One of them myself, having traveled extensively, I figured there is lots going on in the natural building area worldwide, yet we could may be do something to bring it all together in the most practical way possible, through website programming for instance. I had serious talks with members of the EBANZ, YIMFY, AUSBALE at the International Straw Building Conference held in Methven, New Zealand in 2016. We all pretty much thought the natural building community could make great use of such a global web platform. Of course there already are many existing great websites and Facebook groups on the topic, such as Naturalhomes or Naturalbuildingblog, just to mention a couple of prominent ones. Will this new site connect us a tiny bit more? Or let’s say, in a new or different way? I hope so.
At the time, I was working on another platform project and realized there wasn’t much distance between one and the other in terms of structure and functionalities, just that they had different purposes.
I eventually gave it a serious go, day and night, for a couple of weeks, and managed to get something working but, let’s face it, horrible to look at, full of patches and wrinkles in a web development talking way. It was called naturalbuildingworkshops.org. Original right ? And that was it. Until I figured my cousin which I was coincidentally seeing a lot those days, actually was... no less than a programmer. So I asked him some advice and he offered to work on it with me yet... from the scratch! Programmers are like architects for that reason they rather scrape the existing structure off and start completely new - and safe - rather than take the risk amending something they don’t know anything about and that could reveal itself pretty ill.
It took about a solid year to get around the site’s skeleton. Working on the side, both of us, it wasn’t easy task. Now, since September 2018, it’s starting to show for it, slowly, enabling us so far to list events which can be searched through using multiple specific criteria allowing you to get the most relevant information to you.
Current listed events on November 15th 2018
We called it Ecobilda, as for “Ecological-builders” but you probably figured that one out. We’re working on the design and functionalities as I am writing this. Soon we will be able to very specifically search for workshops, courses, conferences and volunteering opportunities. But also share stories, projects, techniques, give advice to one another and much more. Of course, most of this is already possible through a multitude of websites and social networks. Diversity, as for in mother nature, is clearly necessary. But what if all this could be done even more efficiently ?
Now, for all of this to make any sense, you would have to find this site relevant. And useful. I guess we will soon figure that out, by the way you are - or not - going to use it. We do hope you’ll find it useful (ahah...Do you?!)
www.ecobilda.org
Cheers,
Mathias Lefebvre
Happy as I can be after bringing bales inside a brick house. Feels warm and countrylike all of a sudden, love it!
