June 20 2022 OSEmail

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Hello Friends, Welcome back to our monthly email, sent out at least once per year. We're starting to make noise again about the Seed Eco-Home. This time - we are close to the final product release, and start of a 24 person apprenticeship program in March, 2023. We plan to build 4 Seed Eco-Homes this year for outside customers - and 50 more next year. That would mark the point of traction - where our work is finally getting out into the public. Last year we started a pilot Apprenticeship program as part of the Summer of Extreme Design Build. We worked on Seed Eco-Home 2, Seed Eco-Home 3, next iteration of tractor, CNC torch table, built more 3D printers, and much more. See the thousand photos here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/fCachrde4WxhGbkD9 - and see a thousand more on the Seed Eco-Home 2 - our product release candidate - https://photos.app.goo.gl/4adaBjwkwLmCReXR7. The house now has black vinyl siding, not the original stained plywood. Thus it will be black like in the rendering: - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Seed_Home_v2 The point of product release marks an exciting time. Our main learning is that traction just doesn't happen - we have to provide replicable enterprise models at the end of the day. And because diverse, integrated skill-sets are required in our work - we need to train people. As builders, designers, entrepreneurs. All of this comes from proving out the eneterprise model of the Seed Eco-Home - which we're doing this year. We plan on the 4 builds in October and November. The best part is that the model, as promised, revolves around our swarm builds with 24 people in 5 days - in the real build. But not just the structure - but everything, starting from a finished foundation. That is a challenge, on many fronts. For which reason the average house takes 8 months. We've spent an infinite amount of time building and refining Seed Eco-Home 2 - to make the modular swarm build possible. The materials cost for the house is $60k now - actually about 2x than 6 years ago when we started on the Seed Eco-Home - which emphasizes why materials production in house is important for the product evolution. To get to the October build, it's all hands on deck now. The CAD is thorough - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Seed_Home_v2_3D_CAD#Master_Files - but still has hundreds of hours left for completion of the final version that gets published in our forthcoming Building Book. The book will be about 1500 pages so that anyone can build and enterprise with the Seed Eco-Home. Including any other variations of the house - as the Seed Eco-Home provides a construction set for building a home of any size and shape. And any material - such as our Compressed Earth Blocks. We are close to having all the modular design details and patterns worked out and tested fully, so that this work is a truly generative set. We are recruiting a build team for October. Would you like to participate? We'll run the builds with 6 crew leaders, each working with a team of 3 more builders and students. We'll draw on the help of all our former participants - we need a solid crew of 24 for each build. We will try our usual hybrid build model, which includes both builders and learners. This will be both for volunteers, builders, and learners - 3 distinct profiles at least - as we collaborate on proving out the model. We plan to do the full production model next year with 24 apprentices-in-training - and we'll see how much of the education for outside audiences or DIY builders would work well in this package. It will definitely be innovation on enabling swarm builds that include experts, novices, volunteers, and students in one. And we will be experimenting with scalability, as we don't see why we could not build an entire neighborhood over a weekend if we have 1000 people. Our techniques are being designed for this kind of scalability. If you'd like to review the initial promise of the Seed Eco-Home - take a look at our Open Building Institute promo video from 6 years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl7lZZP21c8. It will be all of that and more. This week we're restarting our weekly development meeting, which will go on every Friday at 4 PM CST USA time. Everyone who is interested in documentation is invited. Please respond to me at marcin at opensourceecology dot org for the Zoom link if you'd like to participate on Friday the 24th, or if you have any questions. The basic plan is - producing build instructions, explanatory information, diagrams, build cheatsheets, refining CAD, doing new details for different materials - everything that goes into the Building Book. This is a process where everyone learns and teaches at the same time. Full build cheatsheets for any builder, design details and rationales, enterprise analysis, and all that's needed to replicate will go in the Book. So if you can write, use collaborative docs, do CAD, draw diagrams, do graphic design, copywriting, editing, architecture etc - join us. The bottom line is a house that can be built in 5 days using our modular swarm model, at $60k in materials. That is the start, but the real promise is the open source collaborative design that will take this much further than the current state. It takes a diverse team, and we are still aiming to save the world. Thanks, Marcin

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Hello Friends,

(This is a resend from yesterday as 600 new subscribers are now included - please disregard if you read this already)

Welcome back to our monthly email, sent out at least once per year. We're starting to make noise again about the Seed Eco-Home.

This time - we are close to the final product release, and start of a 24 person apprenticeship program in March, 2023. We plan to build 4 Seed Eco-Homes this year for outside customers - and 50 more next year. That would mark the point of traction - where our work is finally getting out into the public.

Last year we started a pilot Apprenticeship program as part of the Summer of Extreme Design Build. We worked on Seed Eco-Home 2, Seed Eco-Home 3, next iteration of tractor, CNC torch table, built more 3D printers, and much more. See the thousand photos here - https://photos.app.goo.gl/fCachrde4WxhGbkD9 - and see a thousand more on the Seed Eco-Home 2 - our product release candidate - https://photos.app.goo.gl/4adaBjwkwLmCReXR7. The house now has black vinyl siding, not the original stained plywood. Thus it will be black like in the rendering: - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Seed_Home_v2

The point of product release marks an exciting time. Our main learning is that traction just doesn't happen - we have to provide replicable enterprise models at the end of the day. And because diverse, integrated skill-sets are required in our work - we need to train people. As builders, designers, entrepreneurs. All of this comes from proving out the eneterprise model of the Seed Eco-Home - which we're doing this year. We plan on the 4 builds in October and November.

The best part is that the model, as promised, revolves around our swarm builds with 24 people in 5 days - in the real build. But not just the structure - but everything, starting from a finished foundation. That is a challenge, on many fronts. For which reason the average house takes 8 months. We've spent an infinite amount of time building and refining Seed Eco-Home 2 - to make the modular swarm build possible. The materials cost for the house is $60k now - actually about 2x than 6 years ago when we started on the Seed Eco-Home - which emphasizes why materials production in house is important for the product evolution.

To get to the October build, it's all hands on deck now. The CAD is thorough - https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/Seed_Home_v2_3D_CAD#Master_Files - but still has hundreds of hours left for completion of the final version that gets published in our forthcoming Building Book. The book will be about 1500 pages so that anyone can build and enterprise with the Seed Eco-Home. Including any other variations of the house - as the Seed Eco-Home provides a construction set for building a home of any size and shape. And any material - such as our Compressed Earth Blocks. We are close to having all the modular design details and patterns worked out and tested fully, so that this work is a truly generative set.

We are recruiting a build team for October. Would you like to participate? We'll run the builds with 6 crew leaders, each working with a team of 3 more builders and students. We'll draw on the help of all our former participants - we need a solid crew of 24 for each build. We will try our usual hybrid build model, which includes both builders and learners. This will be both for volunteers, builders, and learners - 3 distinct profiles at least - as we collaborate on proving out the model. We plan to do the full production model next year with 24 apprentices-in-training - and we'll see how much of the education for outside audiences or DIY builders would work well in this package. It will definitely be innovation on enabling swarm builds that include experts, novices, volunteers, and students in one. And we will be experimenting with scalability, as we don't see why we could not build an entire neighborhood over a weekend if we have 1000 people. Our techniques are being designed for this kind of scalability.

If you'd like to review the initial promise of the Seed Eco-Home - take a look at our Open Building Institute promo video from 6 years ago - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hl7lZZP21c8. It will be all of that and more.

This week we're restarting our weekly development meeting, which will go on every Friday at 4 PM CST USA time. Everyone who is interested in documentation is invited. Please respond to me at marcin at opensourceecology dot org for the Zoom link if you'd like to participate on Friday the 24th, or if you have any questions. The basic plan is - producing build instructions, explanatory information, diagrams, build cheatsheets, refining CAD, doing new details for different materials - everything that goes into the Building Book. This is a process where everyone learns and teaches at the same time. Full build cheatsheets for any builder, design details and rationales, enterprise analysis, and all that's needed to replicate will go in the Book. So if you can write, use collaborative docs, do CAD, draw diagrams, do graphic design, copywriting, editing, architecture etc - join us. The bottom line is a house that can be built in 5 days using our modular swarm model, at $60k in materials. That is the start, but the real promise is the open source collaborative design that will take this much further than the current state. It takes a diverse team, and we are still aiming to save the world.

Thanks,

Marcin OSEmail