Hi. My name is Tom Cobb. I live on the island of Kauai. Until recently, I was a programmer for Cisco Systems, working remotely from my house. A group of four - my wife, two friends and myself - own a small piece of truly amazing sacred land. I became aware of OSE through Marcin's TED talk. At that time I already knew about FabLabs through former Cisco colleagues working with the Center for Bits and Atoms at MIT, and had been in conversation with various folks in the Fab Lab network about bringing one to Kauai. OSE seems to me the next logical evolutionary step from Fab Lab. I am extremely interested in bringing an OSE facility to Kauai. I would very much appreciate a conversation with others who have done this.

My wife is a composer of sacred music. What started as a public performance of her work "Goddess Chant" has naturally evolved into a "Temple Of the New Earth"(http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112853515426581). Think of it as Open Source Sacred Music. As part of that, we are also hosting open community councils where all are welcomed to share their wisdom. Therefore, in addition open source farming, I am also very interested in open source art and open source politics.

We moved to Kauai from the area of Boston when my wife became ill with serious neurological disorders. We were seeking a place conducive to healing and I believe that Kauai is that place for us. Therefore, I am also extremely interested in open source healing. I believe that all of these things go together and are part of a physical, technological, cultural and spiritual ecosystem.

Most recently, I have been spending my time organizing and managing. In addition to the performances, and councils, I also co-formed a Buddhist meditation center. Our small sangha has recently formed a formal teaching relationship with Khentrul Lodro Thaye Rinpoche. He has a large meditation center in the Ozarks in Arkansas. I am very interested in exploring ways in which various established and organized communities, such as religious and spiritual organizations can be in closer relationship with the OSE organizations in ways which are mutually profitable.

Before my organizing time, I was doing web based development of internal tools for Cisco. I mainly programmed in Ruby, Java and Perl. I developed several template based web tools including front end, middleware, database backend, and extensive connectivity with others systems (source control, build systems, etc. etc. ). I would be interested in applying such tools again insofar as they promoted a healthy local economy.