Tyler Ross
April 2014
Hey Marcin,
I am currently somewhat flexible with time and would like to take the opportunity to participate in your project in some capacity. I would be interested in participating in the CEB Press Workshop or MicroHouse workshop coming up this month. Unfortunately I cannot commit to an entire summer there, (I wasn’t too sure what the options were when I inquired) but I was thinking that I could commit a week or two following the workshop to help out, if this is of value (might be considered volunteer work days as oppose to DPV?). In any case, I am keen to learn as much as I can about distributive enterprise and extreme manufacturing and willing to provide some time and energy to help move this project forward. Please let me know how I may be of most help.
Also, I received your e-mail for the TrueFans contribution, glad that I could help out! Quick bio as requested... So, I have been interested in sustainability and low impact living for quite a long time and have done quite a bit of research/googling in that area over the years and came across your site. What I liked about OSE was the grassroots and open source approach. There are a lot of people out there waking up to the realities of our economic and environmental situation, but the common reaction (if not avoidance) seems to fall in the “try to solve our problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them” category in the many capital intensive projects that are now prevalent. I think the bottom up OSE approach has the potential to address the larger issues of economic disparity, disconnection from food/energy sources etc that the more capitalistic projects do not address. I have a Mechanical Engineering Technologist Diploma and a Project Management Cert. I worked for General Dynamics for a number of years writing technical manuals for military vehicles (SGML/XML) and managed entire logistics support team for a Mine Resistant vehicle program. Frustrated with the huge inefficiencies of the military industrial complex and corporate structure in general, I left there to work for a smaller privately owned company where I designed shipping racks for the auto industry using Solidworks and managed all of the component procurement and subcontract work for sheet metal, machining, laser cutting etc. Currently I’m working on getting a new business venture off the ground. I have designed a range of customizable, ergonomic office furniture, fully parametric and driven by a product configurator. The designs have been optimized for 3-axis CNC router production and I am working with local, independent job shops. The intent is to eventually work with a network of job shops such as 100Kgarages.com to be able to have customer driven design configuration on an ecommerce site, fulfilled by a partner shop local to them.
