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ralphpichie

The Canadians here have almost certainly heard about the severe housing crisis on the Attawapiskat First Nation in northern Ontario. Dilapidated homes that have been in need of repairs for years, mold, sewage backup, gaping holes, families squeezed into tents, all in an environment that gets to -40 Celcius in the winter. It's an isolated place, but hardly an isolated situation. I'll be making sure my contacts in aboriginal organizations have heard of OpenSource Ecology and the GVCS. What is the state of awareness of the GVCS among tribal and other organizations in your region? Are there any active partnerships here in North America? Any thoughts on how to build awareness and encourage participation?

This link is a good place to start for those who are unfamiliar with the subject.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/story/2011/11/24/f-first-nations-infrastructure.html

dorkmo

i think once the bugs are out of the first couple machines there will be more partnerships like this. right now its hard to approach people about using the machines since alot of the stuff is still in a testing stage. the upcoming "gift to the world" i think will kick off outreach and hopefully fuel some good stuff happening.

jerryshaw

Zero knowledge in my area although i'm hoping to change that once I have some machinery up that can be used to help others. Then I can let them borrow the earth ramming machine or something, build up some houses, and i'd expect interest to spread like wildfire. But that first person has to get the first machine... when even that is difficult due to my own financial limitations the process moves slow. :(

It may be important to note that OSE is not exclusively poverty driven... I got mildly verbally smacked for trying to turn it into that in several other threads (see my other posts) to find there isn't much interest in that direction. To make additional adaptions to the even more financially destitute situation of most first nations people like Pine Ridge or Rosebud (where i'm personally hoping to go do something, also Fort Berthold though they are a little less desperate) is as near as I can tell NOT within the core design team's primary interest. It may require a complimentary project with similar but modified goals, sort of like I am attempting to pursue or/and stimulate others to help start where maybe 60-80% of things overlap so both teams benefit, but certain unique adaptions are used only by one or the other.

I personally expect once such an outreach actually occurs, that some of the brilliant machinist minds i've found on EVERY reservation everywhere (a lifetime of having to make do, that mechanic guy with a rez rocket which is a ford engine, chevy transmission, dodge rear axle, a toyota steering knuckle on one side and a datsun steering knuckle on the other side... he made it work because thats what he had available, and it was cheaper to machine around a custom way to stick it together than to actually buy replacement parts) get involved, many other projects would grow by leaps and bounds. But so far my advice and insights on making it more accessible to those groups seems to have been sort of ignored in that I can't find anyone else willing to help me get it down to that level, so that mutually beneficial partnership I foresee remains stuck on the shelf unable to help anybody.

mihaitza

Hi!

is there any thread about converting all the existing plans or plans to be, in international measuring units?

Mike_Apostol

Hi Mihaitza,

Yes, absolutely haha...I'm from canada and really find the imperial units rather annoying. OSE design done at FeF is currently being done in imperial b/c that is what the local nearby fab shop where the materials are ordered from is most familiar with. Discussion will be taking place with that shop soon to see about getting metric material sizes in.

I've posted on the CAD section of the wiki though that the plan is to have designs in both units of measure however and personally I'd like to see metric units come out first and then converted to imperial after. For the first groups of product releases near the end of this month, they will be in imperial. I do not think there will be time to do conversions of all the models and materials. However on the next generation of these products I'm hoping to do them in metric.

Matt_Maier

It seems like the GVCS project itself is in the "poverty" stage since it has to beg for money. Something in poverty can't really help other things in poverty.

I suggest looking at the RepRap as an example. Their first design was pretty much crap because they didn't have any money, any outside interest, or any experience. However, the first design DID technically work, which got them that outside interest, money and experience. The key was the self-reproducing nature of the design. Once it was "released" into the wild its population began to expand. Now there are thousands of RepRaps with new and improved designs appearing all the time. Like any exponential function, it appears to not be going anywhere until it hits that curve and takes off.

What I mean is that, if you want to help people who need this technology, then help finish the technology. The GVCS is a self-replicating technology, so once the first design is released it will start to evolve and in a few years you won't even be able to recognize it. The original RepRaps cost about $1000, but now derivatives are being sold as complete kits for $500 (only a couple years of development) and there's signs of that cost being halved again pretty soon.

It's that reduction in cost that creates the "wealth" that will help people in need. But we can't get to the price reduction until after the genesis of the first generation of the technology.

mjn

The use of imperial measurements in the GVCS plans is largely a result of buying materials and parts in the US. If development had been done on a global basis from the start, everything would be in metric, I'm sure.

I thing that RepRap went through this as well. The original was in imperial and a metric version was later developed.

- Mark

Mike_Apostol

@Matt_Maier: "The GVCS is a self-replicating technology, so once the first design is released it will start to evolve and in a few years you won't even be able to recognize it."

That's exactly my point of view for OSE and what keeps me driven to continue working on the designs including all the documentation even though there are obvious flaws with the designs. It provides the initial seed with which people can look at and say "Oh you could make this so much better by just doing this...and modifying that..."

Matt_Maier

I agree, Mike. Most people don't have very good imaginations. If we can just get functional prototypes out the door, so people can see them working together, however modestly, then people will get it. Not everyone, but the RIGHT ones will. It's gonna be those guys, the people who can engineer the shit out of something but don't waste their time on flights of fancy, who fix most of the problems and really help turn the machines into something practical.

Additionally, it's quite common for a single or small group of designers to utterly fail at guessing what their target audience wants...or even is. For example, the guy who kickstarted Makerslide was doing it for all the home-build 3D printers and CNC machine people. But the group he's gotten the most interest from are photographers who want a simple and cheap way to move their cameras around.

Lets just get these things out there in the wild and let the environment decide what to do with them.

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