OSE Apprenticeship Model

Positioning

College-level learning without debt.

The OSE apprenticeship is a work-study opportunity where you learn to build, learn how to learn, and learn to collaborate for effective problem-solving by design.

Discussion

• Reframe position around housing -
• Torture test - these are developing skills for a lifetime
• Before, it was 4 year commitment. Now it is earned.

Questions

1. How do we address the exciting aspect of problem-solving and design for making a better world if people can be paid only for building homes (according to current snapshot)?
   1. Diversify. Solutions: add other elements - automated machines and 3d printing into the promise of building homes - it is not just redneck work, but an exciting, multifaceted advanture where you learn something every day. And make sure we teach people to design and collaborate so that by the 4 years, they are fully capable and have demonstrated a capacity to add value to the design and to product improvement - via collaborative design.
   2. Offer Enterprise as a realistic option. Promise the 'we did it so you can, too' - which is deliverable pending RLF and LTL infrastructure - but otherwise, this is for the outliers and is not the norm. But this gets through to the entrepreneur - not the world problem solver or teacher. These appear to be 2 different profiles.
      1. This would allow us to determine if our average student turns out to be a collaborator - did we really succeed in teaching collaborative culture in 4 years?
      2. This would incentivize OSE to do better if we cannot teach collaborative literacy in 4 years of practice.
      3. Each person works 3000 hours, earning up to $100k in their time. Note that Revenue Per Employee to Cost per Employee (RPE Ratio) >1 in our model. In the ideal case, we spend $26000 on labor per house, but OSE net in a highly integrated operation is theoretically 3. Costs model is $20k land/legal + 60k + 26k=$106k at a selling price of $200k. But worst model is $20k+$60k+$60k=$140k, which still gets us to a RPE ratio of 1.
   3. Clarify target profiles - builder, designer, teacher, entrepreneur, abundance world-changer. Open collaboration is implied - that part we teach, it's a shallow philosophy if we don't back it up with real skills. It appears fuggedaboud the last category. The last is an outcome of the core 4: builder-designer-teacher-entrepreneur.
      1. With the first 3 profiles, enterprise is a given - pending a level playing field. Thus, if we focus on the first 3, we are likely to result in the 4th. The teacher part is about leveling the playing field - teaching is redefined to sharing economic power - the greatest type of gift anyone can provide. If the playing field is leveled, then we have ready opportunities for entrepreneurial solving of pressing world issues.
      2. Thus we can reframe our core work as leveling the playing field? This does inform the collaborative design work, and collaborative enterprise work such as innovation in every Community Enterprise Center (a variation of the Campus concept)
   4. Show clear roadmap -
      1. Core team of 24. Solopreneurship with team of 4 (5-10 week builds). Then the Maysville headquarters grows to a 240 person housing division.
         1. Market size is 10k homes per year in the KC area (pop. 2M) based on 0.5% new homes per person per year. 240 team means 240 homes at 2000 hr, and 480 homes at 1000 hr - tapping only 5% of the available market size.
      2. Tech roadmap - from Rooftop solar, to 3D printed materials, to open source autonomous machines, to wind, to zero energy (thermal storage), to Hydrogen Filling Station, aquaponic enterprise, to Open Source Everything Store - realizing the promise of financial independence and social responsibility.
   5. Focus on collaboration and teaching (for transformation) - but starting with design-build capable people. Your options are to go into enterprise, or continue OSPD with OSE.
      1. College is 2 days work, rest is build and problemsolving learning
      2. After college - there is a continuing education track - where you work 3 or 4 days, 1 day is school - and 1 day is collaborative design. This program focuses on large-scale collaborative design building up to teams of thousands across each product division, focusing on modular, scalable, Construction Set Approach for highly integrated design, building upon Architectures 101. This delivers the promise of collaborative design for DMS.
2. Do we position as Apprenticeship or Fellowship?
   1. Apprenticeship for design-build and teach. Teach is the documentation: the transfer of knowledge.
   2. Fellowship is earned - as the name implies - you must be able to collaborate to join the team of Fellows. You earn with clearly-defined competency-based criteria of learning how to build the Seed Eco-Home, designing new and different models collaboratively, and learning to teach about it by participating in the creation of rapid-learning documentation and materials. Thus, you have to prove that you are a good collaborator to become a Fellow.
3. How deos design-build-teach manifest in the program?
   1. Design-build - that is the core, 4 days - 2 building, 2 learning design and design tools (House Design Guide, FreeCAD module designers) which help to automate and streamline the design-build process for continuing improvement in efficiency. The Build part includes 3D printing of materials and competency using, maintaining, and modifying machines, tools, and cordless tools.
   2. Teach - teaching manifests as always leaving a 'paper trail' in cloud-editable docs, with supporting files and assets related to the Development Template - with intent of continuous product improvement. By taking the time to document as such, students actively participate as teachers - first to their cohort - and to the wider world.
   3. Connection to Enterprise- the 'paper trail' is effective product development, connecting this to the rigor of producing marketable products in the lifetime design goods category (you can maintain it for ever).
4. How does financial independence manifest?
   1. People can go on their own if they like - but we compete with such defection by offering added value if they stay with OSE: continuing education for advancement in leadership and responsibility, and participation in ongoing collaborative design that leads to lowering enterprise costs - which can be incentivized by directly-related pay increases. Such as 50/50 share in all savings. For example, if we achieve our baseline build performance and start moving into materials production - for example save $10k net on materials due to import substitution - we share the benefit as a bonus for the group. This is team incentive. Individual incentive is any time you work openly on your own to add visible redeemable value. The requirement for redemption is always documentation - business process documentation (blueprints, production engineering, sourcing, protocols).
   2. Ultimate financial independence means access to capital infrastructure during off hours - including 50/50 sharecropping of any natural resource production such as steel, biobitumen, etc. This requires competence (must be demonstrated, tested, documented) - this is a disciplined activity. Production technique and any innovation must be documented transparently - which counld contribute to ongoing organizational learning and overall DMS.
   3. We need to develop the bootstrap model to eliminate capital access barriers to startup. Relevant to people going on their own, and to new builders in a franchise model. How about with custom homes with customer paying up front? Or an owner-builder model where we work with a customer on financing? More details need development here.
      1. Custom designer and rendering software should be accessible for this, for full generation of production blueprints/submission to building department. Owner-builder can do this, they hire us to build. They BYOL + pay for materials, and we do the job for $120k - which yields custom homes at the cost of a spec build.
      2. BPM software to map out the build process with the building department? Meet with St. Joe, for example, to map this out.

Long Form

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Distinctions and Scope

• Apprenticeship is about building. Not easy to position as 'civilization building' because that is not readily apparent. Solution: raise the bar to distinctions of how we build to make a ready case. Such as: PV on every home. Zero energy house. Aquaponic Greenhouse Business Model, Hydrogen Filling Station added - along with automated heavy machines - along with 3D printing - and we are in business.
• Fellowship is about designing a new civilization.

Apprenticeship Requirements

• Lifelong learning
• Design-build-teaching skills for solving problems effectively and collaboratively
• Serious learning curve is expected to be the main challenge such as 4 years even if RLF and LTL is applied. We must perfect our technique.

Fellowship Requirement

• Same as above, except the target audience is a person who already identifies as a progressive problemsolver
• Student shows promise of discipline: 'rigorous discipline and skill set', 'high performance and willing to do what it takes to get there'
• Student shows collaborative ambition - gets excited about 'leveling the playing field' - open sourcing the economy so everyone has a fair shot at omnipotence

Issues

• Apprenticeship takes you to being a builder, designer, and collaborator, but we have to refine our pitch for 'financial independence'
• 'We did it so you can do it' for enterprise is dubious. This is for outliers. It is possible and expected if the quality of our program is sufficient, but we do not expect most people to go out at 22 years old to become entreprenuers.