Hi! I'm not a mechanic or an engineer or a chemist or a programmer, so I feel hopelessly at a loss to do anything substantial for the GVCS. But I am pretty psyched about the whole vision of this thing, and want to help however I can. (I'm a carpenter!) I made $7k last year, so I'm not very well-off financially, but I own my own home ($4k to buy + $2k to fix) and have very low (~2k/yr) living expenses. I would like to start another "Factor e Farm" where I live in Pittsburgh PA -- a cheap, well-forested, well-watered, decently sunny, temperate city full of scrap material and tons of "the youth".

I want to make sure my project has adequate resources and is capable of attracting fun, sharp, smart, clever people. I'll probably fail but, it's what I'm going to try. I think that having Factor e Farm so far from a nice city, and having started off in such crummy living conditions for visitors, was a bad move. I'd like to start my project with a membership-based tool-lending library, then a demolition salvage yard, and then a wood/metal/ceramics shop. Ideally they'll all be connected in a location that I own so I won't get depressed running around town paying lots of rent and failing hard. Anyone in Pittsburgh want to try this out, I have some living quarters and a lot of the raw materials and some of the land, but none of the money / business-smarts / hauling vehicles!   :r]

I've really been enjoying some of the "Fair Companies" videos lately, like this, what a way to live!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DSbQ3t-j41Y

And the Periodic Table of Videos!

Two favorite talks:
http://www.ted.com/talks/sugata_mitra_shows_how_kids_teach_themselves.html
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/en/willie_smits_restores_a_rainforest.html