General Principles of Swarm Development
About
Swarm Development refers to the development of goods, services, and other experiences - which follows the following properties in the OSE context:
- It aims for the accomplishment of tasks at a scale that would otherwise be impossible without involving large numbers of people. Such as building a house over a weekend with 24 people, building a city block with 1000 people over a weekend, or rebuilding a city over a weekend with 100,000 people. And possibly larger, there is no specific limit.
- The usefulness of this is both for repair work (such as war) or for new initiatives (such as settling on other planets)
- It contains incentives which provide a clear motivation to people, such as BHAGs described in the book on crowd development - Bold
- It aims for unlimited scalability, restrained only by the Kardashev Scale at the cosmic level. It starts at the scale of human enterprise, powered by human engagement and can be augmented with automation.
- It is a social process, in that people are inspired by communion with others, while achieving impressive tasks
- In order to engage large numbers, both the incentives, and the capacity for Rapid Teaching or Rapid Learning must be provided.
Tactical - Seed Eco-Home Extreme Enterprise Sprint
Say you want to write a book in a weekend - such as a complete Build and Design manual for the Seed Eco-Home. The tactical process - presence of team aside - means Modular Breakdown into the smallest parts possible - while defining the interfaces between the different parts, as in Contract-First Design. The Success of Open Source (software) relies on the ability to divide large problems into bitesize chunks. This is particularly relevant - in that there are numerous assets that can be broken down. If requirements are clear, then thousands of people can collaborate. If the detailed instructionals and design documents are comprehensive - about 1000 pages (300 pages - general design, structural, utilities, landscaping, PV design; Design guide - 300 pages including how to design new iterations including CEB) 100 pages of CAD for the existing model; 300 pages on Aquaponic Greenhouse; 100 pages for CEB model. Build facility design - 50 pages + 50 pages on tools) + 300 pages of detailed build instructions with cheatsheets. This is nominally 1200-1500 pages.
A team of 12 people can easily engage in any one page to develop it fully.
Google docs, wiki part libararies, wiki work logs, upvoting, Forum, FB threads, Twitter threads - can easily handle the thousands of pages. Photo albums.
What is needed is a detailed index, prepared up front - effectively a detailed table of contents for what the entire book will contain. It's a technical design-build guide. Graphics people can make attractive diagrams. Etc.
If we have 1500 pages, then the collaboration here would be 18000 people, over one weekend. Want to make sure that our server can handle this.
With these 18000 people, there are 12 section leaders who handle a specific aspect. CEB, Aquaponics, Design Proper, PV. This becomes an industry standard build guide.
One of the keys is the intensive outreach up front, such as contacting and gaining a commitment from a significant number of people. 1000 people can show up with the Large Meeting Addon on Zoom.
The required outreach would be three months of full time organizing. That is - 480 hours - 120-240 people who guarantee to show up and who guarantee to a certain deliverable - such as 1 page of the Building Book.
In fact - we topgrade contributors that we reach out to - present a 1200-1500 page TOC, and ask for a commitment to bring 2 people. Every participant gets an ebook copy of the book. Top 100 contributors get a physical copy of the book.
Costs for 3 months full time is $30k for very capable organizers, and $2000 for publishing.
This is more direct organizing than wild HeroX participation, because we are asking for a very specific deliverable, of high value to everyone - Solving Housing.
For the Solving Housing, we would need 6 months budget for an organizer, and 100 pages CEB machine, PowerCube, and 100 pages on Plastic Recycling + 100 pages on Large 3D Printer - 2x2x8', and plastic shred industrial enterprise, and facility Design (Precious Plastic Style). We solve housing and plastic.
Value proposition: a public event at the time of release of real enterprise model. Serves as collaborative development, rapid learning opportunity, marketing opportunity. For value proposition to general crowd - we provide open access to rapid learning. For professionals and Subject Matter Experts, we provide a chance to do something bigger than themselves. Our goal is to Solve Housing. CEB, plastic, lumber, steel construction, solar cement production.
Audience
- Architects
- Draftspeople
- Machine designers
- Eco-builders (less so natural builders, who like more low tech than CEBs and welders, and rock crushers)
- Solar Power Cube designers - 100% off-grid solar brick pressing and operations with Solar Construction Trailer
