Dave Denysenko

Personally, the things listed above haven't given me too much relief. The only thing that helps me is Butterbur. Do some research
(it can't have PA's) but I'd give it a try. For me this stuff is magic!
I'm looking into adding to my garden because it's so helpful to me around this time.

Dan Pink actaully writes a really interesting book on what drives people - the prime example is of wikipedia. Why do people work their day job and then devote large amounts of time to something else, just as technical, for no pay. He says there are 3 reasons: Autonomy, Mastery & Purpose.
Those are the same things that i want to see in the development of this tool.

I think the tool will have value because of the combined wisdom and experience. More specifically, i think we can capitalize on the combined wisdom by building a network of links to show the validity of specific aspects of a design based on the number of sucessful links.
At a very high level, we don't need to take the yahoo approach and log every plant that could influence the garden. As we enter designs with greater and greater detail, the paterns of sucess will show what works together and what does. This information will make planting future gardens increasingly more and more effiecent. Instead of passing on info from generation to generation, we can speed on the process and save it for everyone, by sharing info on a new platform.
Does this concept make sense?

Rufus, i like the direction you're thinking in ( i think it was you in an earlier post)
if you think about the first days of the internet, yahoo vs google. Yahoo wanted to catalog every webpage but google said we can easily see important webpages by looking at how they are linked/network together. a library vs a community.

In this case maybe there is a way to start loging what people are planting where and with what which will show the successful "linking" in the network. Anyone can collect data on plants. Just data on plants is easy - information is easy but what we really want is the community of grows sharing what they do. Sharing experiences which will benefit everyone. We want to capitalize on the community of experience to build a network of growing paterns.

I agree with what you’re saying mike

You repeatedly stress the need for native applications vs cloud. Is this primarily to continue development away from the internet (availability/future problems)? I’m all for that – there must be some mechanism to dump data however I would also argue that a higher priority must be the communicative nature of the program – phrased another way, without the community input this won’t work as well. Both are separate issues and not mutually exclusive, its just a comment regarding priority in building the structure.
“Local food resiliency is very important” couldn’t agree more. It will be a bigger issue as our national status changes. Already close to 30% of our food is imported… that means big problems in a currency disruption. It’s OT but a video was recently posted of Kyle Bass (hedge fund manager) giving a recent talk about the world financial state – incredibly interesting and troubling!

What do you see as the road map/steps to get this moving forward?

i'm blown away be the response - i guess we're all on to something.
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The purpose:
Combine traditional methods and new research to change the way food is grown.

Goals:
1. create a readily available, easily understandable, visual system of distilling hardness, type, feeding, soil ph, sun, watering, pests, companions, Diseases, earlier & late planting schedules, distance & depth, & height of plants to novices and experts alike.

progress:
Currently amassed a base amount of data on typical house garden plants, overstory and herbs. Working with co-worker to develope the data base.
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So i've been shocked that what i thought was relatively noval is being pursued by so many.
as i was reading through Mike Hagar's original post it really dawned on me that my approach isn't correct for what i really would like to see happen. instead a small group creating this thing, the only way this is going to be as awesome as i would like to see it, is to create a mass user input data base - wikipedia model. Build the structure & generic data and then allow users to build the connections which allow the design of the garden/food forest work. my 2cents

i guess i'll follow on the Permaculture information technology: existing databases and design application efforts.


Mike it sounds like you're in or have been in the bay area? I'm a project manager at Stanford, we might be neighboors.

Like Joe Proto, I’ve been a long time stocker first time poster on the forum. I've come out of hiding because this is something I’ve been seriously looking into.
I've had the same questions regarding scope - huge database or simple infographic.
I’ve started compiling info for a database because i want this to be a resource that can help the novice and the expert. Nothing can take away experience however this can be a tool to help guide/give ideas regarding how plants might interact, respond, and/or developed into a system.
The goal is to provide a tool that (1.) helps create better food systems (2.) get more people in the dirt (3.) facilitates knowledge growth.

Because the amount of information is so amazingly large, I’ve put phased completion on the progress with the ultimate goal of including crops, trees, and flowers for more complete systems. For example, the first phase is to complete the subset of data of household gardens. Even at this level this is a functional tool for many.

All of the posts have had great ideas about things to track - i want them all. It's an insane amount of information but a tool like that is something that i actually want.
I think having this resource can help create better permaculture systems.