March 2015

See also January 2015 Hangout

Audio File Download

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Introduction to Sesssion

See more information about True Fans and True Fans Hangouts.

Etherpad for notes: http://piratepad.net/4uv5gbdCAW

Theme: Developing Working Teams to Develop and Disseminate Distributive Enterprise

Overview

The True Fans Hangouts offer broad-scale discussion on the state of the world as seen through the eyes of open source development. Open source means unbridled transparency, and sharing of information, and collaboration. These hangouts begin with big-vision ideals - then descent to the Earth in terms of practical action for getting there.

OSE's goal is to create the open source economy. The current economy appears to be about $100T total. Our model of transformation calls for a fraction of this economy turning into the open source economy - about 5%, at which point, either a cascade of further open source culture ensues to create a predominantly open source economy - or the world collapses as non-regenerative practice continues with events like topsoil loss and continued growth of wealth disparity.

Is open source synonymous with life, as opposed to demise? The specific feature of interest in open source is the sharing of knowledge - which appears to be the most secure route to unleashed innovation and freedom. It is the beginning of the potential for post-scarcity economics - transcendence of artificial scarcity and transition to abundance - of energy, of education, of life-giving forces.

Competitive waste, protectionism, keeping others down, not cooperating - that's how people make money. By necessity, this keeps people down - as best practice is replaced by enforced mediocrity.

Back to the Earth...

The Distributive Enterprise 3 Our practical projects for this year involve those workshops featured on the Schedule page - and releases of 3 products. These products include the Brick Press, Aquaponic Greenhouse, and 3D Printer. With these, we aim to generate revenue by Sales - hiring our first Production Education Managers. These people are Production Managers - who also Educate others to be Production Managers. That could be a robust enterprise model that has a significant earning potential of manufacturing several machines per month and teaching several students per month - for $10k/month earning levels.

Earning Potential - CEB Let's go through the numbers. Once the complete CEB Press production model is developed - anyone can build the machine - and sell it for a profit. Absolute mastery may mean very high earning levels. I am predicting that it will take me about 4-20 hours to organize a complete build of the brick press with our local fabricator. But that will take time to develop the procedures. Reliable sourcing will be key. If we can mark up $2-4k per machine - then the best case scenario earning is $100/hour or up to $1000/hour earning. Now there are many details to such production - so we'll see what is practical in the long run. It will have to be honest, good work at the end of the day. But if we do 4 machines per month this way - then it's $10k earned per month. Since the market is perhaps 1000 machines per year - that could be $2-4M in net revenue for the movement.

The question for capturing the full value of the CEB press revolves around how quickly we can train our collaborators to build the machines - so we generate revenue from sales, and effective teaching of new producers. Like trade school. The relationship to OSE is an open franchising one, where we let people go on their own after some time. But the really interesting limit is taking ourselves out of business while achieving a post-scarcity condition: it is so easy to build the machines, that their production soon becomes saturated, and the CEB press turns into a product service system for building homes. The real value is not machine production, but building of homes. That takes skill, and is a huge market. Thus, the CEB press almost becomes a non-rival resource - and is readily available for use by the commonwealth at low cost.

Earning Potential - 3DP Say we produce 24 3D printers over a weekend - at a $300 markup over material costs. That is $7200 revenue - maybe $5k after costs. Two of these per month - and we have a revenue of $10k/month.

How many such people can we train to run workshops worldwide? The value that we can generate depends on how quickly we can train people, which requires effective production management with people who are ready to learn. By building on open source plans, this can in principle be replicated widely.

The exciting part is the possibility of training trainers - so that a number of people are running educational workshops for us in different places. This is an exercise in managing complexity. If the individual runs the production operation, then OSE manages only the individuals, not the inventory + logistics.

Aquaponics

Over 120 people signed up for the Aquaponics Working Team at the Permaculture Voices (PV 2) conference - including subject matter experts in just about ALL critical areas for project success. This constitutes the largest, most skilled team that OSE has ever assembled on any single project to date. We had an initial meeting at PV 2 a day after my talk, which about 30 people participated. So we are moving forward with the Aquaponics.

We are rolling with the Aquaponics greenhouse - due to the large potential in the team - now by building relationships with the 30 people that made the meeting after my talk.

Aquaponics Team and Process Building - See [1]

Aquaponics 100k x 100k

Working Teams Development

Hackathon Templates: Technology, Enterprise