Charles, Thank you for your letter and I share with David, too.  Andrius

charles williams wrote:
> Andrius,
>
> This is fine. My address is:
>
> Charles Williams
> P.O. Box 436834
> Chicago, IL 60643-1348
>
> My employment is Community Assistance Programs and we have three
> offices in South Chicago. I have invited David to visit me at my
> office but he has not visited. Although we deal primarily with
> out-of-work people in the African American community, we have
> counselors here who can, at the very least, talk with David. But I
> need him to visit! I know he has the free senior bus pass.
> Additionally we will supply free Internet use for him. The address is:
>
> Community Assistance Programs
> 7723 S. Kedzie
> Chicago, IL 60652
>
> Our hours are 8-5, M-F.
>
> Regards,
> Charles Williams
>
>
> On Sat, Nov 14, 2009 at 1:19 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
> <mailto:ms@...>> wrote:
>
>     Charles,
>
>     Thank you for your letter to Anthony and your concern for David
>     and his losing home.  I will talk with David and I hope he agrees
>     that, as needed, I might pay you (my means are modest) to help him
>     keep from losing his home.  Perhaps others can help?
>
>
>     Andrius Kulikauskas
>     Minciu Sodas
>     http://www.ms.lt
>     ms@... <mailto:ms@...>
>
>     charles williams wrote:
>
>         Anthony,
>         My work in Chicago involves closing the digital divide and
>         assisting people in getting back to work. At Community
>         Assistance Programs, where I am employed, I teach workshops in
>         computer literacy, hiring and job retention. And my web site,
>         www.shopsouthchicago.com <http://www.shopsouthchicago.com>
>         <http://www.shopsouthchicago.com>, promotes shopping, living
>         and working in South Chicago.
>
>
>         Please feel welcome to contact me or visit with me anytime to
>         discuss our similar goals. Andrius will have thoughts on this,
>         I am certain, and I too will write more soon about my plans.
>         Meanwhile I will read your web site and learn about your
>         activities.
>
>         We are all very sad about the home foreclosures here. Please
>         keep David Ellison-Bey in your prayers.
>
>         Regards,
>         Charles Williams
>         P.O. Box 436834 Chicago, IL 60643-1348
>          312-560-2592 sbw.info <http://sbw.info>
>         <http://sbw.info>@gmail.com <http://gmail.com> <http://gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
>
>         On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
>         <mailto:ms@...> <mailto:ms@... <mailto:ms@...>>> wrote:
>
>            Hi Anthony,
>
>            Great to hear from you!
>            I appreciate your help to start discussion in Spanish at
>            http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_ES/
>
>            Also, I encourage you to link up with Charles Williams who is
>            closing the digital divide in South Chicago
>            http://www.servicesbywilliams.com
>            http://www.shopsouthchicago.com
>            See his article about David Ellison-Bey:
>            http://www.shopsouthchicago.com/news.html
>
>            David is losing his home to foreclosure.  We wrote his hardship
>            letter last year:
>
>         
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/10/the-includerepisode-5hardship-letter005.html
>            but the latest news is not good.
>            I wish we could organize some help for him.  He's a
>         wonderful person
>            http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?DavidEllison-Bey
>            Perhaps you could call him (773) 874-3332 and even visit him?
>
>            What are you thinking about?
>
>            Andrius
>
>            Andrius Kulikauskas
>            Minciu Sodas
>            http://www.ms.lt
>            ms@... <mailto:ms@...> <mailto:ms@... <mailto:ms@...>>
>
>
>
>            bilingualnewspaper wrote:
>
>                Greetings from Chicago!
>
>                After a few years of depression, after a big betrayal
>         of Andy
>                Pincon, whom Andrius met him at Meda in Chicago.  I'm
>         ready to
>                forgive & forget! Roll my sleeves.
>                 I
>                'd like to Join your group to help close the Digital Divide
>                among the Latino Community in the USA & Latin America.
>                Check out: http://www.AMERICAenEspanol.com
>
>                http://www.BILINGUALMAGAZINE.COM
>
>                Truly yours, your friend,
>
>                Anthony Diaz
>                Founder
>                T: (773) 501.8390
>                Editor@...
>
>
>
>
>
>

Yahoo! Canada Toolbar : Search from anywhere on the web and bookmark your favourite sites. Download it now!

Charles,

Thank you for your letter to Anthony and your concern for David and his
losing home.  I will talk with David and I hope he agrees that, as
needed, I might pay you (my means are modest) to help him keep from
losing his home.  Perhaps others can help?

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

charles williams wrote:
> Anthony,
>
> My work in Chicago involves closing the digital divide and assisting
> people in getting back to work. At Community Assistance Programs,
> where I am employed, I teach workshops in computer literacy, hiring
> and job retention. And my web site, www.shopsouthchicago.com
> <http://www.shopsouthchicago.com>, promotes shopping, living and
> working in South Chicago.
>
> Please feel welcome to contact me or visit with me anytime to discuss
> our similar goals. Andrius will have thoughts on this, I am certain,
> and I too will write more soon about my plans. Meanwhile I will read
> your web site and learn about your activities.
>
> We are all very sad about the home foreclosures here. Please keep
> David Ellison-Bey in your prayers.
>
> Regards,
> Charles Williams
> P.O. Box 436834
> Chicago, IL 60643-1348
>
> 312-560-2592
> sbw.info <http://sbw.info>@gmail.com <http://gmail.com>
>
>
>
>
> On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 2:16 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
> <mailto:ms@...>> wrote:
>
>     Hi Anthony,
>
>     Great to hear from you!
>     I appreciate your help to start discussion in Spanish at
>     http://groups.yahoo.com/group/minciu_sodas_ES/
>
>     Also, I encourage you to link up with Charles Williams who is
>     closing the digital divide in South Chicago
>     http://www.servicesbywilliams.com
>     http://www.shopsouthchicago.com
>     See his article about David Ellison-Bey:
>     http://www.shopsouthchicago.com/news.html
>
>     David is losing his home to foreclosure.  We wrote his hardship
>     letter last year:
>    
http://www.pbs.org/idealab/2008/10/the-includerepisode-5hardship-letter005.html
>     but the latest news is not good.
>     I wish we could organize some help for him.  He's a wonderful person
>     http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?DavidEllison-Bey
>     Perhaps you could call him (773) 874-3332 and even visit him?
>
>     What are you thinking about?
>
>     Andrius
>
>     Andrius Kulikauskas
>     Minciu Sodas
>     http://www.ms.lt
>     ms@... <mailto:ms@...>
>
>
>     bilingualnewspaper wrote:
>
>         Greetings from Chicago!
>
>         After a few years of depression, after a big betrayal of Andy
>         Pincon, whom Andrius met him at Meda in Chicago.  I'm ready to
>         forgive & forget! Roll my sleeves.
>          I
>         'd like to Join your group to help close the Digital Divide
>         among the Latino Community in the USA & Latin America.
>         Check out: http://www.AMERICAenEspanol.com
>
>         http://www.BILINGUALMAGAZINE.COM
>
>         Truly yours, your friend,
>
>         Anthony Diaz
>         Founder
>         T: (773) 501.8390
>         Editor@...
>
>
>
>
>

Monday I spoke with Tiffany Von Emmel of Dreamfish.  I've joined the
Dreamfish group
http://groups.google.com/group/dreamfish/
and also signed up Tiffany for Janet Feldman's working group Holistic
Helping
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/holistichelping/
Thank you to Peter Kaminski, Mark Roest, Sasha Mrkailo and Franz Nahrada
for encouraging us!  Thank you also to Edward Cherlin for linking me
with Bill Daul, also in Silicon Valley and in the Dreamfish group.

In 1998, I founded Minciu Sodas http://www.ms.lt  an online laboratory
for independent thinkers around the world.  I also lead Worknets
http://www.worknets.org  a culture of independent thinkers.  We have
some people in common with Dreamfish, and also many values and dreams.
See, for example, the Dreamfish Humanifesto:
http://dreamfish.com/about/dreamfish-humanifesto/
and the Worknets charter
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter

I'm looking forward to our networks working together.  Dreamfish is
strong in Silicon Valley, which is the center of the world of our
future.  I live in Lithuania and Minciu Sodas is strong there and also
Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda; the UK and Austria; and participants in Serbia,
the US, India and other countries.

We both have a culture of working for free on our own projects and
organizing teams for paid work.   I appreciate working together to
expand these opportunities.

We're both active in organizing online infrastructure.  Minciu Sodas has
about 20 mildly active working groups (email lists, see:
http://www.ms.lt), a mildly active wiki (http://www.worknets.org ) and
mildy active chat room (http://www.worknets.org/chat/
http://www.worknets.org/archive/ )

Recent achievements / clients include:
* http://www.pyramidofpeace.net  organizing 100 peacemaker on-the-ground
and 100 online assistants to avert genocide in Kenya
* http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?MornflakeOutreach 6,000 GBP of work
to create a directory of 500 UK online communities and engage about 70
of them on behalf of Leon Benjamin http://www.winningbysharing.net and
Mornflake cereal's video contest http://www.mornflakecompetition.com
* http://www.myfoodstory.info  We collected 2,000 food stories for Greg
Wolff of Unamesa Association
* http://www.includer.org I won a $15,000 Knight News Challenge Award to
blog about a proposed device (the Includer) for Africans with marginal
Internet access, but see Ricardo's work
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Ricardo for our real achievements

We organize ourselves in terms of people and their answers to questions
(here are Tiffany's):
* Do you have a deepest value in life which includes all of your other
values?  "Connection, healing the fragmentation that exists on all
levels, shifting from control to participation"   (See answers from 500
people at http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Values )
* What is a question that you don't know the answer to, but wish to
answer?  "Who can work as a partner with me? act as Dreamfish's
operation leader?"
* What would you like to achieve?  (Dreamfish? see our
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Endeavors )
* What is your dream in life? "Our earth and all its people practice
love moment by moment. Facilitating the practice of love and how we are
together. Help <http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Help> people in a state
of transition follow their aliveness and realize what they are becoming.
That needs to happen in the gap between what we know and what is
emerging. I'm really good at helping people practice that and helping
people come to their dreams." http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams

If you share your answers, then I will post them at our wiki!  and
you're welcome to create pages there.

Minciu Sodas / Worknets venues are explicitly in the Public Domain by
default.  That means that the current Dreamfish wiki's "sharealike"
license clashes with ours and prohibits us from including ("building
on") your work.  I hope you might also work in the Public Domain as it
allows for sharing most freely and encourages "using your own best
judgement".  That would allow me to invest myself in the Dreamfish wiki,
the Dreamfish venues and encourage others likewise.

Tiffany and I look forward to discovering endeavors and tasks where it's
natural for us to work together.  Here are some:
* Currently, I'm organizing an "economy of dreams" so that we might
learn to support each other's dreams directly and rely less on money.
We can collect our dreams and look for connections:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams
* I'm trying to staff an online help room http://www.worknets.org/chat/
where people can get response, get help on any matter at any time.
(Dreamfish has a nice chat room!)  I'm looking for a new technology
(because ARSC is open source but no longer maintained) that would
include a web based client but also link with IRC clients, Yahoo, Skype,
etc. and that we could enhance (code what we need such as an archive and
integration with our websites).
* We need tasks that our online assistants like Fred Kayiwa in Uganda
could help with.  $200 per month is enough for Fred's studies and
living, but most of all, we need meaningful online tasks that I can
teach him to do for us and he can train others.  See:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks
* We would gladly host a chat on a Dreamfish topic.  Friday, November
13, 5:00 am California time (too early!) we'll be chatting with Josephat
Ndibalema about publishing e-books in Kiswahili for small farmers to
view on DVD players, mobile phones, digital cameras.
* In Lithuania, we're part of a national idea movement, and some of
those include economic literacy.
* Franz Nahrada in Austria is a leader in the global villages movement,
including developing the use of video bridges, as with Alan Lundell in
the Santa Cruz area.
* Edward Cherlin leads our work to create open source textbooks, and I'm
interested to create lessons in ethics (of our new culture) and
mathematical thinking (which I'll try to link to ethics).
* I've become active as an artist
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50525222@N00/ and next spring we're
organizing an art project "Land of Dreamers" where we'll collect
people's dreams around the world, and creatively express them together,
and try to integrate them all.  We're active in the Uzhupis Republic
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uzupis
* Zenonas Anusauskas leads an Internet television station
http://www.internetinetv.lt  I live with his family.  With his
encouragement, I created my first philosophical video "I Wish to Know"
http://ms.lt/IWishToKnow about my lifelong quest to know everything and
apply that knowledge usefully.
* I look forward to delving into Tiffany's philosophical thinking:
http://www.socialtext.net/vonemmel/index.cgi?papers_book_chapters_and_presentati\
ons

I look forward to learning to work together!  Our success and our
discoveries would be a great encouragement to many other networks:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?CivilizationNetworks

Thank you to all who are connecting us!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

Bill Daul wrote:
> Hello Andrius...thanks Ed for the introduction...a little to late in
> the night for a coherent response but wanted to at least say hello!
>
> I look forward to hearing about Minciu Sodas.
>
>
> --bill
>
> On Nov 4, 2009, at 12:31 PM, Edward Cherlin wrote:
>
>> You two should know about each other's work. You both collect active
>> thinkers in Next Now and Minciu Sodas.
>>
>> --
>> Edward Mokurai
(默雷/धर�ममेघशब�दगर�ज/دھرممیگھشبدگر
ج) Cherlin
>> Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
>> The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
>> http://www.earthtreasury.org/
>
> --
>
> *Bill Daul*
>
> Chief Collaboration Officer
> *NextNow Collaboratory*:  a synergistic web of relationships focused
> on transforming the present
>
> http://www.human-landscaping.com/nextnow
> http://www.nextnow.net <http://www.nextnow.net/>  -- NN Network Blog
> http://www.nextnow.org <http://www.nextnow.org/>  -- NN Collaboratory Blog
>
> ==================================
>
> "Play with boundaries, not within."
>

Hi Dee,

Fred Kayiwa in Uganda is helping me and all at our chat room:
http://www.worknets.org/chat/
I'm coaching him so that he might help others with all kinds of online
tasks including tutoring, looking for airline tickets, etc.  He's a
college student studying accounting.

Is there anybody at St.Benedict the African who might be interested to
chat with us?  This would be helpful practice for us!  Please let us
know who and when.  Saturdays might be a good day to try.

Also, my friend David Ellison-Bey (6726 S Parnell) may lose his home due
to foreclosure.  He's a senior.  Is there anybody who might help and advise?

And are there any videos of our choir online?

I've been drawing here:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/50525222@N00/
and here are songs in Lithuanian that I've been creating:
http://www.ms.lt/lt/wiki.cgi?Li%C5%ABta%C5%A1ird%C5%BEiai

Hi to all in the choir!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003
skype: minciusodas

Josephat Ndibalema (Tanzania) and I invite us all to chat this Friday,
November 13, 2009 at November 13, 13.00 London time GMT, 14.00 Nigerian
time, 16.00 Kenyan time http://www.worknets.org/chat/   We're chatting
about creating e-books in Kiswahili for farmers.  Ricardo has worked
through how to publish text as images for viewing on DVD players,
digital cameras and mobile phones.  There are Kiswahili texts at
http://sw.wikipedia.org and http://swahili.food-security.info  Josephat
curates our own Kiswahili worknets wiki at http://www.worknets.org/sw/
where we can prepare our texts.  I can create a script to then convert
them for publication, including locally in Africa, because the resulting
image files are large.  As we get started, we can also devote some
resources to translating materials.

This is a straightforward project where we might all contribute our
talents, further our dreams, build shared momentum and share credit for
our achievements.  It would be great if Dadamac and Earth Treasury might
participate somehow.  Samwel Kongere is organizing a fish pond.  Graham
Knight has DIY Solar.  Tom Ochuka has built a water cart.  Ananya S Guha
is writing children's poems.  These are examples where Kiswahili
materials could spread ideas.

I also ask for help for our chat room as the center of a "help room".
This is key in my efforts so that Minciu Sodas and Worknets are viable,
can respond helpfully to everybody, can organize global teams for paid
work, and can further an "economy of dreams" where we work together to
advance the dreams of each and every one of us.

Fred Kayiwa has been coming often to our chat room
http://www.worknets.org where I have been training him how to help
online with various tasks http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks such as
at our wiki.  Thank you also to Sasha Mrkailo and Kestutis Urba for
visiting often, too.  It's a great help if you can just log in and say
hi whenever you are online.  Maybe you can greet somebody.  And we'll
greet you and think how we can help you.  We're practicing how to help.
Please train now if you'd like to be part of our Minciu Sodas team for
paid work when I find more.

Fred Kayiwa has shown a lot of initiative and I have sent him 100 USD to
help this month.  He is studying accounting in college at Kampala and
that costs him 1200 USD per year.  He also has living expenses of about
50 USD per month and Internet expenses of 50 USD per month.  So his
costs are 200 USD per month and he has to study but he does quite a lot
for us part-time.  Most importantly, he's been most helpful.

Fred has to make his next payment of 300 USD for his studies and he asks
for help.

I'm inclined to support Fred and certainly I would send him another 100
USD per month to continue helping as we build momentum for our help
room.  But I truly should ask more of us for help.  And so I am!  My
purpose is to nurture a culture, and so I need a community.  Yes, we
could share the costs of Fred as an online assistant, and if you've ever
benefited from Minciu Sodas or would like to benefit, which might
include options on Fred's availability in the future, this is a very
helpful cause to dedicate money to.

But more importantly, I need people for our help room (and Fred) to
help.   So by simply coming to our chat room and learning how to be
helped, you'll be doing us a great help, even if we're working for your
for free.  In doing so, we're building assets in the Public Domain for
us and all to use.

Please do respond!

I will send Fred at least 100 USD but more if others show interest and
participate in our help room.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

kayiwa fred wrote:
> Hi Andrius and all,
> Although my budget  may be big this year, i have the urgent budget
> which needs to be covered this month and thats my balance of Tution
> which is $300
> i feel i can slowly look for the rest of the costs up to December if
> this $300 is covered because by the end of this month we start exams
> and no one does without completing the tuition
> I think this makes sense to ,you friends
> i feel this is the most Urgent one and i love doing urgent and very
> important things first
> Thanks a lot
> Fred

Janet,

Thank you for your encouragement which I share also and alert Wael Al
Saad.  For the Knight News Challenge I'm thinking I should focus on
Lithuania because I live here. http://www.helproom.org/proposal/

Janet, When you can, please think for us, what is your long-term dream
for your life?  That's very helpful to know for our "economy of dreams"
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

Janet Feldman wrote:
> Dear Andrius, Wael, Solana, and All,
>
> My apologies for continuing to be offline more than anticipated, and I will be
remembering to network Wael and Cameron soon. Wael, thanks too for your eloquent
and important letters! And Solana, thanks so much for your feedback to Andrius
abt Knight...very helpful (you're a desk unto yourself :))!
>
> I'm so sorry about this funding, but I hope you will apply for Knight funds,
with the specific geographic location of Palestine-Israel. In fact, you might
want to consider Palestine on its own, though I know there are intricate
linkages between the two that do need to be addressed by some programs and
projects.
>
> If you were to focus on what news would be important for Palestinians to have
locally (ie in a citizen-media initiative to focus on news Palestinians might
need), and then also what an international group could do to provide contacts,
networking, "answers" (to development questions et al) in a "help-desk" kind of
way, that might provide some invaluable assistance. Wael's development
ideas--being "local" in nature though applicable globally--could be one focus
for such help and activities.
>
> I think there are other grants or funding that might perhaps be obtained:  the
US Institute of Peace has grants, one a priority competition (I include this
because of a focus on Afghanistan as one priority country, Andrius) and the
other a general competition, which helps to fund projects like this one below.
See urls under that for more info. The deadline is in 2010, however, since all
of their 2009 grants have been given.
>
> Title:   Educating for Peace in Palestinian Schools
> Subject:   Regional Conflict-Middle East
> Applicant:   Holy Land Trust
> City:   Bethlehem,  State:   Palestine
> Project Director:   Sami Awad
> Grant Number:   USIP-011-07F  Amount:   $ 39,235  FY:   2008
> Start Date:   06/01/2008  End Date:   06/30/2009
> Description:   This project will be launched as a model project in five
marginalized schools for a 12 month period. Holy Land Trust will compile a
training manual that will be used to train 100 teachers (20 teachers per school)
during the summer vacation. Throughout the following school year, the training
team members will support the teachers by co-teaching and providing supervision.
Project staff will present the results of the pilot program to the Minister of
Education for replication in other marginalized schools in the West Bank.
>
>
> http://www.usip.org/grants-fellowships/priority-grant-competition
> http://www.usip.org/grants-fellowships/annual-grant-competition
>
> You could also try ANERA (American Near East Refugee Aid). I do not see
"grants" listed specifically, but introductions and networking could surely be
done, and perhaps some form of partnership might result. See
http://www.anera.org.
>
> Hopefully via searches and mailings, as well as word-of-mouth, we will come up
with other opportunities. This is such a crucial area of the world, with
important peace and humanitarian issues to address, that surely there is some
funding available!
>
> With all best wishes and blessings, Janet
>
>
>
> -----Original Message-----
>
>
>
>
>
>> From: Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...>
>> Sent: Oct 23, 2009 8:41 AM
>> To: fightingpeacefully@yahoogroups.com
>> Cc: Awne Abu Zant <awnevip@...>, minciu_sodas_AR@yahoogroups.com,
risingvoices@googlegroups.com, help group <holistichelping@yahoogroups.com>,
globalvillages@yahoogroups.com
>> Subject: [holistichelping] US MENA funding unavailable for Palestine
activities
>>
>> I was writing a proposal for the US funding opportunity "New Empowerment
>> Communication Technologies: Opportunities in the Middle East and North
>> Africa".  I was hoping to organize a global help room based in
>> Israeli-occupied Palestine, specifically, the West Bank.  I had a
>> successful stay there in 2006.  We have good connections with remarkable
>> people like Jafra-Wael Al Saad, Awne Abuzont, Alaa Youssef.  I believe
>> there's a real need and opportunity for Palestinians to look beyond
>> their own country and excel at giving help to others and not simply feel
>> helpless.  I imagine that Palestinian aspirations are a key to the
>> Middle East and to any "economy of dreams".
>>
>> I learned today that the West Bank and Gaza are not eligible for funding
>> http://mepi.state.gov/opportunities/130864.htm
>> "While applicants are welcome to propose projects or activities in the
>> West Bank and Gaza, funding is currently unavailable to support such
>> projects or activities."
>> This was clarified on October 20, just three days before the deadline!
>> At least it's made public.
>>
>> I confess that I thought this was an important opportunity with generous
>> funding that might have helped me personally.  I am sympathetic to the
>> need and opportunity in Palestine, but this opportunity depressed me in
>> a deep way.  I would like to organize a "culture of independent
>> thinkers" and an "economy of dreams" that addresses individuals' dreams
>> in simple ways.  I'm not attracted to heroic efforts in desperate
>> circumstances.  I'd like to work from Lithuania if I can.
>>
>> Palestinians and Israelis suffer hardships.  I think that it's
>> unfortunate that those who invest themselves to get interested and make
>> an effort to help, as I have in both Palestine and Israel, are left out
>>
> >from even the most supportive opportunity.
>
>> I think it's important to be supportive of "independent thinkers" that
>> we know in Palestine and Israel.  I know an entrepreneur in Palestine
>> for whom I might write a smaller proposal.  I encourage us to organize
>> around Jafra Wael Al Saad, he's at Social Agriculture
>> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/socialagriculture/ and elsewhere. He's in
>> Jenin, Palestine, organizing local groups for a sustainable economy.
>> globalpalestine AT googlemail.com
>>
>> Thank you to Janet Feldman for alerting us to this opportunity, which
>> otherwise is very exciting.  I appreciate help to find other such
>> opportunities around the world, especially to organize an online help
>> room as I'm proposing http://www.helproom.org/proposal/
>>
>> Andrius
>>
>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>> Minciu Sodas
>> http://www.ms.lt
>> ms@...
>> +370 699 30003
>> skype: minciusodas
>>
>>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

Pam,

I look forward to chatting with you and all at
http://www.worknets.org/chat/  on Thursday, November 5, 13.00 Nigerian
time, 15,00 Kenyan time, 12.00 GMT, London time.   (There's also a chat
on Saturday, too).

Yes, there's great ways how the same content could appear both at our
Worknets wiki and at the Dadamac website.  One example of how we do this
is that http://www.pyramidofpeace.net is edited at:
http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?PyramidOfPeaceTimeline
It would be great if we might think of Dadamac as a brand for certain
recommended knowledge and activities (like beekeeping) and experts (like
Sasha).

Franz mentioned Perl which is the programming language that ProWiki is
written in.  (He misspelled it "pearl" though).

Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
-----------------------------------

Hi Andrius, Sasha and Franz

I am looking at how we bring various things together.

     * Beekeeping has come up at recent First Thursdays
     * Sasha is one of the people interested in it
     * Dadamac was working on Beekeeping last year related to Attachab -
       fact finding and planning - but no money to move things forward to
       pay trainer etc
     * Marcus Simmons knows  Attachab
     * Marcus Simmons is in Nigeria again now - his visit will help
       various things to move on.
     * We are trying to make Dadamac activities more visible via
       Dadamac.net (long slow job)
     * If the Dadamac beekeeping group restarts we will try to make
       updates available via Dadamac.net
     * Sasha has already collected up great information related to
       Beekeeing on the worknets wiki
     * We need to consider best way to make connections between his
       existing info and info relevant to the Dadamac beekeeping group,
       adn new info we will generate.
     * We do not want to duplicate effort
     * Dadamac and Minciu Sodas have a lot in common - we want to find
       the right working relationship so we complement each other and
       benefit from each others strengths.
     * Franz wrote recently on global villages ref pro-wiki and its great
       features
     * I'm expecting that soon www.dadamac.net <http://www.dadamac.net>
       will start to generate some collections of info that will be in
       the public domain
     * Such collections, as they grow, may well need organising in a wiki
       kind of way
     * We used a wiki when we did out first Teachers Talking work -
       unfortunately not under our control and removed without and
       warning - all info lost.
     * The wiki was a good place to put info - but - had we continued to
       develop it we would have wanted to develop some additional features.
     * Later we did some experiments with Moodle - and that influenced my
       thinking on how I will ultimately want to manipulate info that
       gets generated through Dadamac - but that is for another more
       detailed discussion later
     * If we get the right connection between Sasha's beekeeping wiki
       info and Dadamac group then I hope we will work in a similar close
       way ref info for other dadamac groups

I hope we can explore this through LFEO and First Thursday

Pam

--------------------------

Hi Andrius and Everyone

Next Thursday - November 5th is first Thursday of  the month again.  So
it's time for my usual invitation to you to join me in the chat room,
and my usual thanks to Andrius for making it possible.  All being well I
will be around for an hour as usual starting - 13.00 Nigerian time,
15,00 Kenyan time, 12.00 GMT

Please remember too that Saturday Nov 7th we will be back in the
chatroom for the annual Teachers Talking - self-directed Learners -
Dadamac celebration of how the Internet helps us to work together and
learn. 10.00 GMT. 11.00 Nigerian time. 13.00 East African Time. I hope
there will be some newcomers joining us from the UK as we will be at an
event called BarCampAfrica.  More details here
http://www.dadamac.net/node/80

There were many topics raised at the October First Thursday, and as a
result none of them were covered in sufficient depth. This list of the
topics is written from memory several weeks later so is probably
incomplete - but the discussion included:

     * Attracting expert volunteers
     * Beekeeping
     * Biochar
     * Fishfarming
     * Solar
     * Technical problems related to computers, phones and going online
     * Tourism
     * Water carts

Perhaps at the November meeting we can use that list as the starting
point for an agenda, and deal with each item in turn. We can also try to
include Any Other Business, where people can mention new topics. If you
can let me have your thoughts on this before First Thursday that would
help us to arrange things in a way that suits most people.

To enter the chat room go to  http://www.worknets .org/chat/ base/
<http://www.worknets.org/chat/base/>

Any problems or uncertainties about using the chat room please let me
know. Obviously the people who arrive know how to get there - but there
may be other people who need more help to find their way in. Please give
feedback here if there are any difficulties. We do not want anyone to be
left outside.

Pam

Thank you, Dave! Andrius

Dave Gray wrote:
> Thanks for the thoughtful and considerate response. The "forgotten
> link" between ecology and economy is especially interesting and
> helpful. I agree that the link needs to be restored.
>
> Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems and I have been inspired by
> the work of E.O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur on island biogeography,
> the study of islands as ecosystems. Wilson and MacArthur do a great
> job of differentiating between established and emerging ecosystems and
> the survival strategies that are most successful in each (they're
> different as you might imagine). I'm especially interested in how
> these insights from biology can offer ideas for new ways to approach
> social and economic challenges.
>
> The core of the idea is that established ecosystems favor specialists
> who are focused and efficient with resources, while emerging
> ecosystems favor generalists who are productive, even if they achieve
> their productivity in a wasteful or inefficient manner. The specialist
> approach is well-taught in business schools but the generalist
> approach, which is broader and incorporates the expectation of many
> failures on the way to opportunity, is not.
>
> Dave
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
> <mailto:ms@...>> wrote:
>
>     I share John Rogers's, Tom Wayburn's and Lawrence Kincheloe's
>     responses to Dave Gray's question, How do we define "economy"?
>      John Rogers http://www.valueforpeople.co.uk leads our working
>     group Cyfranogi for participatory society, alternative economy,
>     community currency.  Tom Wayburn is the author of Dematerialism
>     http://www.dematerialism.net   Lawrence Kincheloe
>     http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1187 recently shared his
>     thoughts on open business models after a month where he worked as
>     an inventor at Factor E Farm.  Ben de Vries also offers this link
>     in praise of money by Ann Rand: http://www.working-minds.com/money.htm
>
>     Also, today I sorted through the "law of Moses", Exodus 21-23
>     http://www.earthtreasury.org/wiki.cgi?MosaicLaw
>     I was encouraged that each moral law exemplified an underlying
>     mathematical model.  For example, if one person's bull
>     accidentally kills another person's bull, then you are supposed to
>     sell both bulls and split the money. In other words, you average
>     the value of the live bull and the dead bull.  Whereas if the
>     owner knew that their bull was violent, then you swap the living
>     bull for the dead bull, which is a transposition. I'm interested
>     to learn how to write up ethical lessons for our culture of
>     independent thinkers (as sketched in the Worknets charter
>     http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter ) and teach mathematical
>     thinking as part of that. This might naturally include lessons
>     about "the economy" and "our economy".  I like what John wrote and
>     I am ever exploring how we might act in parallel in both economies.
>
>     Dave, any thoughts?
>
>     Andrius Kulikasukas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
>     <mailto:ms@...>
>
>
>     ---------------------------------------
>
>     Hi Andrius
>
>     Whole libraries are full of tedious discussions about economy and
>     work so I'll try not to add to that!
>
>     For the ancient Greeks 'economy' meant 'rules of the household' ie
>     balancing what comes in with what goes out. The sense of "manage
>     the resources of a country" (short for political economy) is from
>     1651.
>
>     The word 'ecology' is related. It was first coined in 1873 by
>     German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as Okologie, from the
>     Greek oikos "house, dwelling place, habitation" + -logia "study of."
>     So there is an intimate link between ecology - a study of our
>     planetary home - and economy - a study of the individual
>     household, then scaled up to the 'national household'.
>
>     One of the great challenges of our time is to restore the link
>     between economic activity and ecology.
>     The International
>     Energy Agency just produced the first big study of the impact of
>     the recession on climate change and found that CO 2 emissions from
>     burning fossil fuels had
>     undergone 'a significant decline' this year - further than in any
>     year in the past 40. The fall will exceed the drop in the 1981
>     recession that followed the oil crisis. So when
>     economic activity goes down - ie making money - then we do less
>     damage to the ecology.
>     So if humans are to learn to live sustainably on planet earth, any
>     definition of economy has to include ecological impact. That means
>     developing accurate measuring tools for that impact followed by
>     economic tools that allow us to minimise the impact. Which throws
>     up myriad political issues about distribution of resources, access
>     to opportunities etc.
>
>     Getting more concrete, your struggle to define work as "a key
>     hurdle in defining a community currency" is an important issue.
>
>     Think about your day. You helped a relative, friend or stranger
>     out of sheer loving kindness, because you felt interdependent with
>     them and moved by compassion. You maybe did a favour for someone
>     else because you hope they will help you in the future - mutual
>     survival. For someone else you worked for money in the marketplace
>     - money is your tool for survival so that you can buy goods and
>     services from strangers. Which of these is work? Aren't they all?
>     Our bodies and minds are working even while we sleep.
>
>
>     Our confusion comes from the brainwashing of our 'economy' that
>     work is only what you get paid money for. Because we depend on
>     money for survival. When we re-frame 'work' to include every
>     effort that makes us human and interdependent - including
>     volunteering, community work, ecological restoration, voting,
>     activism etc. - then we can start to choose where we want to
>     simply be moved by compassion to give and where we would like
>     other rewards in exchange for our effort.
>
>
>     This frame allows us to locate community currencies exactly
>     halfway along a spectrum between compassion (self-giving love) and
>     money. The metric of community currency gives us more choices.
>
>     This is the theory. The practical challenge right now is to learn
>     from the thousands of experiments with community currencies around
>     the world that have failed ie not sustained themselves over time
>     or collapsed leaving disillusioned users. We need to design more
>     robust systems with clear goals, good cost-recovery mechanisms,
>     governance and management systems.
>
>     The 'tribe' will adopt this innovation when they see clear
>     benefits over costs of participation.
>
>     Otherwise we should just participate in the market as it is and
>     help each other without reward where we can.
>
>
>     --------------------------------
>
>     John Rogers made useful contributions to this task.  For what it's
>     worth,
>     I'll send along the URLs for my thoughts on the subject both new
>     and old:
>
>     "A Natural Political Economy" at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/wiki.htm#_Toc170283591 where I make
>     clear what
>     has to be specified to construct an economy,
>
>     "On the Work Ethic <http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html> " at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html with some thoughts on work,
>
>     and
>
>     On
>     <http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html>
>     a New Theory of Classes at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html
>     where
>     I make clear what I mean by "professional".
>     These last two share a great deal of material.
>
>
>
>     Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
>
>     --------------------------------------
>
>     Lawrence Kincheloe:
>
>     I liked this post, as it adds another node to a well written
>     exposition of various topics.
>     Economy is a hard one, because its defined by the society that
>     uses it. There also isn't a right or wrong kind of economy,
>     because its tied to social norms and interactions.
>     I believe that the statement "a redistribution of resources to
>     satisfy desires" is much too general, but it almost works if you
>     add, "a socially accepted redistribution of resources to satisfy
>     desire".
>     Which at this point you get into concepts like "social contracts",
>     "what constitutes resources", and "what are acceptable desires".
>
>     Work is equally tricky. You'll notice that work is considered
>     something that is socially deemed to have worth. Its peculiar
>     because the actual utilitarian value doesn't really reflect its
>     social worth. So really, work is whatever you do that you can
>     convince others to find value in.
>     If you want to talk currency, I think one of the main deficiencies
>     of the current system is to facilitate local person to person
>     transactions. If the work you do is under valued or you start in a
>     position of having no money, then it is very difficult to get
>     money until you have established the value of your work which
>     usually requires money itself to start. Loans are currently the
>     only way, be they personal loans to yourself or from another
>     party. I'm unfortunately not convinced of the virtues of usury in
>     economics and society.
>     --- In globalvillages@yahoogroups.com
>     <mailto:globalvillages@yahoogroups.com>, Andrius Kulikauskas
>     <ms@...> wrote:
>
>         >
>         > Dave Gray is a leader in visual thinking.
>          http://www.davegrayinfo.com  > It would be great to work for him.
>         > > I'm following his tweets through our Minciu Sodas website
>         > http://www.ms.lt/?source=TW  (If you're tweeting, letting me
>         know and > we'll follow you, too!)
>         > > Dave tweets "What is an economy? I need a concise
>         definition. > #nightshift  ... Seriously, a Google search for
>         definitions of economy > offer surprisingly lame and unhelpful
>         answers #nightshift "
>         > http://twitter.com/davegray/statuses/5414243489
>         > > I define economy as "a redistribution of resources to
>         satisfy desires". > > An economy is healthy if the desires are
>         genuine.  People know what they > want and they are supported
>         and nourished.
>         > > An economy is sick if the desires are contrived.  People
>         want whatever > "the market" wants and they themselves are
>         diminished.
>         > > If desires aren't satisfied, then it's not an economy.
>         > > How do we define "economy"?
>         > > A related question which came up today in our Lithuanian
>         group is how do > we define "work"?  This seems to be a key
>         hurdle in defining a community > currency, at least for me.
>          How do we decide what is work?
>         > > I add some recent letters by Lawrence Kincheloe and Ralf
>         Schlatterback > at Global Villages
>         http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/
>         > > Andrius
>         > > Andrius Kulikauskas
>         > Minciu Sodas
>         > http://www.ms.lt
>         > ms@...
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Gray
> Founder and  Chairman,
> Thanks for the thoughtful and considerate response. The "forgotten
> link" between ecology and economy is especially interesting and
> helpful. I agree that the link needs to be restored.
>
> Ecosystems are complex adaptive systems and I have been inspired by
> the work of E.O. Wilson and Robert MacArthur on island biogeography,
> the study of islands as ecosystems. Wilson and MacArthur do a great
> job of differentiating between established and emerging ecosystems and
> the survival strategies that are most successful in each (they're
> different as you might imagine). I'm especially interested in how
> these insights from biology can offer ideas for new ways to approach
> social and economic challenges.
>
> The core of the idea is that established ecosystems favor specialists
> who are focused and efficient with resources, while emerging
> ecosystems favor generalists who are productive, even if they achieve
> their productivity in a wasteful or inefficient manner. The specialist
> approach is well-taught in business schools but the generalist
> approach, which is broader and incorporates the expectation of many
> failures on the way to opportunity, is not.
>
> Dave
>
> On Wed, Nov 4, 2009 at 1:42 PM, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...
> <mailto:ms@...>> wrote:
>
>     I share John Rogers's, Tom Wayburn's and Lawrence Kincheloe's
>     responses to Dave Gray's question, How do we define "economy"?
>      John Rogers http://www.valueforpeople.co.uk leads our working
>     group Cyfranogi for participatory society, alternative economy,
>     community currency.  Tom Wayburn is the author of Dematerialism
>     http://www.dematerialism.net   Lawrence Kincheloe
>     http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1187 recently shared his
>     thoughts on open business models after a month where he worked as
>     an inventor at Factor E Farm.  Ben de Vries also offers this link
>     in praise of money by Ann Rand: http://www.working-minds.com/money.htm
>
>     Also, today I sorted through the "law of Moses", Exodus 21-23
>     http://www.earthtreasury.org/wiki.cgi?MosaicLaw
>     I was encouraged that each moral law exemplified an underlying
>     mathematical model.  For example, if one person's bull
>     accidentally kills another person's bull, then you are supposed to
>     sell both bulls and split the money. In other words, you average
>     the value of the live bull and the dead bull.  Whereas if the
>     owner knew that their bull was violent, then you swap the living
>     bull for the dead bull, which is a transposition. I'm interested
>     to learn how to write up ethical lessons for our culture of
>     independent thinkers (as sketched in the Worknets charter
>     http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter ) and teach mathematical
>     thinking as part of that. This might naturally include lessons
>     about "the economy" and "our economy".  I like what John wrote and
>     I am ever exploring how we might act in parallel in both economies.
>
>     Dave, any thoughts?
>
>     Andrius Kulikasukas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
>     <mailto:ms@...>
>
>
>     ---------------------------------------
>
>     Hi Andrius
>
>     Whole libraries are full of tedious discussions about economy and
>     work so I'll try not to add to that!
>
>     For the ancient Greeks 'economy' meant 'rules of the household' ie
>     balancing what comes in with what goes out. The sense of "manage
>     the resources of a country" (short for political economy) is from
>     1651.
>
>     The word 'ecology' is related. It was first coined in 1873 by
>     German zoologist Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as Okologie, from the
>     Greek oikos "house, dwelling place, habitation" + -logia "study of."
>     So there is an intimate link between ecology - a study of our
>     planetary home - and economy - a study of the individual
>     household, then scaled up to the 'national household'.
>
>     One of the great challenges of our time is to restore the link
>     between economic activity and ecology.
>     The International
>     Energy Agency just produced the first big study of the impact of
>     the recession on climate change and found that CO 2 emissions from
>     burning fossil fuels had
>     undergone 'a significant decline' this year - further than in any
>     year in the past 40. The fall will exceed the drop in the 1981
>     recession that followed the oil crisis. So when
>     economic activity goes down - ie making money - then we do less
>     damage to the ecology.
>     So if humans are to learn to live sustainably on planet earth, any
>     definition of economy has to include ecological impact. That means
>     developing accurate measuring tools for that impact followed by
>     economic tools that allow us to minimise the impact. Which throws
>     up myriad political issues about distribution of resources, access
>     to opportunities etc.
>
>     Getting more concrete, your struggle to define work as "a key
>     hurdle in defining a community currency" is an important issue.
>
>     Think about your day. You helped a relative, friend or stranger
>     out of sheer loving kindness, because you felt interdependent with
>     them and moved by compassion. You maybe did a favour for someone
>     else because you hope they will help you in the future - mutual
>     survival. For someone else you worked for money in the marketplace
>     - money is your tool for survival so that you can buy goods and
>     services from strangers. Which of these is work? Aren't they all?
>     Our bodies and minds are working even while we sleep.
>
>
>     Our confusion comes from the brainwashing of our 'economy' that
>     work is only what you get paid money for. Because we depend on
>     money for survival. When we re-frame 'work' to include every
>     effort that makes us human and interdependent - including
>     volunteering, community work, ecological restoration, voting,
>     activism etc. - then we can start to choose where we want to
>     simply be moved by compassion to give and where we would like
>     other rewards in exchange for our effort.
>
>
>     This frame allows us to locate community currencies exactly
>     halfway along a spectrum between compassion (self-giving love) and
>     money. The metric of community currency gives us more choices.
>
>     This is the theory. The practical challenge right now is to learn
>     from the thousands of experiments with community currencies around
>     the world that have failed ie not sustained themselves over time
>     or collapsed leaving disillusioned users. We need to design more
>     robust systems with clear goals, good cost-recovery mechanisms,
>     governance and management systems.
>
>     The 'tribe' will adopt this innovation when they see clear
>     benefits over costs of participation.
>
>     Otherwise we should just participate in the market as it is and
>     help each other without reward where we can.
>
>
>     --------------------------------
>
>     John Rogers made useful contributions to this task.  For what it's
>     worth,
>     I'll send along the URLs for my thoughts on the subject both new
>     and old:
>
>     "A Natural Political Economy" at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/wiki.htm#_Toc170283591 where I make
>     clear what
>     has to be specified to construct an economy,
>
>     "On the Work Ethic <http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html> " at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html with some thoughts on work,
>
>     and
>
>     On
>     <http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html>
>     a New Theory of Classes at
>     http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html
>     where
>     I make clear what I mean by "professional".
>     These last two share a great deal of material.
>
>
>
>     Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas
>
>     --------------------------------------
>
>     Lawrence Kincheloe:
>
>     I liked this post, as it adds another node to a well written
>     exposition of various topics.
>     Economy is a hard one, because its defined by the society that
>     uses it. There also isn't a right or wrong kind of economy,
>     because its tied to social norms and interactions.
>     I believe that the statement "a redistribution of resources to
>     satisfy desires" is much too general, but it almost works if you
>     add, "a socially accepted redistribution of resources to satisfy
>     desire".
>     Which at this point you get into concepts like "social contracts",
>     "what constitutes resources", and "what are acceptable desires".
>
>     Work is equally tricky. You'll notice that work is considered
>     something that is socially deemed to have worth. Its peculiar
>     because the actual utilitarian value doesn't really reflect its
>     social worth. So really, work is whatever you do that you can
>     convince others to find value in.
>     If you want to talk currency, I think one of the main deficiencies
>     of the current system is to facilitate local person to person
>     transactions. If the work you do is under valued or you start in a
>     position of having no money, then it is very difficult to get
>     money until you have established the value of your work which
>     usually requires money itself to start. Loans are currently the
>     only way, be they personal loans to yourself or from another
>     party. I'm unfortunately not convinced of the virtues of usury in
>     economics and society.
>     --- In globalvillages@yahoogroups.com
>     <mailto:globalvillages@yahoogroups.com>, Andrius Kulikauskas
>     <ms@...> wrote:
>
>         >
>         > Dave Gray is a leader in visual thinking.
>          http://www.davegrayinfo.com  > It would be great to work for him.
>         > > I'm following his tweets through our Minciu Sodas website
>         > http://www.ms.lt/?source=TW  (If you're tweeting, letting me
>         know and > we'll follow you, too!)
>         > > Dave tweets "What is an economy? I need a concise
>         definition. > #nightshift  ... Seriously, a Google search for
>         definitions of economy > offer surprisingly lame and unhelpful
>         answers #nightshift "
>         > http://twitter.com/davegray/statuses/5414243489
>         > > I define economy as "a redistribution of resources to
>         satisfy desires". > > An economy is healthy if the desires are
>         genuine.  People know what they > want and they are supported
>         and nourished.
>         > > An economy is sick if the desires are contrived.  People
>         want whatever > "the market" wants and they themselves are
>         diminished.
>         > > If desires aren't satisfied, then it's not an economy.
>         > > How do we define "economy"?
>         > > A related question which came up today in our Lithuanian
>         group is how do > we define "work"?  This seems to be a key
>         hurdle in defining a community > currency, at least for me.
>          How do we decide what is work?
>         > > I add some recent letters by Lawrence Kincheloe and Ralf
>         Schlatterback > at Global Villages
>         http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/
>         > > Andrius
>         > > Andrius Kulikauskas
>         > Minciu Sodas
>         > http://www.ms.lt
>         > ms@...
>
>
>
>
>
> --
> Dave Gray
> Founder and  Chairman, XPLANE
> www.xplane.com <http://www.xplane.com>
> http://davegrayinfo.com
> dgray@... <mailto:dgray@...>
> Fax: +1-801-846-1408
>
> Join the VizThink community! http://www.vizthink.com/
>
> Add me to your address book:
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>
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>
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> Join the VizThink community! http://www.vizthink.com/
>
> Add me to your address book:
> https://www.plaxo.com/add_me?u=12885040175&v0=272658&k0=1883332273
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>
> Linkedin: http://www.linkedin.com/in/davegray
>
> Books I recommend:
> http://www.squidoo.com/davegray
>
> Blog: http://communicationnation.blogspot.com
>
> Facebook:
> http://www.facebook.com/graydave

I share John Rogers's, Tom Wayburn's and Lawrence Kincheloe's responses to Dave
Gray's question, How do we define "economy"?  John Rogers
http://www.valueforpeople.co.uk leads our working group Cyfranogi for
participatory society, alternative economy, community currency.  Tom Wayburn is
the author of Dematerialism http://www.dematerialism.net   Lawrence Kincheloe
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1187 recently shared his thoughts on open
business models after a month where he worked as an inventor at Factor E Farm. 
Ben de Vries also offers this link in praise of money by Ann Rand:
http://www.working-minds.com/money.htm

Also, today I sorted through the "law of Moses", Exodus 21-23
http://www.earthtreasury.org/wiki.cgi?MosaicLaw
I was encouraged that each moral law exemplified an underlying mathematical
model.  For example, if one person's bull accidentally kills another person's
bull, then you are supposed to sell both bulls and split the money. In other
words, you average the value of the live bull and the dead bull.  Whereas if the
owner knew that their bull was violent, then you swap the living bull for the
dead bull, which is a transposition. I'm interested to learn how to write up
ethical lessons for our culture of independent thinkers (as sketched in the
Worknets charter http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Charter ) and teach
mathematical thinking as part of that. This might naturally include lessons
about "the economy" and "our economy".  I like what John wrote and I am ever
exploring how we might act in parallel in both economies.

Dave, any thoughts?

Andrius Kulikasukas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...


---------------------------------------

Hi Andrius

Whole libraries are full of tedious discussions about economy and work so I'll
try not to add to that!

For the ancient Greeks 'economy' meant 'rules of the household' ie balancing
what comes in with what goes out. The sense of "manage the resources of a
country" (short for political economy) is from 1651.

The word 'ecology' is related. It was first coined in 1873 by German zoologist
Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919) as Okologie, from the Greek oikos "house, dwelling
place, habitation" + -logia "study of."

So there is an intimate link between ecology - a study of our planetary home -
and economy - a study of the individual household, then scaled up to the
'national household'.

One of the great challenges of our time is to restore the link between economic
activity and ecology.

The International
Energy Agency just produced the first big study of the impact of the recession
on climate change and found that CO 2 emissions from burning fossil fuels had
undergone 'a significant decline' this year - further than in any
year in the past 40. The fall will exceed the drop in the 1981
recession that followed the oil crisis. So when
economic activity goes down - ie making money - then we do less
damage to the ecology.

So if humans are to learn to live sustainably on planet earth, any definition of
economy has to include ecological impact. That means developing accurate
measuring tools for that impact followed by economic tools that allow us to
minimise the impact. Which throws up myriad political issues about distribution
of resources, access to opportunities etc.

Getting more concrete, your struggle to define work as "a key hurdle in defining
a community currency" is an important issue.

Think about your day. You helped a relative, friend or stranger out of sheer
loving kindness, because you felt interdependent with them and moved by
compassion. You maybe did a favour for someone else because you hope they will
help you in the future - mutual survival. For someone else you worked for money
in the marketplace - money is your tool for survival so that you can buy goods
and services from strangers. Which of these is work? Aren't they all? Our bodies
and minds are working even while we sleep.


Our confusion comes from the brainwashing of our 'economy' that work is only
what you get paid money for. Because we depend on money for survival. When we
re-frame 'work' to include every effort that makes us human and interdependent -
including volunteering, community work, ecological restoration, voting, activism
etc. - then we can start to choose where we want to simply be moved by
compassion to give and where we would like other rewards in exchange for our
effort.


This frame allows us to locate community currencies exactly halfway along a
spectrum between compassion (self-giving love) and money. The metric of
community currency gives us more choices.

This is the theory. The practical challenge right now is to learn from the
thousands of experiments with community currencies around the world that have
failed ie not sustained themselves over time or collapsed leaving disillusioned
users. We need to design more robust systems with clear goals, good
cost-recovery mechanisms, governance and management systems.

The 'tribe' will adopt this innovation when they see clear benefits over costs
of participation.

Otherwise we should just participate in the market as it is and help each other
without reward where we can.


--------------------------------

John Rogers made useful contributions to this task.  For what it's worth,
I'll send along the URLs for my thoughts on the subject both new and old:

"A Natural Political Economy" at
http://www.dematerialism.net/wiki.htm#_Toc170283591 where I make clear what
has to be specified to construct an economy,

"On the Work Ethic <http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html> " at
http://www.dematerialism.net/wrkethic.html with some thoughts on work,

and

On <http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html>
a New Theory of Classes at
http://www.dematerialism.net/On%20a%20New%20Theory%20of%20Classes.html where
I make clear what I mean by "professional".

These last two share a great deal of material.



Tom Wayburn, Houston, Texas

--------------------------------------

Lawrence Kincheloe:

I liked this post, as it adds another node to a well written exposition of
various topics.

Economy is a hard one, because its defined by the society that uses it. There
also isn't a right or wrong kind of economy, because its tied to social norms
and interactions.

I believe that the statement "a redistribution of resources to satisfy desires"
is much too general, but it almost works if you add, "a socially accepted
redistribution of resources to satisfy desire".

Which at this point you get into concepts like "social contracts", "what
constitutes resources", and "what are acceptable desires".

Work is equally tricky. You'll notice that work is considered something that is
socially deemed to have worth. Its peculiar because the actual utilitarian value
doesn't really reflect its social worth. So really, work is whatever you do that
you can convince others to find value in.

If you want to talk currency, I think one of the main deficiencies of the
current system is to facilitate local person to person transactions. If the work
you do is under valued or you start in a position of having no money, then it is
very difficult to get money until you have established the value of your work
which usually requires money itself to start. Loans are currently the only way,
be they personal loans to yourself or from another party. I'm unfortunately not
convinced of the virtues of usury in economics and society.

--- In globalvillages@yahoogroups.com, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...> wrote:
> >
> > Dave Gray is a leader in visual thinking.  http://www.davegrayinfo.com
> > It would be great to work for him.
> >
> > I'm following his tweets through our Minciu Sodas website
> > http://www.ms.lt/?source=TW  (If you're tweeting, letting me know and
> > we'll follow you, too!)
> >
> > Dave tweets "What is an economy? I need a concise definition.
> > #nightshift  ... Seriously, a Google search for definitions of economy
> > offer surprisingly lame and unhelpful answers #nightshift "
> > http://twitter.com/davegray/statuses/5414243489
> >
> > I define economy as "a redistribution of resources to satisfy desires".
> >
> > An economy is healthy if the desires are genuine.  People know what they
> > want and they are supported and nourished.
> >
> > An economy is sick if the desires are contrived.  People want whatever
> > "the market" wants and they themselves are diminished.
> >
> > If desires aren't satisfied, then it's not an economy.
> >
> > How do we define "economy"?
> >
> > A related question which came up today in our Lithuanian group is how do
> > we define "work"?  This seems to be a key hurdle in defining a community
> > currency, at least for me.  How do we decide what is work?
> >
> > I add some recent letters by Lawrence Kincheloe and Ralf Schlatterback
> > at Global Villages http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/
> >
> > Andrius
> >
> > Andrius Kulikauskas
> > Minciu Sodas
> > http://www.ms.lt
> > ms@...

Hi Wael and all, Perhaps you might be interested? Andrius, ms@...

Katrin Verclas wrote:
> Will you spread the word about this workshop on participatory data?
>  Application is online!
>
>> Are you a technologist in the Middle East involved in citizen and
>> community data collection, crisis mapping, mobile tech, and open
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>>
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>> can now be more than a person-to-person communication medium but can
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>>
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>> collection, this approach can address significant unmet challenges in
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> for travel and accommodations.
>
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>>
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>
>
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>
>
>
>
> Katrin Verclas
> Co-Founder and Editor
> MobileActive.org
> katrin@... <mailto:katrin@...>
> + 1 413 687 9877
> skype: katrinskaya
>
>
> Check out our new site and mDirectory!
> Tools, research, case studies, and how-to use resources about mobiles
> in social change work.
>
> http://mobileactive.org <http://mobileactive.org/>
>
>
> --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~
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>

Dear Andrius, David, and All,

On David's home, there is a "reverse mortgage" program that allows "seniors" to
stay in their homes without paying a mortgage each month, this to stave off
foreclosure or the need to move. This is a govt program, so David may be a bit
concerned about that aspect. But for some folks it is the only way to avoid
losing their homes.

What happens is that your home is accessed for its value, and you are "loaned"
that amount to pay off any existing mortgages, and sometimes given more in a
credit line, from which you can draw for other expenses. David, do you own your
home, and do you know how much it is worth (assessed value), such as what the
city of Chicago would value it at?

The money you borrow becomes due upon death of the owner.

On group insurance, there should be someone in the insurance field who can be
consulted free of charge?  Is there an insurance agent among David's
congregation or circle of friends?  If not, there should be someone who could be
recommended, including perhaps the company that David's friend used for the
life-insurance policy.

Group rates are usually more affordable, so that might be the best option.

Since David is 73, he surely can tap into services offered by the city and state
for "senior citizens", people 65 and older. There should be a Dept of Elderly
Affairs that can be contacted first, and in Rhode Island there is a whole
booklet on services and programs for seniors, which is very useful to sort
through all the options (yes, and the "red tape" :)).

Hopefully this is a bit helpful, and we can do more online to find other
resources, I'm sure. Is anyone reading this in Chicago?  That would be great for
some phone calls to agencies and programs.

With greatest blessings and prayers for your well-being and uplift!  Janet

-----Original Message-----
>From: ms@...
>Sent: Nov 2, 2009 2:14 AM
>To: david ellison-bey <d_bey@...>
>Cc: minciu_sodas_AR@yahoogroups.com, minciu_sodas_EN@yahoogroups.com,
socialagriculture@yahoogroups.com, nafsiafrikasaana@yahoogroups.com
>Subject: [socialagriculture] Re: More Discomboberlated, overwhealmed,     
overburden now 73 and distraught.  Why?
>
>David, Islam! Thank you for your compassionate letter which I share with
>Minciu Sodas laboratory groups.  I think it would be good to consider and
>organize some kind of insurance or simply compassion for Minciu Sodas
>participants.  I am also concerned about you not losing your house to
>foreclosure.  What can we do to help?  Who can we find to help you in
>Chicago? Greetings from Lithuania.  Andrius
>Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
>
>> In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.  To whom it may
>> concern.              Bits and pices you have to put
together,  its not my
>> intention to offen anyone, but if I do , its not intentional.  I just got
>> turned off by others persional power, that some people don't seem to know
>> they have and its affects on others.  All actions have a reaction and
>> consequences.  Do you understand that?  I have wretten some long thoughts,
>> but prefer short ones.  When i try to talk about my troubles and
>> problems,  I get (you are not the only one, don't you know that I know
>> that?  12-15-05, Johnny stoped by my house to tell me that Sis. Delois
>> Murphy-Bey had passed from cancer and told me the details of arrangement
>> he had made.  I was the only card carrying Moor their and spoke., etc,. 
>> Bro. Wiullie-Bey was suppose to show up but did not show.  Her spirit was
>> such that many didn't understand,  She fed people and always try ed to
>>  bring laughter to people. She had an insurance policy on me because she
>> wanted to make sure that if anything should happen to me that I would
>> have a proper funeral.  The Sister was a FOI under The Messager, and an
>> dance instructor, Cook, etc,.  None of these things is mentioned in her
>> obituary because most diden't know, she picket people up off the street
>> befriended and fed then and their children many time throughout the time
>> I knew her,  That use to bother me, because my attention was on the
>> organization of the Temple.  Grant Major Temple, 957 W. 75th st. Why we
>> collect for death and have no group insurance?  They were paying many of
>> the bills out of their pocket, because they were not generating enough to
>> pay the temples expenses.  I said: bits and Pisces.   So I will mention
>> some others I have known.  Sister Eula Solomon-Bey , May 2, 1935 to June
>> 22, 1986,  I have more, but am not going to look for them now.   After I
>> was appointed
>>  Director of the temple,  one of my first duties assigned to me by the
>> then Grand Governor Bro. Paul Johnson-Bey was to conduct a funeral for
>> the Elder Gilmore-Bey, whom I didn't know, with the help of Bro. Olden
>> Coleman-Bey, who has since passed in the VA hospital , after calling to
>> inform me of his condition. I found out later from his nice that he had
>> passed.      Being alone and turned off by others, not that they know
>> this or are aware of it.  But because of not being adapted to home
>> computers, at work i had my on State PC to work on.  But people come in
>> your home and ask to use your personal computer without informing you of
>> what they are doing and how it will affect you, or how to undo what they
>> have done.  Some seem to be inept in social settings.  Because of this
>> from a variety of people who have visited me over the years, I haven't
>> use my computer enough to learn how to use it for what i wanted it for,
>> and find my self with
>>  more e-mails and advertising than I think I need to read.  My interest
>> seem to have gone out of the window.  As you get older, your time
>> gets shorter.  I finished typing class knowing all the parts of a
>> typewriter and typing 79 words a minute with no errors.  Typing mailable
>> letters perfect.  I never could spell good, but I was able with a
>> dictionary to get by very well.  I have put a sign in book by my front
>> door, and I am putting the rules of the house back on the front door, 
>> because it seem few people know how to be a guess in others houses.  I am
>> tired now, and will rest, because its tiresome to see so many people who
>> are socially inept.  O year, The whit man is now trying to introduce our
>> children to serve the next generation of forimgners  that they are
>> bringing into America to take our place in the poor labor force.  I just
>> had to put that in , because whats going on disturbs me.. Peace.  Bro. D.
>> Ellison-Bey       
>
>
>
>
>------------------------------------
>
>Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>

David, Islam! Thank you for your compassionate letter which I share with
Minciu Sodas laboratory groups.  I think it would be good to consider and
organize some kind of insurance or simply compassion for Minciu Sodas
participants.  I am also concerned about you not losing your house to
foreclosure.  What can we do to help?  Who can we find to help you in
Chicago? Greetings from Lithuania.  Andrius
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...

> In the name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful.  To whom it may
> concern.              Bits and pices you have to put together, 
its not my
> intention to offen anyone, but if I do , its not intentional.  I just got
> turned off by others persional power, that some people don't seem to know
> they have and its affects on others.  All actions have a reaction and
> consequences.  Do you understand that?  I have wretten some long thoughts,
> but prefer short ones.  When i try to talk about my troubles and
> problems,  I get (you are not the only one, don't you know that I know
> that?  12-15-05, Johnny stoped by my house to tell me that Sis. Delois
> Murphy-Bey had passed from cancer and told me the details of arrangement
> he had made.  I was the only card carrying Moor their and spoke., etc,. 
> Bro. Wiullie-Bey was suppose to show up but did not show.  Her spirit was
> such that many didn't understand,  She fed people and always try ed to
>  bring laughter to people. She had an insurance policy on me because she
> wanted to make sure that if anything should happen to me that I would
> have a proper funeral.  The Sister was a FOI under The Messager, and an
> dance instructor, Cook, etc,.  None of these things is mentioned in her
> obituary because most diden't know, she picket people up off the street
> befriended and fed then and their children many time throughout the time
> I knew her,  That use to bother me, because my attention was on the
> organization of the Temple.  Grant Major Temple, 957 W. 75th st. Why we
> collect for death and have no group insurance?  They were paying many of
> the bills out of their pocket, because they were not generating enough to
> pay the temples expenses.  I said: bits and Pisces.   So I will mention
> some others I have known.  Sister Eula Solomon-Bey , May 2, 1935 to June
> 22, 1986,  I have more, but am not going to look for them now.   After I
> was appointed
>  Director of the temple,  one of my first duties assigned to me by the
> then Grand Governor Bro. Paul Johnson-Bey was to conduct a funeral for
> the Elder Gilmore-Bey, whom I didn't know, with the help of Bro. Olden
> Coleman-Bey, who has since passed in the VA hospital , after calling to
> inform me of his condition. I found out later from his nice that he had
> passed.      Being alone and turned off by others, not that they know
> this or are aware of it.  But because of not being adapted to home
> computers, at work i had my on State PC to work on.  But people come in
> your home and ask to use your personal computer without informing you of
> what they are doing and how it will affect you, or how to undo what they
> have done.  Some seem to be inept in social settings.  Because of this
> from a variety of people who have visited me over the years, I haven't
> use my computer enough to learn how to use it for what i wanted it for,
> and find my self with
>  more e-mails and advertising than I think I need to read.  My interest
> seem to have gone out of the window.  As you get older, your time
> gets shorter.  I finished typing class knowing all the parts of a
> typewriter and typing 79 words a minute with no errors.  Typing mailable
> letters perfect.  I never could spell good, but I was able with a
> dictionary to get by very well.  I have put a sign in book by my front
> door, and I am putting the rules of the house back on the front door, 
> because it seem few people know how to be a guess in others houses.  I am
> tired now, and will rest, because its tiresome to see so many people who
> are socially inept.  O year, The whit man is now trying to introduce our
> children to serve the next generation of forimgners  that they are
> bringing into America to take our place in the poor labor force.  I just
> had to put that in , because whats going on disturbs me.. Peace.  Bro. D.
> Ellison-Bey       

Ed Cherlin and I spoke today. Ed lives in Silicon Valley, California and
leads our Earth Treasury working group
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/earthtreasury/ (please join!) and subwiki
http://www.earthtreasury.org He's the leader I'm organizing around for
Minciu Sodas and Worknets vision of education, both adults and children.

Please see below Ed's business plan outline and expertise request. His
goal is to end poverty, oppression, war, disease. His business will
organize all that's needed for the people of a village to organize a
bright future for themselves, including electricity, microfinance,
health services and one laptop per child.

This is all too much to believe. But I think that we do need to think
with Ed's boldness if we're going to address our local situations,
especially our challenges in Africa. I therefore ask us to take up his
challenge, to take him seriously and then, in turn, we will take each
other seriously as well.

What we agreed would be helpful for Ed, and for Worknets as well, and
for our African leaders, would be that we identify those among us who
aspire to be "super lab leaders" such as Samwel Kongere in Rusinga
Island, Kenya. Samwel's fish pond (for food security) is a good example
of the kind of project that Ed's business would find support for.
Together we can look for microcredit (about $2,000) to finance the fish
pond, and look for advice (such as from Jeff Buderer or Ben de Vries) on
how to make the most of the fish pond. And we can think how the fish
pond might be part of the wider effort for a village rebirth. Such
projects will help Ed's business become understandable to those who
might provide larger funds some day. I think it will also help him and
us think about all of the aspects of leading a lab and organizing a
global village, to help us make visible all that we do and should do, to
formulate and meet our expectations. What is our reality? Samwel, Franz
and all, please join Ed's group if you are interested!

Ed is also writing a book of "Lessons on Discovery".
http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/The_Undiscoverable
"The chief task in building new learning materials will be discovering
ways to structure learning to maximize the amount of discovery the
children can achieve, with the minimum of direction."
What are the hints that inspire us to discover?
I'm hoping that Ed leads us to create and publish such isolated lessons
that each of us can learn to write so that we have a wonderful
collection of them. I have been thinking about writing "ethics lessons"
for our Worknets culture of independent thinkers - what behavior we
might expect of ourselves and why - because I think this is what truly
is important to teach and learn. I am thinking that mathematical
thinking can be relevant as the kind of models that come up in ethical
situations (sometimes multiplying, sometimes dividing, sometimes adding
or subtracting, for example). In Lithuania, we have participants
interested in making sense of money, and that is another place where
ethics and math come together. Consequently, I will be working on our
wiki interface so that it is helpful for publishing such individual lessons.

Ed and I have creative tension in our different concerns. Ed wants to
respond to poverty and serve those who might help. My own instinct is
that the notion of "poverty" separates people into a caste system of
"us" and "them", whereas if we engage each other as equals (as
independent thinkers with a shared culture), then we are brothers and
sisters and have a natural interest to care for each other and those
around us. In that sense, we multiply our resources and we get a richer
sense in what ways we are rich or poor.

Similarly, Ed has a list of solutions that have proven to work. But I
believe that the people who I'm attracted to, people like Ed, have a
creative streak where they're not so interested to do what's been proven
to work, but want to follow their own path. Furthermore, I think from a
business point of view, that this is the value that we have to offer in
remote villages, that we can be places to experiment and our research
can advance innovations (as in education, ecology, health) that would be
very expensive to develop in a wealthy or established country like the
US or Western Europe. If we ask, what can we offer the west? then I
believe we will discover the business value that Ed can offer.

So I hope that we might coach Ed just as he might coach us. What I
emphasize, though, is that organizing around Ed we have the opportunity
to advance ourselves as leaders of labs, of global villages and of
schools for self-learners. He might link us to the ideas and resources
we need to respond to Samwel's situation of food insecurity and many
other such real challenges that we're facing.

Please join us!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...


Edward Cherlin:

I am writing a business plan for Earth Treasury to include
infrastructure (electricity and Internet), education, and
microfinance, all in a virtuous cycle so that it can generate profits
for all concerned and put an end to poverty. I welcome any of you to
discuss how your initiatives could fit in here.

The overall anti-poverty and global empowerment plan is on the Earth
Treasury site. You will see that there is much more to it than this
business idea, such as replacing textbooks with Free digital media.
Here is a quick sketch of what I have in mind right now.

Go into a village, by invitation only, and start with non-technical,
non-financial organizing and planning, as do Sarvodaya and Grameen.
When conditions permit, including some education and training of
children and adults, start microfinance operations. We would like to
provide a telephone, a computer, the electricity to run them, and a
low bandwidth Internet connection to four entrepreneurial groups
(typically five women each). There are relatively easy business
opportunities at that point in e-commerce, with local art and craft
items obtainable nowhere else. We want to provide free information
services on the computer, and paid business services. We must examine
the costs and benefits of education so that we can find opportunities
with a short payback period to finance the longer education cycle to
support a lifetime of work and social engagement.

This begins a virtuous cycle, where every step enables other steps,
and almost all steps are profitable in a fairly short period.

o The Grameen Phone model for village infrastructure at a profit all around.

o The ITC e-choupal model of increasing farm income with village
computing for farmers.

o The Sarvodaya Shramadana model of integrated village development.

o The Partners in Health approach to health care.

o OneVillage Foundation, particularly in Ghana, is involved with
wireless communications, ICT, and education.

o One-to-one computing in education, so that children can do homework
together from their scattered homes and make friends around the world,
among other things. We expect some of those friendships to turn into
global business partnerships in time. One Laptop Per Child provides he
model for the computers, and Sugar Labs for the software. 40-year
computer and education pioneers Alan Kay (Smalltalk, GUIs,
Object-Oriented Programming), Seymour Papert (Logo, Turtle Art), and
Doug Engelbart (Mother of All Demos, Enhancing Collective
Intelligence) are major supporters.

Senator John McCain has recently endorsed the OLPC/Sugar program as a
counter-insurgency strategy. I'm not sure about that, since it might
make targets of the children in some places. But there are XOs in some
of the more difficult areas in Colombia, including Medellin, so maybe.

o Electricity and Internet for even the poorest and most remote
villages. The technology is here, and many for-profit and non-profit
organizations are working on various parts of the problem of
optimizing products and services for every inhabited terrain and
climate. The infrastructure sine qua non. We are negotiating with
SolarNetOne on integrated solar PV/wireless installations for 25 to
1,000 XOs in a school, plus lights, servers, and some outside
businesses.

o Microfinance to complete the loop. Electricity and Internet
businesses can be profitable from the beginning. As children learn
computer skills, more and more opportunities will open up. We are
proposing to start with the Fantsuam Foundation's microfinance project
in Nigeria.

Our part of the program has opened up just recently because OLPC will
now accept orders for fewer than 10,000 XO laptops. The minimum order
is now 25 of the improved XO 1.5 units @ $250, or $6,250.

I don't see any problems in coming up with a financial plan showing
how much capital would be required for various possible rates of
growth. I do foresee numerous, mostly temporary, obstacles from
governments, from corruption, and from culture clashes. I have been
making a study of such problems, which does not mean that I have all
of the answers, but that we have a decent chance of asking the right
questions of the right people.

Many people confidently predict that what we are doing cannot be done.
My view is that it took 50 years for the campaign to end slavery in
the British Empire to come to fruition, and that I don't care whether
we can succeed tomorrow at something that must be done sooner or
later. And that doing it at a profit all around is the only way to do
it sooner.

http://www.laptop.org/ OLPC

http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/ Sugar Labs

http://www.sarvodaya.org/ Sarvodaya Shramadana Movement

http://ipo.grameenphone.com/ Grameen Phone IPO

http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/10/iqbal_quadir_on.html Iqbal
Quadir on TEDTalks: The impact one cell phone can make on a village...

http://www.fantsuam.org/ Fantsuam

http://gnuveau.net/cgi-bin/wiki.cgi SolarNetOne Wiki

http://www.pih.org/ Partners in Health. See also Mountains Beyond
Mountains, by Tracy Kidder; Rx for Survival, PBS

http://www.echoupal.com/ ITC e-choupal program

Harvard Business School on e-choupal

http://harvardbusiness.org/product/itc-echoupal-initiative/an/604016-PDF-ENG
ITC eChoupal Initiative
by David M. Upton, Virginia A. Fuller
20 pages. Publication date: Oct 28, 2003. Prod. #: 604016-PDF-ENG

Soybean farmers in India have traditionally sold their product through
ineffective and frequently dishonest physical marketplaces (mandi).
Farmers are generally poor and often illiterate and are forced to be
"price-takers" after an arduous journey to the mandi. They also have
very limited access to information and education on farming
techniques. Describes the use of Internet technologies to reach these
farmers and, in particular, examines a new system called the eChoupal,
developed by the India...

http://search.hbs.edu:8765/sei/?qt=e-choupal
ITC e-Choupal: Corporate Social Responsibility in Rural India -
Harvard Business Publishing
Case ITC e-Choupal: Corporate Social Responsibility in Rural India by
Ali Farhoomand, Saurabh Bhatnagar 26 pages. Publication date: Jun 30,
2008. Prod. #: HKU765-HCB-ENG Set against the ...
http://harvardbusiness.org/product/itc-e-choupal-corporate-social-
responsibility-in-r/an/HKU765-HCB-ENG?Nao=4580

[PDF] ITC-eChoupal-Platform-Strategy on WRI.PDF
BSAP Conference, HBS Dec 1-3, 2005 ITC eChoupal ©Anupindi and
Sivakumar 1 ITC’s e-Choupal A Platform Strategy for Rural
Transformation Ravi Anupindi Stephen M. Ross School of Business
University of Michigan Ann Arbor,...
http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/pdf/2-Anupindi&Sivakumar.pdf

Global Poverty Abstracts - Social Enterprise
Panel 4: Measuring Success at the Base of the Pyramid Panel 5: Civil
Society & Social Entrepreneurship Panel 6: Government Regulation &
Public-Private Partnerships Panel 7: Pre-conditions, Limitations & New
...
http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/globalpoverty-abstracts.html

International Development with an MBA-twist - News
http://media.www.harbus.org/media/storage/paper343/news/2007/02/05/
News/International.Development.With.An.MbaTwist-2694605.shtml

Conference on Global Poverty: Business Solutions & Approaches - Social
Enterprise
A Conference on Global Poverty: Business Solutions and Approaches
December 1-3, 2005 Overview Panel Sessions An index and full text
version of conference abstracts, by panel, is available at Panel
Abstracts Home...
http://www.hbs.edu/socialenterprise/globalpoverty.html

[PDF] FindingMissingMarkets.v25
08-065 Copyright © 2008 by Nava Ashraf, Xavier Giné, and Dean Karlan
http://www.hbs.edu/research/pdf/08-065.pdf
--
Edward Mokurai (??/???????????????/????????????? ?) Cherlin
Silent Thunder is my name, and Children are my nation.
The Cosmos is my dwelling place, the Truth my destination.
http://earthtreasury.org/

I invite us all to chat tomorrow, Thursday, October 29, starting at 9:00
am New York time, 13:00 am London, 16:00 Nairobi.  Come to our chat room
http://www.worknets.org/chat/

I will be participating at a meeting in Lithuania and explaining how we
can use Internet tools (like chat, wiki, emails) to help people with
their projects.  I want to motivate our team in Lithuania that they can
learn how to use such tools and that they can truly be helpful.  Your
participation will make for concrete examples and help me get my points
across!

For example, Fred Kayiwa is working as an online assistant at our chat
room.  Today he started helping to move some Lithuanian pages from our
Worknets wiki http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Values to our Lithuanian
language wiki http://www.ms.lt/lt/wiki.cgi?Vertyb%C4%97s   It's
interesting that he can do that even though he doesn't know Lithuanian!
So this is a good example that Lithuanians can help other people, too,
even if they don't know English.

I ask us all to please visit our chat room when you are online.  Sign in
and say hi and a line or two about what you are doing (just like
Twitter).  And please let me and Fred and Sasha teach you how to help
with our tasks http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Tasks and likewise
please give us your tasks that we can help with.  In this way, we will
have a vibrant help room which will make a sound foundation for our own
"economy of dreams" (of helping each other), but also working as teams
to make a living and make Minciu Sodas, Worknets strong along with all
of our projects.

Ananya Guha has a great project of writing poems for children.
http://www.earthtreasury.org/wiki.cgi?AnanyaSGuha
http:/We can publish them in English and local languages for viewing on
DVD players, digital cameras, mobile phones and that supports Ricaro's
endeavors and Josephat Ndibalema's as well.  Ananya, if you can join us
online at our chat room then we can likewise help more with your lovely
endeavor.

Proscoviour Vunyiwa is an example of a person who I'd like to encourage
to participate more.  You are very skilled and we would greatly benefit
and you could teach others, too!

Samwel Kongere has written about his dream for a fish pond.  We can
respond by looking for microcredit solutions, and by learning from Jeff
Buderer and other about Integrated Farm and Waste Management.  Jeff, can
you advise?  Let's share our dreams!

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...
+370 699 30003

Ananya Guha wrote:
> Dear Andrius,
>
> Thanks very much for the information. In the meantime I am trying to
> continue with my writing texts for children. Kindly have a look, I
> need your help, to put them into a narrative structure, with voice etc
> in DVDs.
>
> Ananya S Guha.

---------------------------------------

Proscoviour Vunyiwa:

Thanks Andrius, I had spoken to Samuel Kongere on phone. If I will be
through with my exams which i will be starting late November and finish
early December, I will travel to Kisumu on 8th so that we can chat the
way forward on how we can work together. I also do carpet weaving on
readily available material and I believe this skill can help improve the
life of someone.   I appreciate your encouragement and getting time to
read my articles.  God bless you.

---------------------------------------

Samwel Kongere:

My dream is a community sustainable agriculture. I've a dream to keep
myself fed and enable about 772 villagers access Tilapia their staple
food, source of protein, commercial earner and make it sustainable to
our livelihood. The people have been depending on this fish trade for
decades but due to too much pressure of famine, destruction of
vegetation and fishing pressure. I really dream of an integrated fish
farming in a FishPond. My preliminary finding shows that it can be
started with Kenya shillings 130,000 (about 1750 USD) which can run to
close at 200,000 or so (about 2700 USD) to make it sustainable and
transferable to the next generation. After several consultations with my
comrades in Networks in Mendenyo, Rusinga island, the Kawala Women
development group who appear on a picture in my profile in MS wiki,
Udogo youth Development, YUVA (Youth for Unity and Voluntary Actions),
RIDFI (Rusinga Island Youth Development Forum Initiative) all registered
with the government and based in Rusinga Island in the New district of
Mbita! We are working on 'A Living hope is desire'. If sustainability in
Agriculture can sustain livelihood, then Enviromental friendly will be a
long vested venture amongst dreams to create water catchment. My hope is
to have specialist volunteers locally and internationally to aid this
dream. A volunteer house can be constructed to save expenses, logical
food security.

See also other dreams at http://www.worknets.org/wiki.cgi?Dreams for our
economy of dreams.

------------------------------------

Sasha Mrkailo:

Hi Andrius,
  I find it hard to find connection between wiki pages I made. I feel this is
counter productive, its like thinking thoughts but not keep them together. Its
like forgetting them, like they have never been thought. I think this is not
good, or at least its not useful to me. I would like to have some system where I
could know which are pages made or modified by me. Or eventually make subpages
like there is for example: EarthTreasury / AnanyaSGuha.
Maybe I could make a subwiki SashaMrkailo / Beekeeping  SashaMrkailo / Linux and
so on.

Sasha, that's a good idea and I can make such a report!  Thank you for your
ideas for improvements.  Andrius

Samwel,

Thank you for writing.  I confirm that I gave you $140 and the $80 extra
is a loan that you can wait to pay back when you are able.

The fish pond sounds like a good idea.  I am sad to hear of your
famine.  Please keep us posted.  Let's keep thinking.

Andrius

Andrius Kulikauskas
Minciu Sodas
http://www.ms.lt
ms@...

Samwel Kongere wrote:
> Ok Andrius,
> I have a bill  over 220 $ US dollars for my health bills. I am now resting in
Rusinga Island. I sent Lillian my wife to find an area where we can purchase
cereals for our family business, there is severe famine here.But this will
hamper my dreams on fishing farming to restore commercial and protein source for
the 82 families in our village with a total of 772 adults with several children
going to school.
> I need to a certain the cost of a fish pond, fence and expertise.
> Samwel.
>
>
>
> Social Community Network/Information Coordinator,
> Suba/Mbita-Kenya
> 'Aliving hope is desire' When it is socially lived!
>
>
> --- On Sun, 10/25/09, Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...> wrote:
>
>
>> From: Andrius Kulikauskas <ms@...>
>> Subject: [mendenyo] Samwel, next steps?
>> To: mendenyo@yahoogroups.com
>> Date: Sunday, October 25, 2009, 8:21 PM
>>
>>                   Samwel,
>>
>>
>>
>> How are you feeling?  I'm glad that you found out in
>> Nairobi that it was
>>
>> just a strain and not anything much worse, as we feared.
>>
>>
>>
>> How much were your related bills and expenses? I agreed to
>> give $140
>>
>> from the money you are holding for me and loan more as
>> needed.  But if
>>
>> you spent less, then I think it would be fair to deduct
>> from me only
>>
>> what you spent, yes?
>>
>>
>>
>> Let's also think about next steps.  What are you
>> working on?  What are
>>
>> your dreams, endeavors, questions?  How might we
>> participate and help?
>>
>>
>>
>> Andrius
>>
>>
>>
>> Andrius Kulikauskas
>>
>> Minciu Sodas
>>
>> http://www.ms. lt
>>
>> ms@...
>>
>> +370 699 30003
>>
>>
>>
>> ------------ ---------
>>
>>
>>
>> Samwel Kongere wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> Hello All,
>>
>> For your kind words, i am Okay, and would want to say the
>> doctor said it
>>
>> was not an alarm but only a strain from veins and muscles.
>>
>> Samwel
>>
>>
>>
>> Social Community Network/Information Coordinator,
>>
>> Suba/Mbita-Kenya
>>
>> 'Aliving hope is desire' When it is socially
>> lived!
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>>
>
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------------
>
> A Focus is being made on having a wireless internet connection for the
> community to help them have a place for information handling and
> transfer. There is motive of taking risks to help the community Develop.
>
> Yahoo! Groups Links
>
>
>
>
>

I share Franz Nahrada's excerpts of Lawrence Kincheloe's blog post about his
open source hardware design project and his pursuit of an open source business.
http://openfarmtech.org/weblog/?p=1187
Franz also adds several ideas.  One difficulty in Europe is that there are many
regulations, safety and otherwise, which prohibit do-it-yourself technology
design, which in turn limits the possibilities of the digital public domain.
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
----------------------------------

Lawrence Kincheloe finished his stay at factor E farm two days ago due to
a lack of stoves. He wrote a remarkeable blog post in the openfarmtech
blog which I commented there.

I document parts of his post (the core part which comprises three article
ideas about the nature of open source hardware and business models) and my
comment/reply on openfarmtech here in globalvillages and hope this will
start our conversation here.
Lawrence, you did a wonderful job!

Franz

---------

Lawrence Kincheloe writes:

Title: Musings Upon the Nature of Open Source Hardware as a Business



> > “If you’re not making art with the intention of having it copied, you’re
> >not really making art for the twenty-first century.” ~ Cory Doctorow
>

At the core of any business are a set of core beliefs that it was founded
upon. These may be stated or implied through actions, but never the less
make up the “personality” of an organization. I believe that change is
coming in the way we look at how products come together and the name of
that change is free and open source products. Its effecting art, culture,
literature, and commerce. Even now there are several articles  detailing
its history, and what I will be discussing in this article is how the open
source movement is relevant to hardware and how to possibly make a living
off of it.
The key fact is that we aren’t doing anything new or radical with
completely opening up the design to the public. Many institutions do this
already in academia and research. In some cases they even make money off
of it. Its not even novel to try to form a community around a business
practice for reducing costs and living better. All these things and more
have been tried, found to be successful in some cases, and fail in others.


> >    Most businesses/groups/etc fail.
> >    It is the rare exceptions that are celebrated.
>

Designing a business model that fits into the lifestyle you want to lead
and the overall goals you wish to achieve, reflects your values and what
the market and the rest of the world is doing. This makes crafting a
business model a bit challenging because when you look behind the curtain,
its a philosophy of how to run things.


> >    “Put me out of business! Please!” ~ Lawrence Kincheloe
>

Free and Open source as defined by the Free Software Foundation and Open
Source Initiative is real tough to adhere to in a traditional business
sense, because a product design licensed under it would not ensure that
those who put in the work see economic rewards for their efforts. A good
example of this is the RONJA Project
(->http://ronja.twibright.com/development/philosophy.php). There are ways
around this, such as putting the work under a dual license like MySQL
(http://www.mysql.com/about/legal/licensing/oem/) does so a company can
combine your device with their closed source product. Another method lets
individuals work as a contractor who makes modifications to a project for
a specific need stated by a customer for a price. The point remains
though, that you cannot directly make  money off an open source licensed
product by keeping control of the licenses and patents to stifle
competition and recoup your losses. This unfortunately removes one of the
easiest ways to make money.

However, money isn’t everything. All socioeconomic phenomena are based on
the human condition, and because of this, I believe that there are
untapped motivational forces that are more beneficial than the desire to
gather and collect, which is the fundamental bases of money. Altruism,
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altruism)  I feel has more desirable
socioeconomic consequences for a large populace and I believe that Free
and Open Source go hand in hand with altruism. So how would this work,
what  sound business plan uses altruism as its philosophical core. Well,
they are many and varied, from charities to research foundations.

For me, I intend to build a business that holds at its core, the desire to
generate and disseminate technology and information as quickly as
possible. To build a community of collaboration and noncompetitive
behavior. I envision a company that is an open book that doesn’t trap
customers, which is on an equal footing with its customers for a fair and
balanced relationship. Lofty goals indeed, but so are the rewards.



> > “Start simply by simply, starting.” ~ Lawrence Kincheloe
>

The easiest and arguably the most important feature is to build a place
for a community to develop and interact. Because primarily, I am
interested in doing hardware development I want to develop tools to help
make collaborative hardware development possible for a wide range of
different products. I envision hosting projects ranging from home made
kilns to advanced robotics, with everything in between. Having and running
such a website could be a source of ad revenue as well as a way to build
business contacts and a community of collaborators.
Second on the list is to develop a market place for people to sell goods
and services. To take on contract work and to offer up manufacturing
services for different projects. Not everyone has the ability, time and
tools to make any open source project, and this would be a great way to
get people comfortable contributing their time to a project they are
passionate about while still getting positive reinforcement through
traditional capitalistic means. The key is not to “sell out” but to build
attractive bridges between ideals and reality. For myself, I would in
theory have some sort of manufacturing capability and could offer to build
products and bill for my time. This would also be a good place to put up a
market front for dealers to sell products they make that are open source
in nature.
Third, is how to manage investment and community growth. Growing can be
difficult, and business have a development life cycle just like any other
living thing. When the processes that keep it running break down, it
ceases to be. Because this is a loose knit community, building trust is
very important commodity. Also, because having capital and pre-orders can
mean the difference between having the resources necessary to build a new
product and not, there is a lot of potential for micro-investments in
interesting products for a marginal price reduction. This is similar in
concept to the Open Source Hardware Bank (-> http://www.oshwbank.org/)
idea which allows producers take advantage of bulk purchases and
guaranteed orders and generates incentive by consumers to fund projects
they like. Balancing a community that’s motivated by both more traditional
rewards as well as social rewards through working together with a
community isn’t easy. It will be difficult to be the trusted middle man
and still take part in the community. An example of a company that does
this well is Valve Software and their Steam gaming platform
(http://store.steampowered.com/). Valve sells their successful Half-Life 2
video games but also digitally distribute games from many other vendors. I
would go one step further and open up the inner workings of the company
for interested parties to view. The goal is to build trust, and to make
sure the community knows that the people managing their market
infrastructure can be trusted to remain unbiased. I believe the rewards
for such behavior will be great.



> > “Can’t Buy Me Love” ~ Paul McCartney
>

One glaringly obvious flaw in all of this is the practical side of needing
to eat and live in a comfortable lifestyle. I’ve already established a
business model based around good will and fuzzy feelings, but open source
doesn’t guarantee you any sort of income. If you make a contribution, you
don’t necessarily get a monetary reward for the work. So take a deep
breath with me and learn to love living a fulfilling life by making enough
to live on but not enough to get rich with. It is possible to be a great
systems designer and integrator, or an expert in tractor building which
could be sold as a service based contract job where you can apply what
your good at directly to a problem. However, being a great designer
doesn’t mean you can sell yourself and your designs, and so your
brilliance might not get rewarded by people who use your designs to solve
contracted problems. There are potential ways around this problem of
evaluating collaboration by some sort of individual metric, but I think
that discussion should wait for another essay.
However by embracing open source, there is a lot of potential for people
to combine resources to slash the most pressing needs such as food and
shelter. Therefore leaving any income to go towards things that a person
wants to be comfortable. Open source can help develop cheap house building
methods, labor free farming techniques, and products that are unique and
innovative that evolve and are valued in a fluid working free market. As
innovations build on past success, these get wrapped up in future
releases, which benefit everyone. It just won’t make you a millionaire,
and may require community living styles to reduce costs and labor. For
many though, the benefits of communal living are more than just economics,
its about the community itself. Its all about fitting the business model
to the philosophy and life style of those who wish to participate. Its not
for everyone, but it doesn’t make it any less valid.
The below links were a source of inspiration and perspective.

    1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cathedral_and_the_Bazaar
    2. http://www.catb.org/~esr/writings/cathedral-bazaar/cathedral-bazaar/
    3. http://oreilly.com/openbook/freedom/ch09.html
    4. http://opensource.org/docs/osd
    5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists
    6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_software_movement
    7. http://ronja.twibright.com/development/philosophy.php
    8. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_source
    9. http://reprap.org/bin/view/Main/RepRapGPLLicence
   10.
http://www.dwheeler.com/secure-programs/Secure-Programs-HOWTO/history.html
   11. https://www.nearlyfreespeech.net/services/pricing
   12. http://www.opensourceinstruments.com/
   13.
http://www.isthmuseng.com/aboutus/workerownedcoop/workerownedcoop.aspx
   14. http://www.openbeacon.org/start.0.html
   15. http://www.thingiverse.com/about
   16. http://www.etsy.com/faq.php
   17. http://www.shapeways.com/about/how_does_it_work

Categories: Open Source Ecology

--------------------------

So far Lawrence. Here is my reply:



Hi Lawrence.

it was great and wonderful to see you moving in and contributing with
dedication, ableness and pride. Its good to see you working on both ends,
on the concrete product as well as on the overall socioeconomic model. I
would really like to see more of such people like you here in Europe,
where things fall dramatically apart and intellectuals rather rarely get
their hand dirty, whereas tinkerers usually are - ahem, tinkerers.

I think the material benefit of Open Source behaviour can only show if we
are able to close the cycle of mutual support and do away with money in
our immediate social relations. It will be easier to achieve at the
village scale. But then we will see dramatic results. It will put an end
to the current paradox that every rise in labour productivity is a step
towards scarcity and crisis, because it leads to a decline in business in
the long run. It will enable us to truly tune into the groove of a
positive feedback cycle. I believe that in the material world the core of
the feedback cycle will be physical proximity, whereas in the idea
development it will be globality.

So reading your posts, here is three invitations.

I think you are absolutely right that we need a virtual place where the
communities can really meet and work. Ralf is bringing this concern to the
Manchester conference in two weeks, and I hope there will be better
coordination. We need things like thingiverse that allow us to identify
our partners and to know who fits with us in goal, technical level and
tool structure. But we need much more than that. We need a space for
synchronous rich interaction with a design language, 3 D modeling and
simulation tools on the web. We need repositories, version control and so
on. I just talked to Ralf about that and I hope a lively discussion can be
sparked before he is going to Manchester. Also, Andrius Kulikauskas is
actively evolving virtual collaboration spaces. They might not meet our
requirements yet, but there is a very dynamic seed and a person who
resembles Marcin in zeal and dedication - at least the guarantee for the
emergence of a center of activities. So I suggest bringing this discussion
to the globalvillages worknet and I would like to invite you to the
globalvillages mailing list. Its best to subscribe from the web:
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/globalvillages/

The second thing that you outline is the lack of a marketplace. I fully
subscribe to the idea of Thomas Diener who seeks to combine the ideas of
fair trade with an Open Souce hardware product marketplace (very similar
to the Open Hardware Bank idea). We had a meeting here in Vienna the full
day yesterday and we are very close to the establishment of a foundation
under swiss law to achieve exactly this. see: http://fairwork.mixxt.org/ I
confess we do struggle a bit how to basically implement OpenSource
principles, but I also invite you to help in that struggle.

http://fairwork.mixxt.org/networks/forum/thread.19966

Thomas Diener has brilliant ideas to care for the growth of the community
and for the material support of developers!

A third current bottleneck is that we do not have enough physical places
in the world to start with experimenting. We are already thinking about
encouraging the crowd that Marcin met here to figure out possibilities in
Austria based on very clear project outlines, for example also for further
pursuing the "Ingas House" project and so on. (We are also putting our
minds together how they would be able to meet the different security
standards in Europe, where even building a steam engine comes with legal
restrictions. Its not always control and monopoly that create such
restrictions, but also widespread safety concerns.) There is some
indications that we will be able to find such a place, and it would be
very helpful if we could circulate a letter of intent of yours saying that
you would be willing to come to Europe under certain conditions to
continue your work on the torch table. Would you?

all the best

Franz Nahrada

Tom, Thank you for writing about the water cart design! That's very
helpful.  I look forward to Samwel's photos.  Please upload them to
http://www.ms.lt "Add a photo" which takes you to:
http://www.worknets.org/software/addphoto.php  Thank you, Andrius
Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, ms@..., http://www.ms.lt


tom ochuka wrote:
> Dear Andrius ,Janet ,Rich and all,
>  Greetings to you all,have had sveral challenges one of the My wifes helth she
got malaria and is down,she has shown signs of imrovement,she has been helpfull
in tis project ,so have been abit of derailed.
>  Thanks to all of you have sent pictures for the step by step fabrication
,thouh not much but have tried the best to explain what and how to make the
water cart,Goiliath is complete and so is Samson one iof the wheel got off so
will get another since they are used,am trying abetterone as tey all are used.
> Am gresing the Goliath again.
> Please find attachments, I will ask Sam to post the pictures of Goliath first
Red Oxide coat,Kongere is apinter he wil paint for any of us,he painted mine
free.
> Thanks.
> Tom Ochuka
>


WATER CART DESING AND CONSTRUCTION USING AVALIABLE TOOLS

Used Materails    1 Angle line   2 Lengths of 40 feet
                                      2 Round Pipe 1 Length for Handles
                                      3   Old car differential


You will see in the picture a frame of Samson and a completed Goliath.

            Fabrication:

All the Metals /Iron metals must be new ones Not used because the will
be joined using the welding rods and therefore if they were used this
will cause problems, because of weight they will not carry the load,
hence the must also not be so thick or too heavy or large inside because
they were pulled or pushed by human beings who are likely to be between
60 to 100kg when they are heavy the require either machines or animals
like donkey to  pull or push.

  Angle line Iron metals are cut and measured beginning with the length:
5.62 ft and with 2.26 ft while depth or deep inside is 2.26 ft. The pipe
to make the handles is 1 inch in Diameter   and 3 ft in size. An old
differential from a saloon car can be used or round pipe 2 inch diameter
3 ft in length  this will hold the 2 tryres of size 14 car tryre not
acar of more than 2 .5 tones. If bigger tryre is used then pulling it
will be difficult because of the preasure inside pressure adds more weight.

   Step 1: Gather all the metals required
                  Measuring of the metals then using hacksaw cart the
longer sides first to Avoid the waste: Ensure that the sizes fits
together therefore you will have 4 pieces of 5.62 ft,then if that is
done cut the width ,wider part s taht are shorter make sure they are 4
of 2.26 feet each running left to right 2 times for front and back ,then
cut Dipper part or depth which is also 4 runing up down for front and
back ,then you will get  the well rods that fits the design not hard
ones for unigrtaors /joining trailers but manufacturing og window frames
gates etc.

    Step 2:  Join all the Metals cuts together ,so that the pieces makes
the frame you see on the pictures we have pictures of cutting on and
pictures of joining ,aftter joning the frame, look at the sides and
measure again to ensure good and correct size, bring in the square and
measure the sizes ,so that all the Angles agree if not then when loaded
it will always bend to one side. Before going to the next step then
using grinder smoothen all the angles and any spot that forms pimples
which is harmful   ,its difficult to apply paint also with this sports.

   step 3:  Together Turn it upside down and check the Balances again
this will make you construct the bottom casing,in order to fit the
driving shaft of Differentials, welled this together so you will have
frame and shaft or the pipe holding the tyre, Smooth both sides before
putting the bearings standard size of 2inches then in the bearing apply
Grease 1/4 kg to the bearing and surface. Make sure the bearing fits so
tight to the metals id it runs loose the tyre with load is likely to
come out.

  Step 4: Now fit the tyres into the Rims both sides make sure the tubes
are in but dont put pressure first ,this will not make the balance
accurate as it will be heavily already ,it will be the last stage before
putting water. Then begin with either side put it into the bottom shaft
or rolling pipes, you will have both tyres fitted after finishing.

   Step 5: Now   with both tyres on its light since there is no pressure
inside of the tyres turn it over with the tyres touching the ground, now
measure the handles then weld them both left and right ,grind the
necessary sport to smooth. Then try pusshing it over back and forth.

   Painting.
   Apply red oxide paint which the metals absorbs well allow it to settle
this was Done by Sam Kongere ,Please He will put the pictures ,the apple
the final coating ,then putt the timbers inside for Jericans to rest on
with load .There is no need to paint the timber ,as it wil always be wet
and the rubbing of Jericans clear off the paints.

   Jerricans/Containers: This is important to note Ensure you get used
Accid Jeri cans not ordinary like food /oil containers because the are
light but Acid ones are stronger and last made for sulphuric acid, clean
them thoroughly with hot water before use and soap,then several times
dry them .Go and put pressure on the tyres ,before going for water ,your
CART IS Now ready for use,

    Note:  Size of cart depend on materail and weight
               Color does not matter alot
                Write using paint your containers or label them foe
safety as the also look alike.

  Please feel free to contact me, I will write now next on the progress,

Thanks to Andrius,Janet,Ricardo, Pam maclean and all MS  Members,

Franz has been invited to the Clear Village Lab for designing a new
village in Spain, November 5-7.
http://clearvillage.ning.com/events/clear-village-lab
He's excited that many "thought leaders" are coming together there.
He's also helped to make it a more open process.

He's written an introductory post about "Global Villages" which I repost
here.
Andrius Kulikauskas, Minciu Sodas, http://www.ms.lt, ms@...
----------------------------------------------------


Franz Nahrada
The Village as a Planetary Solution
http://clearvillage.ning.com/profiles/blogs/the-village-as-a-planetary

  From the very beginning I learned about the Clear Village Lab I was
excited about the fact that the theme of rehabilitating the village meme
for the first time is taken care of by a professional mainstream
environment.

Dont get me wrong: I am working in this field since almost 25 years.
There is a heroic movement for village regeneration throughout Europe
and I am a part of it, for example currently as president of the
Austrian section of ECOVAST (European Council for the Village And Small
Town). The movement has been partly successful, but if you look at the
bigger picture, worldwide the future of the village is still uncertain
and in jeopardy. And also new experiments like the Ecovillage and
Cohousing movement, the Televillage movement and the Arcology movement
have not been able so far to influence public attention and thinking yet.

The village is still identified with an association which was never its
only or primordial characteristic. The village is identified with
agriculture. Nobody cares that this is already a product of the heavy
split between cities and villages which is a pretty modern phenomenon.
Traditional villages used to be much more than that: they used to be
communities that were dealing with all aspects of life, although on a
smale and often not so elaborated scale. A village used to have at least
30 or 50 professions, from carpenter to midwife, blacksmith,
wheel-maker, barrel-maker, saddler, cobbler. and so on. A village
thrived on an intensive local economy, which was gradually depleted by
the rise of industry and factories. It was vibrant and rich in social
relations, as it could also be stuffy and crushing to independent minds.

I think when we talk today about a future village project we mean not
just an isolated piece of suburbia with an underground parking lot where
people would get into their cars or communte in another way to their
place of work. If you google "village" you will find a lot of gated
communities - primarily, but not any more exclusively in the United
States- , that work exactly that way and just try to create a beautiful
romantic association with the name "village" without being one at all.
My understanding is that there is something radically different and much
deeper in sight, but its a complex shift in reality that requires the
intentional cooperation of many, good ideas and visions, thorough
testing and experimentation and intelligent implementation.

I would like to start talking to this community and beyond in a series
of short blog posts about the Village Solution. I would like to begin
with a hint to one of the most interesting thinkers that have influenced
me. That was Marshall McLuhan, the Canadian media theorist. Everyone
knows that McLuhan has coined the Term "Global Village" to give a name
to the fact that the modern media make it possible to affect our senses
directly with events that happen far away as if they were happening
right in our immediate neighborhood. Few people know that McLuhan - who
is seen as the prophet of globalisation - had a little surprise in his
pocket that few people ever learned about.

In McLuhans terminology and theory, history walks on four legs, not on
three as in Hegels dialectic. He calls those four legs the "Laws of Media".
* 1. Enhancement: every new medium (like: the car, the internet) tends
to enhance social, cultural, psychological, spiritual traits and comes
with a cloud of resonating patterns. So a medium might be as well the
base for a certain type of society to thrive.
* 2. Obsolescence: by the same token, every new medium suppresses other
patterns. The village was suppressed by the emergence of centralised
industial production and distribution.
* 3. Retrieval: any new medium retrieves elements of an older culture.
Nothing in history is lost for good, because evolutionary proven
patterns tend to reappear under certain circumstances and in new shape.
* 4. Reversal: any media evolution leads to a point where they exhaust
their capacity; when this tipping point is reached, they reverse into
some unintended form - and a new medium is born.

And here comes the McLuhan quote that is my favorite one:

"The media that globalize experience will, if pushed to their extremity,
expand local possibilities beyond any conceivable measure"

Let's look at those local possibilities together!

---------------------------

Thomas Ugo Ermacora Comment by Thomas Ugo Ermacora on October 20, 2009
at 5:41pm
     That last sentence embodies much of what we can hope to achieve
through collaborative networks. McLuhan was one of those visionaries
that had a good connection to the pre-digital age and also saw it emerge
which calls for a wider understanding of the possibilities and desires
vested in the build up of the internet society. I believe he was close
to Jane Jacobs as well and probably influenced each other widely with
respect to their thoughts about cities and dwelling in general. We look
forward to more of these intellectual stimulations!

-----------------------------------

John M Comment by John M 1 day ago

     'rehabilitating the village meme' sounds about right. I see two
design challenges, one around resources, the other around social form.

     On the one hand, the village format must not simply secretly offload
the problematic requirement for industrial-scale production (factories)
and consumer consumption (shopping malls and cinemas and Apple
showrooms) to 'elsewhere', as it produces gilded, 'downshifted'
lifestyles for those that can afford it. On the other, trying to solve
everything at the village scale will lead to low-quality of life, since
division of labour (or at least regional/spatial distribution of
production) and economies of scale would be overlooked. So villages must
belong to, and self-consciously be part of, larger constellations of
production systems and settlement networks.

     As for social form, village formats - whether spatial or 'virtual' -
hold out promise of better, more rewarding, human interactions, both
casual and developed. But they also hold out the same old story of
identity-normalisation, group exclusion, entrenched power dynamics,
surveillance, etc, which people have believed they have passed beyond in
the large city format. How can one achieve the ideational and social
mobility of the large group, with the intimacy of the small group?

--------------------------------------------

Franz Nahrada Comment by Franz Nahrada 1 day ago

     So villages must belong to, and self-consciously be part of, larger
constellations of production systems and settlement networks.

     Fully agreed. There are several patterns emerging that meet this
challenge and problem:

     Concerning the first cluster of problems:

     Mothercities: Urban economies built around remote support systems.
We can observe for example that in the health sector urban clinics begin
do develop diagnostical capacities especially targeted at telemedicine
(teleradiology, telesonography, telepathology etc.) . We could equally
imagine urban industries focussing on "village technologies". So the
design challenge here is to identify urban - village partnerships that
avoid lock-ins and allow for reliable and sustainable delivery of
services and products that increase local quality of life. We need to
identify roles, capacities and needs of mediators in the village context.

     Regional Economies - another approach is the intentional divison of
tasks by various "nodes" in a region, which allows for deeper
specialisation and division of labour. A good approach to it is to frame
"themes" for villages, so that there is a kind of intervillage
cooperation. In Austria, we see this with the introduction of so called
microregions, where 5 or more villages start to plan their investments
and coordinate them with the goal of multiplying their common offerings.
So one village might focus on a pool - spa - leisture theme, the next
one on an education - culture - administration theme, the next on a
craft - production - arts theme, the next will feature a big hall to
host meetings and functions and become like the wedding and birthday
village, and so on. Rural areas do work in a totally different logic
than cities, but they can in fact achieve equivalence in this difference.

     I hope we will look into more patterns at the workshop. What really
makes the village attractive is the balance between man and nature,
which allows self - feeding, self - supporting local ecologies of high
efficiency, resourcefulness of many kinds.

     Regarding the second cluster of problems, we also will have to come
up with good patterns: some of them might be:

     Cross - Fertilisation: Traditional village cultures made it
mandatory at least for young men to travel. that was part of their
professional education (you had to learn from differnt masters), but
also fulfilled many social functions. We might see a revival of
culturally valued intentional travelling especially for young people.
That might be supported largely by the net, because now there is a
constant opportunity to also stay in touch.

     Mosaic of Subcultures - Christopher Alexander has made this an
essential pattern for cities, Claude Lewenz has applied this to his
village town proposal with his famous piazzas
(http://www.villageforum.com), but I have seen it applied as usefull
pattern even in smaller communities. Having intentional cultural choices
within a village might be very helpf ulremedy against conformism. Look
at the nuclei in Damanhur to get an idea what that could possibly mean.
A community of 30 in the federation of 1000 is for example a world-class
study group on the relation between humans and plants (Arboricoli), and
they have their own special lifestyle. This might look extreme, but its
nothing more extreme than a fashion model on the catwalk in comparison
to the normal dress. It gives us an idea and expression of what we want
to look for.

     OK, that are just some ideas that come to my mind. I am sure we will
find much more on deeper reflection.

-----------------------------

Franz Nahrada Comment by Franz Nahrada 1 day ago
     A nice comment by Eric McLuhan, son of Marshall McLuhan, who worked
with his father on the "Laws of Media", from Canada:

     Dear Franz,

     I went to the site(s)--thanks for the URLs. Were I a member, I would
have added as comment, a hearty "I concur."

     It is a great idea to get the dialogue going that way. Let me know
how things turn out!

     Best,
     Eric