Brad Comments on Finding Collaborators June 2022
Well, I think that many good contractors are not so accessible because they are so busy, meaning that there is so much demand for their services that a lot of times they just don't respond if they don't need the work or they see something in the ask that they don't want to bother with or that annoys them. That doesn't mean that all contractors are unresponsive, but if I was overwhelmed with requests from friends to help them move, I would start to pick and choose the friends that I cared about most and help them first - not some acquaintance that I met once at a party a year ago. That same dynamic played out recently with Evan Wiig, who works for the Farmer's Guild and Community Alliance for Family Farmers (CAFF) and who I met over a year ago at a Taco Tuesday bike ride and then he never responded to my emails, nor Marcin's email about their small farm tech competition. I ran into him again at the Taco Tuesday ride a few weeks ago, talk to him about the same thing, I send him a follow up Facebook message and he responds with links to CAFF's press release about that electric tractor that I posted to OSE's Facebook page and which got 25+ likes and a few comments - that's not huge, but that post got more attention than anything I've seen posted in the last 6 months to OSE's Facebook page. The point of this story is to highlight that busy people need reminding to respond to people they don't know well.
Physical, skilled labor is hard work and hard on your body over a career and it often isn't fun. Most people that make a career in the construction field do it because there can be good paying jobs, especially if you take on high end jobs. I've pitched the SEH2 as affordable housing to one design build firm that eventually referred me to a sole proprietor type contractor and along the way they tried to dissuade me of the affordable seeking aspect of what I wanted done. That's fine, as I found out that firm (and many other similar ones) does a lot of high end, custom "green" construction for people with lots of money in Sonoma County. That's not me or what I was looking for, so the person I interacted with referred me to a contact of hers and moved on. But that firm definitely had the skills on their staff to really help us, if they were interested in doing that kind of work.
As far as similar situations, I was referring to the surveyors who explained concepts to me like "running out the block" and how they conduct property boundary surveys to be able to defend them in court, when I asked questions about what they originally wrote back. They seemed busy too, but for some reason the surveyors were more approachable in terms of written/email communication. Several seemed to like to talk about their work. Maybe more educated, like to think more, I don't know - ?
The FreeCAD Forum posting that you posted on May 10 (https://forum.freecadweb.org/
I get what you are saying about very little collaboration on open design, but we don't have to solve for open design right now - we are just trying to find a few good, professional collaborators. I thought that Elijah has given very helpful feedback in the past when you or Catarina asked him - does he do CAD? Or maybe he knows someone that does CAD? And I remember that one of the guys from Summer X, (Emmanuel?) was an electrical engineer that did contract work with the Department of Energy. This may not be up his alley, but maybe he knows someone...?
Oh, I just read your notes on the Wiki on CAD draftspeople - you are aware of F_Rosa, cool.
Architects Without Borders (https://www.facebook.com/
"Open Source Ecology (OSE - https://www.opensourceecology.
- experience with FreeCAD software (https://www.freecadweb.org/)
- construction experience that allows them to assess the buildability of the designs we have already as well as new designs
- experience reconciling design with actual part choices for standard, off-the-shelf building products (carpentry, plumbing, and electrical materials)
- BIM
- knowledge of modern building codes in the USA
We have a budget for between 80-160 hours of work. Compensation depends upon your skill set, experience, and ability to help us reach our goals. Please take a look at the latest file for each and let me know the next step that you would take to complete the design - email me at marcin@opensourceecology.org.
Thank you for your time,
Marcin"
My final idea is to pitch it to a professor of architecture as a student project, if you know of someone. That seems like it would be the perfect environment for open design/collaboration. I remember reading on the Wiki that some dean at a university in Maine (College of the Atlantic?) invited OSE to become a part of it many years ago. There must be some dusty old contacts from academia that we could reach out to and go fishing for interested parties.
Migrane Construction: it wasn't just the lack of detail in the build cost that disappointed me (and the guy was at least honest about that in his narration over the very simple sketch graphic). It was also the lack of detail in terms of recommendations on finding and screening contractors, since that was what he was recommending doing for that aspect of the build. Or any materials ideas/tips.
Whew! that was a lot!
Brad
