Crowdsource Research

Introduction

Here we are interested in creating a collaboration platform for deploying a finite, essential set of Global Swadeshi technologies for better living. The aim is a crash ‘open source everything’ project with tangible results based on the open-sourcing of key, proven technologies. Application are economic renewal of post-economic collapse scenarios, dedicated sustainable living and right livelihood paths, economic localization, creation of replicable post-industrial villages, and other post-centralist economic regimes. The basic technology tree for the next 6 months is:

The main process revolves around a set of technologies that everybody uses, and therefore which are of key importance to economies. The importance of the list should be self-evident to the reader.

Development Assumptions

We are gathering a team of developers who take as a starting point:

• That open-sourcing (enhancing access to) of key economic activity has great potential in improving the lot of humanity, via distributive economic generation
• That it is feasible to ‘open source everything’ as above, by the recognition that such opening of economic activity benefits everybody, and gathering a substantial team of collaborators to work on the research
• That developers do not quarrel about the choice of technologies, given that we are looking at a large number of essential technologies – unless technical merit proves another technology to be superior
• The basic OS Engineering cycle is Design Rationale to Proposal to Implementation.
• Implementation shall take place at the OSE Collaboratory or supporting facilities.

Engineering Process

The process for open source product development is phrased in the framework of engineering problems. The nature of the problems is interdisciplinary, and so isthe requirement of people on the OSE Development Team. This means that developers can take any physical problem - whether propagating a plant, carrying out a chemical reaction, or designing a process – and perform due diligence research as guided by the OSE Core Team. The OSE Core Team is the team that has the highest level of interest in outcomes, and is prepared to implement proposals by crowdsource organizational strategies. The salient feature of the type of people on the OSE Development Team is that they are interested in being physical producers.

The engineering problems of interest are all the phases of product development necessary for replicable, optimized fabrication capacity for a given product. This may involve digital fabrication in some cases, and it is likely to involve open source equipment of some sort. The ‘engineering problems’ may have the scope of building prototypes, performing testing, developing fabrication capacity, etc.

In general, OSE wants to deploy a working enterprise at its Factor e Farm collaboratory, as part of its validation experiments and part of creating a working, replicable, post-industrial village.

How To Participate: Social Technology

There are several types of contributors to the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS). These people are called the OSE Development Team in general. Thy roles in this Team are:

• Core Team - those people who are physically located at Factor e Farm on a long-term basis
• Project Managers - people who are leading the development of tangible products, to be deployed at Factor e Farm. See the list of projects. At present, we have 3 project managers: CEB, Sawmill, and Solar Turbine. Each of these projects may be divided into subprojects. For example, the Solar Turbine may be divided into the steam engine, metal casting, open source lathe, and other subprojects. These subproject leaders are also called Project Managers. One of the main tools used by Project Managers for fostering wide collaboration is Red Pages solicitation.
• Co-laborators- (distinct from collaborators) people who visit Factor e Farm on a per-project basis: to build an implementation of any GVCS technology; to build any supporting facility improvements
• Visitors - People who visit our facilities for work days or short stays, or those who come with an intent of further co-laboration
• Contributors - these are people who contribute to Wiki content, donations, Red Pages content, and other areas. These are many in number.
• Resource Development - these are people who engage actively to organize resources, funding, publicity, web support, and other support functions for deploying the GVCS in as timely a fashion as possible.

OSE Development Team Invitation

If you agree to the above assumptions, then we are inviting you to the OSE Development Team. The primary duties are:

We are asking for 1 hour per week of dedicated research as part of membership on the OSE Development Team.

Team members are listed on the OSE Development Team page. The main members constitute the Working Q(uestion) Team. The stakeholder intersested in results is OSE, and is part of the Core Team.

The duties of the Working Q Team are to answer all questions – on the Red Pages category on the Openfarmtech wiki. These questions are highly technical – and constitute the necessary due diligence in product design, as guided by the Design Rationale. The questions are proposed by the Core Team. The Core Team reviews all answers to the technical questions, and iterations of questions are carried out until a coherent solution is attained. This solution is then passed on to the Proposal phase – where the Working Q team carries on this phase.

The proposal phase involves collating all information in a usable format – in such a fashion as will facilitate presentation to crowdsource supporters. The Core Team is responsible for publishing this proposal as a downloadable, working document. The Core Team will also summarize the proposal on a crowdsource funding website, dedicated for the purpose of marketing the open product development to interested individuals.

Working proposals are submitted for funding on monthly cycles, utilizing Chip-In or other funding basket.

Nature of Work

It is our further assumption that humanity in general has sufficient knowledge to enable prosperous survival in localized economies – yet various reasons exist which prevent this from happening. Structural reasons currently block integrated learning and access to capital which would otherwise make such prosperity the norm. Thus, open-sourcing access to information, and therefore capital, is the key feature of the work.

The above information exists in many places, and is frequently disintegrated and not easily accessible. However, careful sifting and winnowing distills this knowledge into a potent form. This winnowing process occurs by identifying knowledgeable individuals, and contacting them most effectively by phone, if not by personal visit.

Therefore, the Development Team and Core Team should take on a following approach and etiquette:

1. On a weekly basis, check in on the Red Pages.
2. Commit 1 hour to research and documenting of said research, trying to call the sources of information as the first contact option.
3. Each Team member shall record their learnings diligently on the wiki – under the given question. Therefore, the progress of each question can be seen in real time by all developers. This point is key. So much research goes unrecorded – such that others can not build upon it.
4. The Red Pages are organized by Products and Components. The developer team should go to Red Pages Main when starting on their task.
5. Each Product will have many components. Clicking on each component will lead to a dedicated page for that component. Each particular question will have its own dedicated page, such that all questions, which may be 100s of questions – are all indexed under the Red Pages category. One may go directly to the index at the bottom of the Red Pages and click on questions there.
6. Instructions for contributing to the wiki tells you how to sign in to edit and contribute to pages.
7. Development team has an OSE Open Source Engineering email list for communications.
8. Members should contact each other for documenting existing due diligence, such as visits to sample implementations of components.
9. As soon as relevant information is available, it should be posted under the Red Pages page of interest – for reasons of research continuity. For example, if a likely source of information provided no further leads, that should be recorded such that others do not pursue a similar dead end.
10. The Core Team will remove pages from the Red Pages once the necessary solutions are attained – and place them under Red Pages Completed category.

Scope

The goal of the OSE Engineering Cycle is to recruit a large number of individuals – 1000 – who show a continued, dedicated, and able support on the Working Questions of interest. As such, 2000 research hours per week are the aim – which if handled properly, may solve significant technical issues of post-industrial village construction within the time frame of one or two weeks. This way, proposals are written, people are recruited, and funding is crowdsourced for rapid deployment of projects on a monthly to 6 week complete product cycle – for each product phase. This mechanism can be realistically paralleled if recruiting succeeds in attracting others to the Core Team. We believe that this is feasible because of the fundamental importance of the ‘open source everything’ approach. Here we are providing an explicit mechanism for such open-sourcing to happen – including facilities, people, and funding.