I study community economic development, program design & management, and public policy at the University of Washington. I work as an RA for an NSF-funded program that advances the role of women in academia in Science, Engineering, and Math, and work part-time with an urban farming/job-training program for at-risk youth. I spend much of my free time gardening and building/fixing things around the house, reading about farming, permaculture, and ecology, looking for natural models that might prove useful for thinking about human society (most recently, Jane Jacobs' "The Nature of Economies"). My professional experience is mostly in the wilderness, mostly with youth, and centers around education, team leadership, self-sufficiency, counseling, and curriculum design. I've also done some writing, construction, and landscaping. My strongest skill sets are in backpacking and primitive skills, logistics, communications, drawing and design, teaching, and observation and troubleshooting.

My primary interest in OSE is in helping to develop a curriculum for teaching "lay people" all the necessary skills for constructing, operating, and evolving the GVCS once it's been developed. This, of course, means learning the skills myself. My partner and I are both open to the possibility of participating in the first 2-year experimental village, writing and documenting the experience while developing a curriculum. She's a VERY talented community organizer, and we live in a highly-functional cooperative right now, so we've got some "soft" skills that, in such an experiment, may come in handy.

If curious, you can follow my thoughtstreams here: http://thesparrk.blogspot.com/ and here: http://digthisdigthat.blogspot.com/. It's not all meant for public consumption, but there are a lot of links to really cool articles, interviews, and videos along with reflections of my own. Nice to be here!

~Matt