Factor e Farm Roles and Responsibilities

Note: This is older work from 2012 and needs to be updates for developments as of early 2015)

Introduction

Factor e Farm is a a community-in-the-making. It is not just any community. The intent is a Post-Scarcity, Autonomous, Modern, Open Source, Distributive Enterprise, Learning, Contract Community. It is an experimental community with a population limit of 30 people - on 30 acres - engaging in demonstrating the limits to creating a modern economy based on local, on-site resources. Our aim is to create a modern standard of living, up to production of semiconductors and metals, on the small scale of a farm - while requiring 2 hours of labor per day to provide all trappings of modern civilization. The basic governance is meritocracy: role-based authority, where individuals are - by merit - entrusted with stewardship over various parts of the community.

Roles and Responsibilities

Upon entering each participant agrees to a certain set of roles and responsibilities.

OSE Campus

The community consists of a college-like Campus:

Core Values

These are the core values:

General Guidelines

• Factor e Farm is primarily a meritocracy. People with merit take on specific roles.
• Authority is gained by fulfilling roles and developing a track record of success.
• In general, be respectful of other people's domains.
• Ask questions before criticizing others in order to understand why things are done the way they are.
• In general, propose solutions instead of focusing on problems.
• Authorized people only in workshop.
• Check in with domain leaders to identify their boundaries. Feel free to ask them why those boundaries exist so that you understand them.

Social

• We promote a culture where people express their needs non-violently and in a mature way. We advocate takings to express yourself.

Core People

These are the people who are needed to produce a modern civilization at two hours of labor per day. It may seem ambitious to claim aluminum or semiconductor fabrication with 1 person guiding that effort; we will explore these points in detail. See Core Team Character Values.

(Person - colloquial - purpose - responsibilities - authority over resources - transparency - reporting - collaboration)

1. Founder - Benign Dictator. The lead organizer and protector of the community mission. Determines the long-term character and direction of the community, and invites community members to join based on a voluntary social contract. Runs community like an enterprise of life-work integration. Inspires the community to learn. Lead contributor of strategic development priorities. Steward of natural resources of community in conjunction with Farm Director, Site Manager, and Construction Director.
2. Executive Assistant - Assistant to the Founder. Maintains organizational structure and land stewardship legalities in good standing.
3. Community Manager - Facilitates positive on-site relationships and conflict resolution. Provides hospitality and tours. Prepares participation contracts. Responsible for recruiting, interviewing, hiring and firing. Organizes Flash Mobs for development.
4. Farm Director - Manages all farm operations including field crops, garden, orchard, nursery, aquaculture, fiber crops, animal husbandry, and others. Produces a full, year-round diet for participants. Generates approximately $100k of value-added agricultural value per year from 30 acres.
5. Food Alchemist - manages a wide range of food processing operations, including grain storage, bakery, dairy, fermentation, distillation, oil expression, and others. Collaborates with Farm Director on feedstock production.
6. Forest Farmer - Provides various forest- and biomass products. Produces edible forest-scape, lumber, mushrooms, pelletized biomass fuel, forage zones, and bioplastics.
7. Production Director - Manages collaborative production runs for bootstrap funding the community. Guides producers in making technological artifacts. Produces GVCS tools on-demand.
8. Site Manager - manages energy provision, fuel production, waterworks, site grooming, material cycles, and tours.
9. Construction Director - manages creation and maintenance of the built environment. Manages fiber crop planting. Directs natural building workshops. Experiments with building innovation.
10. Community Health Provider - The Doctor's Nemesis. Community nurse + emergency medic, cook, internal and external exercise instructor and provider. Maintains ping-pong table, swimming pool, and sauna. Understands food as medicine, promotes lifestyle habits as preventive medicine.
11. Librarian - manages Civilization Starter Kit and other publishing. Responsible for layout, graphic design, animation and augmented reality training materials.
12. Digital Blacksmith - Manages the development of precision machining infrastructure, hot metal processing, automated production, and other fabrication optimization developments. Advances production techniques for use by the Production Director. Generalist crazy engineer.
13. Strategic Partnerships Director - Generates collaboration with allied efforts.
14. Web Director - maintains servers, develops online collaboration platform
15. Financial Director - Manages community finances + bean counting, provides radical financial transparency, fabricates resource-based currency.
16. Semiconductor Engineer - Runs a silicon foundry and clean room.
17. Metallurgist - manages melting, casting, and alloying operations with scrap steel as feedstock.
18. Materials Artist - The Open Source Industrial Chemist. Provides pottery, ceramics, cloth, cement, aluminum, bioplastic, glass, carbon, oxygen, and other material resource transformations from on-site materials.
19. Interns - 5 interns for agriculture, production, and construction.
20. Videographer - aka Factor e Farm Documenter - produces video - both instructionals and day-to-day documentation of community and technical development.
21. Documentation Director - Sets standards for OSE documentation, and is responsible for the organizational learning necessary for best practices to spread throughout the OSE development community.
22. Communications Director - Key disseminator of OSE culture. Journalist and blogger of OSE progress - documenting philosophical, organizational, and technical development of OSE and the Global Village Construction Set. Manages online presence and social networks.
23. CAD Director - Oversees development of open source CAD platform, and manages CAD Sprints.
24. Documentation Community Manager - Nurtures a documentation community and organizes Book Sprints. Oversees the on-site and global community of developers with an emphasis on generating project documentation in a variety of formats.
25. Director of Learning - Works with other Documentation Team members to produce rapid learning materials on key topics of relevance to open source economic development. Facilitates on-site cross-training sessions and remote education programs.
26. Resource Developer - Leverages nonprofit sources for funding and in-kind donations.

Basic requirements

Everyone is required to cross train one day per week, and to participate in 'barnraising' construction tasks as well as group plantout/harvest sessions. Participants are all required to maintain a blog of their activity, with weekly video updates in conjunction with the videographer.