your work product, and we start the program with less than 24 people. Of course we build up as much infrastructure as possible. But what I have described above is a rollout, and hard to convince people prior to testimonials from people who actually went through our Apprenticeship.  We have testimonials from other programs. I could ask other collaborators for meaningful feedback, such as Bradley or Dr. Pearce. Regarding pay structure incentives and risk - would you be open to a package where we pay $15k for your work, and then $1k for any Apprentice that is accepted? That means up to $39k for securing 24 - for anyone for whom you are responsible for any time from start of campaign say to 6 months after Sep 1? This is beneficial for OSE up front, and beneficial for you if the campaign gains traction. Not sure if we can easily track, for example if people were referred by others vs finding our assets online. Let's discuss if this makes any sense and if you are open to it. It seems that initially, it will take time, but it seems that you will over time bring in ample people. I am willing to go over 24 in the program itself, and up to 48, including what that means for infrastructure: massive buildout of microhouses on campus. 
 
Let's talk through this next week when we present to you. I want to be collaborative and make this work, and at the same time we can't achieve your objectives for $15k. In my experience it's very difficult to do accurate attribution as you mention, so I'm not too keen on the $1k per apprentice structure. However I have some ideas of how we can be flexible so let's discuss after you've had a chance to see our proposal. 

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