[Discuss] Open Source Ecology Revenue Model

Friends, I'd like to provide a brief report on Open Source Ecology's (OSE) learnings so far - on sustaining open hardware development. We have been at it for some time, having coined the open source Global Village Construction Set concept in 2008. We got foundation funding after my TED Talk <http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski?language=en> in 2011, and then it ran out after 2013 - the standard unsustainable scenario of foundation funding. Last year we started offering immersion training courses in welding/fabrication/hands-on skills where we taught people to build heavy machines such as our brick press - or other products - such as modular homes. We found that this is an enriching productive, learning, and social experience. In general, we have found that most people find such an experience transformative - in terms of people discovering their raw power of productivity. We are spreading some open culture, such as one student <http://news.psu.edu/story/325138/2014/09/05/academics/architecture-student%E2%80%99s-open-source-experience-makes-her-more-open> who shifted to open source architecture as a result of exposure to OSE. We found that the workshop model - which we call Extreme Manufacturing - provides self-sustaining funding. The revenue in this model can come from dual sources - workshop tuition, and from the sale of a machine in a machine build workshop. The key to its feasibility is radical build efficiency, where we developed the capacity to build machines in a day and small homes in a weekend. We are extending our workshops this year. We found that it's a good way to involve outside talent, - to create open source documentation - and to teach - all at the same time. We are thus able to fund R&D effort this way. Our next step is to train others to run workshops, so that this can scale. The challenge is the diverse skill set required to run workshops - and the availability of open source designs - which we develop at the same time. It's a chicken and egg problem. However, my experience leads me to believe that community based manufacturing will be much more common in the future than we think, because of its positive social, economic, and environmental impacts. There's a long way to go, though, as formidable economic power arises only when there is a sufficiently large developer community and all the bugs are worked out. See some of our workshops for this year - http://opensourceecology.org/workshops-and-programs/. My favorite is where we build an open source, tracked utility/agriculture micro-tractor powered by biochar. Sign up to learn skills, and please pass this on to your networks. Thanks, Marcin -- *Non-confidentiality Disclaimer:* OSE works openly. All conversations in this email are intended to be transparent and subject to sharing, with due respect. OSE does not sign NDAs in order to promote collaboration. All of our work is libre or open source. If you are discussing potential development collaboration, your work must also be open source pursuant to the Open Source Hardware Association definition <http://www.oshwa.org/definition/>. See Global Village Construction Set TED Talk <http://www.ted.com/talks/marcin_jakubowski>. Sign up for our Design Sprints <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_Design_Sprint>. Subscribe as a True Fan <http://opensourceecology.org/community/#truefans>. See Tsu <https://www.tsu.co/OpenSourceEcology> or Facebook <https://www.facebook.com/OpenSourceEcology> for updates. Subscribe to monthly update OSEmail <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSEmail>. Donate to our 501(c)3 <http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Other_donation_options>. Marcin Jakubowski, Ph.D. Executive Director Open Source Ecology http://opensourceecology.org -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://lists.oshwa.org/pipermail/discuss/attachments/20150613/c14d1560/attachment.html>