FABxLive
https://fabxlive.fabevent.org/
Marcin's application for a talk:
We know that open source hardware is challenging to develop - and starting an enterprise an open source hardware product is even harder. It takes not only tremendous effort - but also innovative business models. We are developing ways to make open source hardware startups easier - by leveraging large-scale, open collaboration. To this end, we will be doing an experiment - by gathering over 1000 carefully pre-selected participants, to develop an open source product - in just one weekend. We call this an Extreme Enterprise event. Wait a minute - is this crazy? How to find, motivate, and coordinate such a large number of people in such a short time? That's exactly what we are figuring out, with an open source, swarm-based, agile, modular process that can get quality results in a short time. We will apply our techniques to design, prototype, and productize a modular, affordable, ecological, 750 square foot house - that can be built by 2 people in one week - for US$50,000. Join this 1 hour presentation to find out more about how we plan to execute this Extreme Enterprise event - to make life easier for millions of people by making affordable ecological housing widely accessible.
Contents
Playlist
- YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC02rOPpBb1EwVu25ib9L0NA
- Apparently all talks are recorded - [1]
- Community Action Playlist - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hvtuc8yEbbQ&list=PLLgC0nB1k-MMVP9Exfbp_AA94P3LhNowe&index=3
- COVID playlist - [2]. Session - nation-wide PPE efforts - [3]
Discussion Thread and Registration
- https://fabxmembers.fabevent.org/posts/7418826?notification_id=818644274&utm_campaign=notification_space_post_mention_recent&utm_medium=email&utm_source=transactional_emails
- Zoom Backgrounds - https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/14_hEe9zdN8lZmZdkCDhZPewzTvvkJTe1
Marcin's Presentation
Self-Recording
FB Live Sesssion Recording
https://www.facebook.com/fabfndn/videos/286782419054750
Key Links:
- Global Village Construction Set TED Talk
- Distributive Enterprise
- Extreme Manufacturing
- Seed Eco-Home
- Extreme Enterprise
Technical:
Feedback
Ayo Log
Some feedback / question on the Extreme Enterprise Event:
- Ambiguity in the project title: Extreme Enterprise Event leaves out any reference to open source tooling, building or making which would have helped in cutting straight through to a target audience (what type of enterprise?). Good point, but if OSE is doing it, doesn't that go without saying? It builds upon Extreme Manufacturing and Extreme Design - which are open centric. Target audience is not open source people specifically - it is open source collaborators with skill sets. I forgot to mention that a lot of open source is not collaborative in its process, and a lot of 'collaborative' is not open source.
- Need for an 'elevator pitch' - two - paragraph description. True there is a lot to unpack but that heightens the need for a concise summary that can be sent to prospective collaborators with links for more details. Yes. What do you suggest? There is the elevator pitch on product: A 1000 sf house that you can build with a friend in one week for $50k. Need one for the XE concept. What do you suggest?
On the elevator pitch for Extreme Enterprise. I had a look at the wiki entry and the summary is about just fine, I tweaked it a bit to allow for (I hope) some more clarity:Extreme Enterprise is a collaboratively developed, extremely efficient, open source enterprise model, funded by social capital (in contrast to finance capital), and with an overarching goal of addressing difficult global problems (see Pressing World Issues), using a carefully orchestrated and efficient architecture for collaboration at a massive scale.
- It's not explicitly clear how the Extreme Enterprise Event gets people to show up, compared to previous efforts with the STEAM camps and other Extreme Build Events. The scale at 2000 participants creates added complexity in terms of logistics and recruitment of participants but gives no guarantees that people would show up. Having priority to have a seed-eco home built is not enough of an incentive to participate in the build (getting a big discount in the price of the product if you participate in developing it however would be clear as an incentive). Yes, that's it. I didn't mention it in the presentation. The need for affordable housing for example does not mean I would automatically be interested in the hard work of collaborating in its design and build, especially if I don't have the aptitude for that kind of stuff, and if I do, it does not mean I have the means to invest in an affordable home. We are separating the development from product. The development is by elites who can afford it. The product becomes available to all. I see the reference to how owning a distributive enterprise and earning an income from the skills learnt becomes an incentive, but it's not very clear in the messaging so far. Right, the enterprise track incentive can be clarified: entrepreneurs will have a guaranteed 5-10 houses that they would build - that would be good work.
- Need for the messaging to have a stronger focus on what the participants / collaborators stand to gain than what OSE is trying to achieve internally. If that messaging is compelling enough, OSE's motive of having people show up would stand a stronger chance of getting fulfilled. The crux of what I think this messaging needs to address is already contained here: https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Extreme_Enterprise#Value_Proposition, I suggest it gets condensed and added to the elevator pitch and referenced earlier when giving presentations, etc
- Definition of roles being recruited for and requisite call to action.....Sign up as a collaborator by clicking here to register, Register here as an instructor for....., Sign up by clicking here if interested in being supported by OSE to set up a distributive enterprise.
You most likely have these on your radar already, just stuff I pondered about while digesting the material.
Best regards,
-ayo.
G Log
I'll be honest. The ambition and scale of 2000 people collaborating together in a weekend scares me, but is exciting at the same time if it can be proven productive. (in theory, there's no reason it can't. Just crazy! Haha). Also, take it with a grain of salt. But a product like a house is very personal. I'd rather build the majority of the eco-seed home myself and / or with a small group of close friends and family, rather than a swarm of strangers. The model is you build it with a friend or two. Again, this is probably my own mental blocker, or personal preference and viewpoint. I'm sure the "extreme" scale of people and shortened timescale is highly appealing to some. Just not me for something I'll spend the majority of my time in for years to come. Anyways, I'm totally aligned with the larger vision of OSE, and happy to help or contibute as best I can. Defining a modular breakdown of a eco-seed home workbench is something I can assist with. However, that could be an extreme weekend event in of itself. Well, you're the only guy qualified to help right now. I think if you can produce sufficient documentation, then we will have more people. So the key is to do well documenting your work.
Text - sorry, not updated from last presentation
- Hi, my name is Marcin - and I am presenting on the latest updates on Open Source Ecology - and our experience with large scale collaboration for developing open source hardware. We design and build open source industrial machines, and publish the plans on the internet for free. For a good 4 minute overview of our work if you are not familiar with the project - please see my 4 minute TED Talk on the Global Village Construction Set. You can also see more information about our workshops at https://www.opensourceecology.org/ We are working on all the critical machines that are used to build infrastructures and produce things, so that a civilization with modern comforts could be built. It is everything from a tractor, to a bread oven, to a circuit maker.
- You can see my TED Talk from 2011, just google Global Village Construction Set TED Talk https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/TED_Talk
- In particular - I will focus on the last missing frontier of open source hardware - that is the business model for scaling it.
- So first some definitions of open hardware - 4 freedoms.
- We develop our work according to the 4 freedoms.
- We build things, but more importantly, develop collaborative ways of building things.
- This means Extreme Builds: swarm-based builds where we can build machines in a single day.
- Or houses in 5 days.
- Since then, we have completed about ⅓ of the set, with hundreds of prototypes around the world. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/GVCS_State_of_Completion
- Our main milestones are: 1. replication
- 2. Module-based design - reducing prototyping times from weeks to days. Ironworker - from 6 months of a build - to 2 days.
- 3. Extreme Manufacturing - swarm builds, like the house.
- 4. Realtime Documentation -
- 5. So all in all, by using wikis, work logs, FreeCAD, and Google docs - we are able to get hundreds of people to collaborate, asynchronously.
- But there are some serious challenges. Over the years, we have explored and studied the limits of open collaboration, so here are some of our conclusions.
- The first and obvious is that collaboration doesn't exist. Wait a minute, let me explain. I mean open, interdisciplinary collaboration doesn't exist. People as a practice do not collaborate. Now what do I mean by collaboration? Let's look at some distinctions.
- Open collaboration is not the same thing as open source. Open Source Projects rarely collaborate, from my experience. What is open collaboration? Open collaboration in our definition is beyond the OSHWA or DIN-SPEC-3105 definition - which says you must publish your plans when the product is finished. There is only one problem: a product is never finished. A product improves and evolves over a lifecycle, constantly, or it dies. Thus, to say that publishing your results when you are done is limiting. The OSE definition of collaboration inolves publishing in-process, using live documents that change. That means wikis, git protocol, live realtime editable docs such as etherpad or google docs. So for example, yesterday I heard that the open source 100-year lifetime washing machine project from Austria will release plans once they are ready. That does not allow for collaboration.
- Back at the PhD when I was in grad school, I was studing physics - and I could not talk about my research openly to other groups. Because we had hot stuff - what a waste, I thought.
- That we do not collaborate openly, in general, is summarized by this graph: Linux Adoption, Open Hardware adoption. Nonexistent.
- There are other details: how many commercial open source designs are there out there? Apertus, Farmbot, Lulzbot 3D printer, Prusa Printers, OSE D3D Printer, Arduino. Unfortunately we can count them on only a few hands.
- Open Source Hardware Trap
- That's where we started thinking. Distributive Enterprise! But that's a concept only.
- So let's prove it. What does it mean to prove it?
- Let's put this into perspective - Gini Coefficients. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_Gini_index_since_1800s
- How do people not work openly? The obvious part is patents and trade secrets. It is about an awareness.
- There is a psychological dimension: self-esteem, vulnerability.
- Scarcity mindset - 10k x more energy from the sun.
- Putting together lessons from OS and a decade of our results, we come up to: Extreme Enterprise.
- Show example of Prusa Printers. Adafruit is $45M. Sparkfun -
- Total was $50M in 2011. -[4]
Modular Machine Building (this is a 10 minute Fab Academy Presentation)
From Fab Academy Recitation:
- We build in a modular way. This picture shows the Universal axis module - a universal CNC axis - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Universal_CNC_Axis - with 10 micron step resolution - that is a building block of any CNC system. For example, the 3D printers above, D3D Pro - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/D3D_Pro - and D3D Universal - are built from this axis.
- This axis can be lengthened - to make a 6’ tall 3d printer
- Or a 1 cubic meter 3D printer.
- But it can also be enlarged, to larger rod side - such as starting from the original 8 mm axis and going to 25 mm -https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10211318198887887&set=gm.690934881099091&type=3&theater
- to make this CNC torch table - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/CNC_Torch_Table_v19.10. So here
- Even up to much lareger Universal Axes with large rods - 2” or 50 mm -
- - so you can build a heavy duty CNC machine. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/2%22_Universal_Axis
- What you can see here is an emergence of a modular product ecology. We started with 3D printers, we 3D printed parts for the larger Universal axis, and ended up with the CNC Torch Table. Now the CNC torch table cuts flat sheets of steel, so we can make things like our tractor - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Trencher
- Or compressed earth brick press - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/CEB_Press
- So we can build a house with industrial efficiency - 5 days with a team of 50 people. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Seed_Eco-Home
- Or an aquaponic greenhouse. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Aquaponic_Greenhouse
- We build all of this in our Open Source Microfactory. For example, this was a build of the brick press for building houses. So let’s taka a look at the basic product ecology.
- We build all of this in our open source microfactory. For example, this was a build of the brick press for building houses. So let’s taka a look at the basic product ecology. 3D printers make torch tables make brick presses and tractors. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Product_Ecologies
- But then how do you close the loop to move into an ecological, Circular Economy?
- So here we add the next level of complexity, where we shred used tractors, cars, and other objects, and then we extract metal, which we can melt in an Induction Furnace, then roll into virgin steel, and CNC machine into products such as more tractor bodies, hydraulic motors, and engines. For the plastic, we can recycle that through the plastic extruder, to make 3D printing filament, and then start 3D printing plastic parts, car tires, and rubber tracks for more tractors.
- We have covered metals and plastic, but we still need to cover rocks, plants, soil, and water, and there we have almost all of civilization’s infrastructure. You can turn soil into building blocks with the compressed earth block press, you can make cement blocks by burning limestone in a lime burner, you can turn straw into fuel pelltets and insulation, and you can turn trees to lumber, and if you want to go further, take trees and turn them to bioplastic and 3D printed glazing. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Materials_Production_Facility
- What you see here is a bunch of product ecologies where machines make other machines, and then recycle themselves to keep the loop going. Now instead of melting things down, it takes less energy to reuse things. That’s why we focus on modular design. In our system, we use modular structural tubing and interchangeable parts such as the Universal Rotor. . https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Universal_Rotor, which can be thought of as a heavy duty version of the Universal Axis for motion.
- We also use interchangeable power units, so we that we can run a tractor on one-10 of them. So far we only did 3. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Power_Cube
- So if you look at the tractor, you see the modular frames, 3 power cubes that can be used elsewhere, and Universal Rotors - circled - where in one case it can function as a wheel drive and in the other it drives the trencher.
- It’s also worth noting that the one of the same power cubes - can be used in our microtractor. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/MicroTrac_v17.10
- We use a construction set throughout. We have the tractor construction set, CNC machine construction set, and power electronics construction set - not only mechanical items lend themselves to this - it’s a universal approach. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Construction_Sets
- What is the limit? Well, if you have precision CNC, and precision grinders, you can go down to micron machining resolution. You need flat granite for your frames - see https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Dan_Gelbart. With 1 micron resolution, you get to air bearings, and super-precision equipment used in positioning and in vaccuum chambers - so you can make semiconductors and microchips from dirt and twigs under your feet. But, simpler than this - you go from induction furnace, to precision grind - to make Ball Bearings.
- For us, we envision a 40 acre facility, our site, where we have a microfactory that can make solar panels from sand (silicon), and go all the way up to Extraction of Aluminum from Clay. So that clay is used for our CEB block, for clay 3D printing and ceramics, and for aluminum.
Speakers at Overall FABxLive Event
Neil Gershenfeld Director, MIT’s CBA
Sherry Lassiter CEO, The Fab Foundation
Tomas Diez Director, Fab Lab Barcelona
Blair Evans Director, Incite Focus
SPEAKERS
Juliet Schor Professor of Sociology, Boston College
Max Lobovsky CEO, Formlabs
Peter E. Raymond Global Bureau Chief
Ron Eglash Professor
Felencia Hutabarat Cofounder/Managing Director ke:kini | Secretary General Coworking Indonesia
Thomas Landrain CoFounder and CEO - Just One Giant Lab (JOGL.io)
Vasilis Kostakis Professor
William Baker MD
Alfonso Parra Rubio Research Assistant
Ece Tankal Co-founder|Designer|Creative Director, Hyphen-Labs
Sameera Chukkapalli Founder and Director of Needlab
Danny Beesley CEO, IDEA BUILDER Labs
Cindy Kohtala Postdoctoral researcher
Manu Prakash Professor
Richa Shrivastava Managing Partner, Maker's Asylum
Tomás Vivanco Director, Fab Lab Austral. Professor
Pranam Chatterjee Research Fellow, Harvard Medical School and MIT
Alejandra Díaz de León L Co-founder, Laboratorio DAFD & Fab Lat Kids
Kali Akuno Executive Director
Sename Koffi A. Architect, anthropologist
Joel Cutcher-Gershenfeld Professor
Zach Fredin Research Assistant
Alysia Garmulewicz Professor
Carmen Aguilar y Wedge Co-founder| Designer| Creative Director, Hyphen-Labs
Christie Mettes MSc.
Lars Hasselblad Torres Executive Director, Artisan's Asylum Inc.
Dan Meyer Fab Lab Sr. Manager
Robert Garita Designer / Architect / Artist / Consultant
Roberto García-Patrón Coordinator of the International Maker Network
Vaibhav Chhabra Founder & Chief Learning Officer, Maker's Asylum
Cesar Garcia Researcher
Martina Ferracane Founder, FabLab Western Sicily
Suchit Jain Vice President Strategy & Business Development
Zaid Altawil Emergency Physician
Alex Ntare CEO
Jonathan Jilesen Expert Senior Specialist
Josef Prusa CEO, Prusa
Stephanie Stapleton Emergency Medicine Physician at Boston Medical Center