Crude sketch of a not-business plan.

I hope this is okay to post here.  I just want some feedback on the idea.

Context:  I've started a non-profit mutual benefit corporation called Ariadne Systems.  I've also got some land in N. California (I'm tentatively calling it "Green Hills" after the poem in the story by Heinlein.)

In re: Living Neighborhoods:  https://www.livingneighborhoods.org/ht-0/bln-exp.htm (with whom I have no affiliation!) Christopher Alexander's ideas applied at the neighborhood level.  Add in applied ecology (like Village Homes in Davis CA), and modern technology, and this is what I mean when I reference "Living Neighborhoods"

"1,000 True Fans" refers to this essay by Kevin Kelly https://kk.org/thetechnium/1000-true-fans/


Business Plan:

Get 100 to 300 members.  At $30/month/member that's $3000 to $9000 per month gross "income" (does it count as income, like, for taxes?  Surely they tax it, eh?  Ariadne Systems is mutual benefit, not public benefit, we're not tax-exempt.)

That's the whole plan in terms of "selling" things or "making money", just get some "1,000 true fans" to give me thirty bucks a month.

So then what's the plan for doing things with that money?

First, all open books, all open activity.  Everyone shall be able to see what we do and how we spend the money.

Second, the ultimate goal is to build (on Green Hills or elsewhere) "Living Neighborhoods" that supply our needs automatically and are fun to live in, and that improve the health of the Earth, and then let people live there.  I imagine a mix of resident members and people whom we just give a living to for their creative output.  I dunno?  2/3rds members and 1/3 "Fellows" or whatever we call it?

The general idea is that the people living in the neighborhoods then "pay it forward" in terms of making the transition (to a kinder, gentler economy) happen.  Not every member has to be some radical gardener, but the general trend should be towards more land under ecologically harmonious mgmt, faster.

So, between here and there, what's the program?

Well, we have land.

I'm going to lease land to Ariadne Systems at a rate of $1000/acre (I think that's a fair price, if not I'll adjust it.  Downwards adjustments only, the figure is a ceiling.)  On that land I'll install garden beds and such, and deploy robotic systems, etc. on behalf of the membership.

The only other major expense would be labor.  I'd like to pay my sister a reasonable rate for her work as Secretary, and I'd like to pay myself
something like $1500 per month (mostly for books and seeds.)

To a great extent I do not want to "import", as it were, a lot of material from off the land.  Especially, I don't want toxic chemicals nor plastics and rubber, etc.  Obviously, since I'm making and deploying robots there's going to be a certain amount of, uh, non-compost-able waste, but I want to keep it to a minimum.  As a side effect of that,
less money is spent, eh?  Ideally, our largest ongoing expense after lease and payroll should be the satellite Internet connection.

I'm going to share my personal seed collection and make it available (contingent on several factors to be elaborated later) to Ariadne members
both for their own use...  (I don't really have to explain this, it's described elsewhere no doubt, but for my own peace of mind: you get
seeds, you grow the plants, you get more new seeds from the plants, you return seeds to the library.  If all goes well you return more seeds to
the library than you originally checked out.  Ta-da!)  ...both for their own use and to be planted and tended on Ariadne Systems' leased ground at
Green Hills.

We'll live-stream the plants growing (and make time-lapse videos) and in the meantime work on robots and automation to make the whole thing fun
and easy.

After meeting expenses, any extra dues from members will go into a fund to acquire more land.

The primary "output" of Ariadne Systems is not produce, it's the tools methods and starter cultures to take a parcel of raw land and turn it
into a living neighborhood.  That's our "product" if you will: terraforming kits.

I'm going to put in a timber bamboo grove, and I already have a flock of eggers (chicks at the moment) to produce future flocks for members.

So yeah, that's the general idea.  A member-supported mutual benefit non-profit corp that develops terraforming kits (plant+animal guilds &
robots/automation), and also acquires land to deploy said kits, and then leases or kinda gives away the resulting "living neighborhood" homes.

There are details, of course, but I don't want to go on and on...  Any and all questions and comments would be most welcome!  Cheers!

Sounds OK.  I would be thinking about a marketing plan to get those members.  

Cheers!

Ah marketing, "therein lies the rub", eh?

On the one hand, getting the word out is now the limiting factor (I've got land and seeds and tools and chickens, etc.)  On the other hand, I'm one of those people who thinks of advertising as, at best, a necessary evil.  Marketing is not the same thing as advertising, but I'm still cautious.  I also don't want to use any of the typical ad systems you might reach for (no Facebook, Google, etc...) because I don' t want to participate in the whole "surveillance capitalism" thing.

I'm not sure where to go with all this.

The main "value proposition" is creating these "living neighborhoods" and then people can live there.  I'm really serious about this, I just turned 49 and it seems like a good use of my time (now that computers can talk and program themselves.  I was a programmer until about ten minutes ago.)  I might not be able to do it on the land I have now for zoning reasons (it's zoned ag, not residential) but somewhere, someday, soon.  But I don't want to come on strong with some "Pay me now and get a home next Tuesday" gag, you know?  This isn't a real estate speculation deal.

The main "product" at first will be the story of the project?  Access to the Seed Library is pretty great (IMO) but it's not $30/month great.  Watching plants and chickens grow, same thing.  So I'm kind of selling a vision?

Going with the definitions I was taught, sales is convincing the customer they need what you have; marketing is finding out what the customer needs and providing that.  

You have observed that $30 is anexpensive vision.  So, you may want to look at an alternative route.   I would look for something more tangible and less expensive.

Those are good definitions, cheers!

For what it's worth, I don't want to do either.  I certainly don't want to convince anyone of anything, because I don't want to manipulate other people, and because I'm convinced of very little myself.  Nor do I want to research what customers need and sell products to them, because I'm not running a business.   I don't have customers, I have (will have) members.  There are economic activities involved in what I'm doing, of course, but the overall shape of it is more like a research lab, or an art studio where the medium is neighborhood & ecology, eh?

The "non-profit mutual-benefit" corp is a bit of a weird beastie.  It's usually used for things like country clubs or Home Owner Associations.  There's a Board of Directors, and Members, but you don't issue stock.  It's also not tax-exempt like a "public benefit" corp would be.  It can sell things, but it's more like having a "bake sale" to raise funds, not like a store or catalog.

I don't understand what benefit the robotic systems actually provide? How are robotic systems better than community owned/supported agriculture? How did we go from basically patreons supporting an ecovillage prototype to robot gardeners? Have you developed any robotic prototypes, do you have skills and experience in this area? Why would you then expose your systems in videos to others who might copy these unpatented systems?

Seems rather unnecessarily complicated to me...what am I missing?

First, thank you for the very stimulating questions, I really appreciate
it.

The main reason I want to develop robotic systems is just that I like
robots, always have, ever since I was a kid.  And, yeah, I've got a
little bit of experience.  I wouldn't say I'm an expert, but I know my
way around an electronics workbench.

There's also the practical reason, that they can do the work for me.  I
don't mind work, but I hate to waste time.  If a robot can collect and
sort rocks for me then I can do other things.  But it's not that I hate
rock collecting or look down on people who make awesome rock walls by
hand, no, to me that's art and a kind of human experience that is (or at
least can be) noble and deep and fulfilling.  Same goes for any "mundane"
work, like washing the dishes or sweeping the floor.  It can be drudgery
or meditation, eh?

Also, I'm getting old.  I'm nearly fifty and although I'm looking forward
to developing muscle tone from working around that land, I'm just not
gonna become a farmer overnight.  It took Baldassare Forestiere fifty
years to make his fantastic villas, and he did an inconceivable amount of
labor to do it.  I admire him, not least because I would never be able to
do the tenth part of he did, with his own two hands!

I want to mention (this reply feels rambley but I'm wandering around in
the right place) that these days robots are pretty much off-the-shelf.
For example, I have a tiny little board from Polulu that can control up
to six servo motors and is fully programmable.  You literally plug in the
servos and then just send the board a little script over USB!

And on the software side things have gotten bananas with the recent
advances in Machine Learning, et. al.  For example, the software to look
at the camera feed and recognize and categorize, say, rocks, like I want
to, is also off-the-shelf.  It's kind of ridiculous.

I don't want to go on and on about it, but to sum up, robotics these days
is more like playing with LEGO bricks than electrical engineering (in
fact, now that I think of it, LEGO Mindstorms is a decent robot kit!)

Now, I personally am not in favor of robot gardeners.  I follow the old
way: "The best fertilizer is the footsteps of the gardener", for me
gardening is a sacred activity wherein we "enact our dependence on the
land" as Wendel Berry wrote.  To turn our service over to machines and
ignore our friends in the garden is... well, let me just say, I wouldn't
do it.  The point of the robots is to do the scut work to free us up to
do the important things (like parenting and gardening.)

However, I do like and desire things like robot scarecrows that can
recognize and scare off predators 24/7; systems that can monitor
conditions for me and warn me or adjust automatically if e.g. the
greenhouse is getting too hot/cold/dry/wet; and of course rock-stacking
robots to convert my "gravelly loam" into stone walls to protect from
fire, small dams to prevent erosion, resurfacing the road in cobblestone,
etc.;  Oh, and robot wheelbarrows and donkeys (they already have those:
little dumper droids (sorry Lucas! He trademarked "droid", you won't hear
any robot manufacturer calling their machines "droid" because they would
have to get Disney's approval!  What a world, eh?) little dumper wagons
that follow you around and can carry loads.

I see a near future where most labor is done by machine, in fact this is
already happening (whether we like it or not) due to economic pressures.
As the capabilities of the machines improve, more and more jobs will
become obsolete.

Now to me, speaking broadly, there are two main paths that I like to call
"Star Trek or North Korea" in one path we apply automation to free up
human from labor so we can do things like live in harmony with Nature and
explore the Universe; in the other path we apply automation to do what we
have been doing just harder and more intensely, and you get a few "haves"
at the top and the rest of us just riot or starve or live as creepy
brain-chip-implanted cyborg slaves or something.  Ew.

I'm in favor of the Star Trek future, where we mostly have our personal
problems solved and everybody more-or-less lives well and is generally
happy.  And also we're not destroying the ecosystem!

So that's the context I'm working from, for what it's worth.  I don't
want to just make a CSA farm, I want to produce a kind of
Utopia-in-a-kit, a simple system to go from what we have now to a
low-labor high-tech ecologically-harmonious neighborhood.

And that brings me to your question "Why would you then expose your
systems in videos to others who might copy these unpatented systems?" and
the answer is, that's the whole point!  I have always given the fruits of
my work away for free.  (I'm a programmer, all my software is released
under something called the GNU General Public License (GPL) which
"guarantees end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify
the software." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GNU_General_Public_License )
Not only will there be videos but the software and hardware will be given
away freely as well!  (In re: hardware, at first the plans are free, and
then as I develop robots to build robots I can also give away the
machines themselves.  That's how you get exponential growth:
self-replication.   I'm making a kind of RepRap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap )

The best thing that could happen from my POV is for others to copy and
use and promote these systems I'm making.  That would be fantastic!  I
would be over the moon!  That would accelerate the Star Trek future path.

I realized long ago that the efficient way to work is to give away the
wealth I generate freely to everyone and then ride the "rising tide" that
"lifts all boats".  (I mean "wealth" in the Bucky Fuller sense: the
intangible software that encodes algorithms for solving human problems.
I can generate unbounded wealth just sitting in a chair typing!  What a
world!) I can either try to make this work, or go get another computer
programming job doing scut work to make rich investors richer.

Maybe I'm just a starry-eyed hippie after all, but I really think this is
the way to go: let's make a simple, high-tech, ecologically-harmonious
version of our civilization and live in it.

Simon Foreman wrote:First, thank you for the very stimulating questions, I really appreciate
it.

I see a near future where most labor is done by machine, in fact this is
already happening (whether we like it or not) due to economic pressures.
As the capabilities of the machines improve, more and more jobs will
become obsolete.

I love your Star Trek vs North Korea analogy.

This is how we think, we being me and my husband, both 61.
He is a master mechanic and has also done computer programming
among many other things. He is right on board with you about
robotics. He is a huge Elon Musk fan (in terms of what he is doing)
and one of his favorite projects is the Optimus robots.

I don't know if this will help you, but one way he believes that
those programmable robots can help, while not hurting but basically
changing the "work environment" once again is that there will be
a huge demand for the programs for various tasks. I don't know if
that is what they will be called but think Youtube only these "creators"
will be teaching robots specific tasks and then sharing those instructions.
There can be practically unlimited iterations on even simple tasks.
Am I making sense?

I got to your thread because I am trying to figure out how to
structure our next phase of life wherein we move to south Georgia
and continue homesteading while he is able to work on his projects
vs doing mechanic work in the oilfield. One of his projects is a
viable pyrolysis contraption that can take a variety of materials.
No, I don't exactly know how it differs from what is already being
done, that is his area.

I am less technical and more to the side of networking and
dissimating information. I wanted to suggest that to help you
progess with your vision that perhaps you can look for someone
who gets it and believes in it and that could be your marketing person.
I think you will need help with that to make this happen
and there are people who don't see it as just a necessary evil.
The only way enough people will learn about your project is
through some kind of marketing/advertising combination.
You could perhaps start with an ebook that talks about something
that the kind of person you want to attract would be very interested in
and then it also includes your vision. Suggestion: a vision of how
robotics can be used in a homestead.

Cheers Karen, you're making perfect sense!  

> these "creators" will be teaching robots specific tasks and then sharing those instructions

Oh yeah, you kind of have that already in the "Maker" space where people share models for their 3D printers, or Wiki-How or Instructables, you're talking about that but for robots, eh?

In re: marketing, my father was a salesman and he kinda taught me how to do it.  "Nothing happens until somebody makes a sale." was one of his sayings.  I'm pretty much going to have to be the "marketing person" for myself I think.

My problem isn't that I don't know how to market my vision, it's that the vision sounds insane without some example to back it up.  I'm in a circular jam: I need money to make the system so I can sell the system to make money.  That's before you get to the oxymoronical proposition that I don't want to sell the system at all, I want to give it away.

Simon Foreman wrote:Cheers Karen, you're making perfect sense!  

> these "creators" will be teaching robots specific tasks and then sharing those instructions

Oh yeah, you kind of have that already in the "Maker" space where people share models for their 3D printers, or Wiki-How or Instructables, you're talking about that but for robots, eh?

In re: marketing, my father was a salesman and he kinda taught me how to do it.  "Nothing happens until somebody makes a sale." was one of his sayings.  I'm pretty much going to have to be the "marketing person" for myself I think.

My problem isn't that I don't know how to market my vision, it's that the vision sounds insane without some example to back it up.  I'm in a circular jam: I need money to make the system so I can sell the system to make money.  That's before you get to the oxymoronical proposition that I don't want to sell the system at all, I want to give it away.

Yes, like that only I think it might be more like freeware because it is probably in some kind of code.
But I don't know.
My husband is more of the tech guy. But he is convinced it will be a whole new creator market.

I understand your dilemma about making money to sell the system to make money in order to be able to give it away probably better than most. Though maybe not most on this site.

Simon Foreman wrote:First, thank you for the very stimulating questions, I really appreciate
it.

There's also the practical reason, that they can do the work for me.  I
don't mind work, but I hate to waste time.  I'm nearly fifty and although I'm looking forward
to developing muscle tone from working around that land, I'm just not
gonna become a farmer overnight.

I want to mention (this reply feels rambley but I'm wandering around in
the right place) that these days robots are pretty much off-the-shelf.
For example, I have a tiny little board from Polulu that can control up
to six servo motors and is fully programmable.  You literally plug in the
servos and then just send the board a little script over USB!

And on the software side things have gotten bananas with the recent
advances in Machine Learning, et. al.  For example, the software to look
at the camera feed and recognize and categorize, say, rocks, like I want
to, is also off-the-shelf.  It's kind of ridiculous.


However, I do like and desire things like robot scarecrows that can
recognize and scare off predators 24/7; systems that can monitor
conditions for me and warn me or adjust automatically if e.g. the
greenhouse is getting too hot/cold/dry/wet; little dumper wagons
that follow you around and can carry loads.

I see a near future where most labor is done by machine, in fact this is
already happening (whether we like it or not) due to economic pressures.

Now to me, speaking broadly, there are two main paths that I like to call
"Star Trek or North Korea" in one path we apply automation to free up
human from labor so we can do things like live in harmony with Nature and
explore the Universe; in the other path we apply automation to do what we
have been doing just harder and more intensely, and you get a few "haves"
at the top and the rest of us just riot or starve or live as creepy
brain-chip-implanted cyborg slaves or something.  Ew.

I'm in favor of the Star Trek future, where we mostly have our personal
problems solved and everybody more-or-less lives well and is generally
happy.  And also we're not destroying the ecosystem!

So that's the context I'm working from, for what it's worth.  I don't
want to just make a CSA farm, I want to produce a kind of
Utopia-in-a-kit, a simple system to go from what we have now to a
low-labor high-tech ecologically-harmonious neighborhood.

I have always given the fruits of
my work away for free.  
Not only will there be videos but the software and hardware will be given
away freely as well!    That's how you get exponential growth:
self-replication.   I'm making a kind of RepRap
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RepRap )

The best thing that could happen from my POV is for others to copy and
use and promote these systems I'm making.  That would accelerate the Star Trek future path.

I realized long ago that the efficient way to work is to give away the
wealth I generate freely to everyone and then ride the "rising tide" that
"lifts all boats".

First, I'm so glad I asked! I have a much clearer picture of your vision now from which to respond. And I hope that since the thread indicated that your idea was in the crude sketch stage, the questions help you clarify some of this yourself

Trading mind labor for body labor is a valid reason among others. I work in a non-programming position in the tech industry with a bunch of coders, so I am more familiar than most with current AI capabilities and limitations, and I think this is an excellent and largely untapped niche at this moment. I'm also pretty familiar with most of the other concepts around post-scarcity and shared economies, but rep-rap was new, thanks!

Given your goals, have you considered applying for a grant from OpenAI or similar? The crowdfunding makes more sense, now that I have a better understanding of your goals and rationale.

I realize you are early on in this process AND I would like to suggest that a mission/vision statement may be helpful, as well as a general roadmap with some milestones so that you can gage your progress.

Instead of (in addition to?) opening the prototype village to "owners," what about using it as a demo/tourist area? In other words, people could combine a unique vacation with potentially hands on experience and perhaps some educational classes, similar to how Paul offers things at Wheaton labs? My personal thoughts are that the non-owner occupied method makes this look less like the less desirable model you mentioned in my mind, but perhaps that's just me. I think if I were setting this up as a legal entity, I might move towards a cooperatively owned timeshare, perhaps? I, personally, would probably avoid a non-profit because boards are a pain in the keister to set up and maintain, unless I needed the 501c3 status for tax purposes. Instead, I'd probably lean towards having it held in a charitable trust if it weren't simply cooperatively owned (or owned by a DAO).

And I too would love a robotic scarecrow The ideas you are proposing are things I personally, have wished for, so I think you are on the right track with several of them.

P.S. is the little board you are referring to an arduino? If you decide you want to geek out on this more in depth than most of Permies is likely to find intriguing, I am available via purple moosage also.

On the subject of working with a marketing person who gets it...have you considered contacting the youtuber Mark Rober? Some of my web3 friends might be interested to talk to you about it

@Cat

(I'm going to use email style quotes, I'm having a tussle with the forum's quoting system.)

> I hope that since the thread indicated that your idea was in the crude sketch stage, the questions help you clarify some of this yourself

Oh, yeah, it was very helpful.

> have you considered applying for a grant from OpenAI or similar?

Applying for grants would be a logical thing to do, but paperwork is my kryptonite, so in practice it's not gonna happen.

> a mission/vision statement may be helpful, as well as a general roadmap with some milestones so that you can gage your progress.

Both good ideas.  I've been putting off working on the website for Ariadne Systems until I could finish setting it up (and pay for things like web hosting from out of the org's own accounts.)  That would be the obvious place to put such things.  A friend of mine was going to be one of the initial Directors but he's having some personal issues right now and had to bow out.  So the whole thing has been a bit stalled.


> Instead of (in addition to?) opening the prototype village to "owners," what about using it as a demo/tourist area? In other words, people could combine a unique vacation with potentially hands on experience and perhaps some educational classes, similar to how Paul offers things at Wheaton labs? My personal thoughts are that the non-owner occupied method makes this look less like the less desirable model you mentioned in my mind, but perhaps that's just me. I think if I were setting this up as a legal entity, I might move towards a cooperatively owned timeshare, perhaps? I, personally, would probably avoid a non-profit because boards are a pain in the keister to set up and maintain, unless I needed the 501c3 status for tax purposes. Instead, I'd probably lean towards having it held in a charitable trust if it weren't simply cooperatively owned (or owned by a DAO).

Very good ideas!

Right now it's just not practical to have people out there at all.  There's no infrastructure (other than the well) so you're basically camping.  Although, it seems according to the law that, if I built a proper latrine, I could host people at a campground.

In terms of ownership I don't plan to share this particular property, at least not for a few years.  For one thing, it's kind of a PITA to get to until the road is improved.  For another, I need to get over my reclusive phase.  I love people but I don't like them.  That's something I'm working on.

I see this place as a kind of "factory" or cornucopia for producing the materials (seeds, cuttings, tools & robots, bamboo lumber, and so on.) for transforming more places to eco-harmonious neighborhoods.  I do want to buy land, convert it, then sell it or give it away.  I just don't see this place as well situated for that.

In terms of governance I want to use a Quaker Consensus style of decision-making.

> P.S. is the little board you are referring to an arduino?

It's a "Micro Maestro 6-Channel USB Servo Controller" https://www.pololu.com/product/1350

It does so much that it almost feels anticlimactic.  It's not really electronics at this point.  I mean, you have to do a little bit to make sure you're supplying enough power but that's about it.  I also have a bunch of Raspberry Pi Pico and a whole tube of ATMega328P (the arduino microcontroller, eh?) and a BeagleBoard Black, etc...

> Mark Rober?

Hmm, I hadn't heard of him before.  Would he "pick up the phone"?

My general plan is to get something on the website ( https://ariadne.systems/ ), do some things on the land to have something concrete to talk about, then just contact people who have like, podcasts and newsletters, in the general subject area, and ask them if they want to interview me or if I can interview them.  Word-of-mouth and "cold calling" are the best methods from what I gather.

Simon, I believe in you.  Simply put, I want to be your friend and share my ideas with you because we are both
on the right treck.  :)  I can help you implement it.  Amy

Well thank you very much Amy, I really appreciate that.  I'm kind of regrouping this week, I lost some chickens and it's been super hot (111F today!) so right now I'm feeling like I should get a job instead and try again in the winter.  But I think that will pass.  It really depends on how things go in the next few days.  It boils down to whether or not my family wants to stick it out with the heat here in and around Redding, or whether we go...  I don't know where.  We don't want to go back to San Francisco.  I have seldom been so at a loss as to how to proceed. I'm not even sure in what direction I should proceed!

Simon Foreman wrote:

> have you considered applying for a grant from OpenAI or similar?

Applying for grants would be a logical thing to do, but paperwork is my kryptonite, so in practice it's not gonna happen.

Hmmm...does using Chat Gpt as an assistant change this for you at all? I find it very helpful for that first draft that I can tear to bits and reassemble later.

Simon Foreman wrote:
> a mission/vision statement may be helpful, as well as a general roadmap with some milestones so that you can gage your progress.

Both good ideas.  I've been putting off working on the website for Ariadne Systems until I could finish setting it up (and pay for things like web hosting from out of the org's own accounts.)  That would be the obvious place to put such things.  A friend of mine was going to be one of the initial Directors but he's having some personal issues right now and had to bow out.  So the whole thing has been a bit stalled.

I like to draft this kind of thing in google drive so that I can share with remote co-conspirators and control access. If it ever comes time to publish to a website you can convert docs to html and or embed a view only link to your site    

Simon Foreman wrote:

In terms of governance I want to use a Quaker Consensus style of decision-making.

I like/support this AND I think it will be important to clearly delineate what will be controlled in this manner and what is not controlled by consensus for several reasons, not the least of which that this type of decision making is slow, and there will be times when decisions may need to be made quickly.

Simon Foreman wrote:
> P.S. is the little board you are referring to an arduino?

It's a "Micro Maestro 6-Channel USB Servo Controller" https://www.pololu.com/product/1350

It does so much that it almost feels anticlimactic.  It's not really electronics at this point.  I mean, you have to do a little bit to make sure you're supplying enough power but that's about it.  I also have a bunch of Raspberry Pi Pico and a whole tube of ATMega328P (the arduino microcontroller, eh?) and a BeagleBoard Black, etc...

That's freekin' cool. I don't have enough words for how awesome that is.

Simon Foreman wrote:
> Mark Rober?

Hmm, I hadn't heard of him before.  Would he "pick up the phone"?

He's an engineer who is the Milennial and later Mr wizard.  He's top Tier YouTube. Doubt it. Looks like he charges 200K for a speaking gig. But type his name in Youtube and watch his Glitter bomb vs porch pirates and you'll see the connection. There are various ways to try and contact him through his various sites and links, but I doubt he answers any personally, except possibly his linkedin?

Simon Foreman wrote:
My general plan is to get something on the website ( https://ariadne.systems/ ), do some things on the land to have something concrete to talk about, then just contact people who have like, podcasts and newsletters, in the general subject area, and ask them if they want to interview me or if I can interview them.  Word-of-mouth and "cold calling" are the best methods from what I gather.

They were 10 years ago. I'm not sure that that is still as true today. Digital marketing and online fundraising (Kickstarter) are very much things. As is building a social media following and your own brand, which usually begins with a known platform rather than a privately owned website. One thing I'd be putting on my website other than the documents I suggested is a link to sign up for a mailing list (Emailed Newsletter). Tech investors today love transparency, they want frequent regular or on demand updates, even in early stages- at least that's been my experience with web3 project funders, many of whom have moved into funding AI projects.

Cat Knight wrote:
Hmmm...does using Chat Gpt as an assistant change this for you at all? I find it very helpful for that first draft that I can tear to bits and reassemble later.

I'm kinda ignoring the talking computers for now.  It's not for me.  James Mickens has a keynote address that pretty much covers my attitude: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajGX7odA87k

Cat Knight wrote:
I like to draft this kind of thing in google drive so that I can share with remote co-conspirators and control access. If it ever comes time to publish to a website you can convert docs to html and or embed a view only link to your site    

I use markdown files in a git repo on sr.ht, but the principle is the same.

I had one "co-conspirator" who was going to be a Director of the org, but he has some personal issues to deal with at the moment so he had to bow out.  It's really just me right now, although my sister helps.

I'm looking (sort of) for more people to be Directors now.  I have some basic qualifications in mind:

Scientific grounding

Spiritual motivation

Understanding of consensus decision-making and a commitment to use it

The first two are just a baseline, I don't want to argue with people about basic science or metaphysics.  The third one is a big deal because it conflicts with ego trips and because it's so "expensive" in the sense of requiring a lot of communication "overhead" to work.  (I suspect that consensus is the most expensive but also most efficient mode of decision-making.)

Cat Knight wrote:
I like/support this AND I think it will be important to clearly delineate what will be controlled in this manner and what is not controlled by consensus for several reasons, not the least of which that this type of decision making is slow, and there will be times when decisions may need to be made quickly.

Yeah, that's a good point.  I really want to restrict the scope of the org.  I don't want to start a political movement, nor a commune, nor a cult, etc.  I just want to facilitate the transition to ecologically-harmonious ways of living.
Really, Ariadne Systems could be thought of as a specialized real estate development company (although that concept doesn't capture all the aspects of it.)

In terms of fast/slow decision-making, that's part of the work of designing the org.  Ideally the guidelines or principles that determine the fast decisions are worked out thoughtfully ahead of time through the slower more contemplative, uh, thought.

Cat Knight wrote:
That's freekin' cool. I don't have enough words for how awesome that is.

Riiiiight!?  Things have sure changed since I was banging together crude robots out of old vacuum cleaners and 7400 series discrete logic chips.

Cat Knight wrote:
He's an engineer who is the Milennial and later Mr wizard.  He's top Tier YouTube. Doubt it. Looks like he charges 200K for a speaking gig. But type his name in Youtube and watch his Glitter bomb vs porch pirates and you'll see the connection. There are various ways to try and contact him through his various sites and links, but I doubt he answers any personally, except possibly his linkedin?

What a world.  He seems to me like a combination of Bill Nye and Johnny Knoxville.  ("Does Farting Make You Weigh Less?"  don't get me wrong, I'm going to watch that video, it's just...  Maybe I'm just getting old and cantankerous.)

Cat Knight wrote:

Simon Foreman wrote:
My general plan is to get something on the website ( https://ariadne.systems/ ), do some things on the land to have something concrete to talk about, then just contact people who have like, podcasts and newsletters, in the general subject area, and ask them if they want to interview me or if I can interview them.  Word-of-mouth and "cold calling" are the best methods from what I gather.

They were 10 years ago. I'm not sure that that is still as true today. Digital marketing and online fundraising (Kickstarter) are very much things. As is building a social media following and your own brand, which usually begins with a known platform rather than a privately owned website. One thing I'd be putting on my website other than the documents I suggested is a link to sign up for a mailing list (Emailed Newsletter). Tech investors today love transparency, they want frequent regular or on demand updates, even in early stages- at least that's been my experience with web3 project funders, many of whom have moved into funding AI projects.

Food for thought, cheers!  I'm really out of the loop.  I've been a recluse, literally, since before the pandemic lockdowns, and my social graph, so to speak, has withered.  I've got no idea what's going on, or how to reach people.  I did join Mastodon!  That's going well I think.

On the topic of grants, I found this for you https://proposals.deepfunding.ai/collaborate/da289bb5-70ec-42d1-bd51-d2a85c0070b4

Wow! Thank you.  THat is interesting.  Do you know these folks?  Would they be interested in a project w/o blockchain, cryptocurrency, or NFTs?


FWIW, here's my current inventory of little electric motors.  The five stepper motors are for a RepRap and the two dozen micro-servos are for robotics and automation.  These are basically toys, at least at first.  Broadly speaking I want to make lots of small, light, fast robots rather than a few large, heavy, fast robots.  Little kids should be able to smash these things.

Simon Foreman wrote:Wow! Thank you.  THat is interesting.  Do you know these folks?  Would they be interested in a project w/o blockchain, cryptocurrency, or NFTs?

I don't personally know them, no. I doubt they would be interested in a non-blockchain project since the fun that is funding these grants is a DAO, and they are using it for transparency and accountability and paying out in crypto. I'm not sure why accepting grant in crypto would be such a problem as it readily converts into fiat.

But if you mean if the project receiving the grant isn't making them? Seems very likely they would still be interested.  Although it doesn't take much to set up your organization with NFT membership cards, or to use a token to allow people to support your research and get behind the scenes stuff like Patreon, but without the middleman. (Use a token to gate a member area of your website or control chat access) There are plenty of ways to fit it into your existing plans without it being a big time sink or expense.


little small robots sound great for things like seeding (and pollination?), but how are they going to do things like harvest?  

I have a friend who has some experience with crypto and NFTs, I'll ask him about it.  I have no particular interest in it myself, but I'm pragmatic: if it'll get things moving, great!

> little small robots sound great for things like seeding (and pollination?), but how are they going to do things like harvest?

In my view we should be harvesting manually, eating off the tree, minimal prep.  ("Whole foods, mostly plants" or something like that, eh?)  Part of the allure of the food forest concept for me is that once it "pops" your labor is mostly harvest.  Robots should relive us of drudgery and collecting food is pretty much the opposite of that.  It's sacred.

So, uh, yeah, I personally wouldn't use robots to harvest.  But that's me, and I'm a weirdo.