Introduction

When Open Source Ecology Social Synergy comes across people who are releasing under some form of open/reusable license, ideas, proposals, or theories that we collectively think are useful, we will start an active project to immediately apply those ideas. Our particular goal is to promote real production and replicable, open source business models for production.

Founding Question

How can we work together apply some or all of your ideas in real world situations, right now, today?

Origin

"This network, this human construct of technology and intellect, has been opened to us like a great beautiful playground. A total frontier. We, the nocturnal innocent throng through the gates and begin to explore, and we begin to build. We can build great landscapes in this blank slate paradise, works of great beauty and deep meaning. But it must be claimed for beauty and not for cash. It must be claimed for truth and progress, for learning and exploration. For glory through achievement, and not power through greed. Let now be the zero hour." (from the now defunct http://web.archive.org/web/20010208150333/http://zerohour.net/ site)

We add:

We must also work together to accelerate ideas into action. A tradition borrowed from http://www.communitywiki.org/en/ThinkTalkAct

We want to help focus ideas into usable, replicable solutions, both in the realm of physical products, and in the realms of all other human systems. Let now also be the zero hour for us to help you start a project to apply your ideas into the real world as soon as possible, in an open and transparent way.

Addressing the Founding Question

In order to address the application of ideas to real world applications, right now, today - we must use a particular framework of communication. We emphasize that the Zero Hour project is an attempt to accelerate ideas into action. Therefore, we invite initiatives to be phrased as a testable hypothesis within some context. This way, a particular course of action can be attached to the hypothesis immediately. A timeline and goals are suggested as well.

In the framework of Zero Hour, we invite the following template.

1. The Theory: The underlying theory in a nutshell. The Theory must be presented as a working hypothesis that is being explored and tested. There must be an experimental procedure to test the theory- the theory must be testable. The Theory question must be well-posed: an answer must exist. If any of these criteria are missing then the project will not move forward effectively.
2. Existing problems in the real world that relate to this theory, a brief description.
3. Proposed way to apply the theory to those existing problems, the context or pre-requisites for this solution (solution in this case is application of the theory)
4. Related existing work that verifies feasability with context summary of links to those references
5. Related existing data or facts that support theory
6. Existing constraints and barriers to deploying
7. Related existing work that argues against theory (or summary and link to a place where this already exists)
8. facts and data that support arguments against theory
9. A brief summary about how this is related to Open Source Ecology (Relevance to OSE) core values
10. Links to partner site references

Seperate headings for descriptions of all active enterprise, striving to move forward into economic feasibility, are listed below. Our goal is to provide support for implementing this project using OSE infrastructure commons. We will provide you with resources we have available, help you grow an actual pilot project, help in connecting with other people, etc. We will help you grow this into a tangible real world project, the same way that we are growing open designs into real world products right now. When ventures are made, partnered open source software, open knowledge resources, and open design projects will receive a share of revenue.

Progress Reporting

Once the above template is filled in, we suggest putting up new headings for Hours Evolved as: Hour 1, Hour 2, etc., to denote how much organizational time has been put into the project. If experts contribute content, then each hour passed indicates significant progress. Design time should have its own Hours Evolved - if a novice designs something, that may take hundreds of hours. If a design is already available, it takes zero hours. Thus, Hours Evolved is best updated as hours of organizational time. We aim at transparency regarding progress on a project. This helps to clarify that each hour spent intends to move the project forward.