Appropedia:BFI prize submission: Difference between revisions

Challenge Response (limit 1500 words).

"The Buckminster Fuller Challenge seeks submissions of design science solutions^[1] within a broad range of human endeavor that exemplify the trimtab principle. Trimtabs^[2] demonstrate how small amounts of energy and resources precisely applied at the right time and place can produce maximum advantageous change."[1]

"In order to win The Buckminster Fuller Challenge, your entry must clearly convey how your solution exemplifies the trimtab principle and meets the Entry Criteria stated below."[2]

Entry criteria

This section of notes will not necessarily be used sequentially, but might be used as appropriate in the final submission."

Comprehensive — a clear demonstration of holistic systems thinking.

Wiki as basis, open format. Open approach to add-ons including forums.^[3].

• Networking on the site supports info resource (help with info, projects, project writeups), and vice versa (people are most likely to come for the resource, and networking happens incidentally).
• Forums support the creation of content, thanks to open license and forum policies and focus.

Anticipatory — projectively tracking critical trends and needs; identifying and assessing long term consequences of proposed solutions.

• Openness allows for all manner of ideas and solutions that meet the basic criteria for scientific rigor.^[4] Some of those solutions will be very forward thinking, and we as individuals will not recognize their significance. However, we provide a place for all such projects and designs to grow, until the time is right.

Ecologically responsible — reflective and supportive of nature's underlying processes, patterns and principles.

Emphasis is on empowering and informing, enabling those who use the resource, and those they impact, to be ecologically responsible.

Reflective of natural processes - unstructured, allows for people to create roles and fill niches.

Verifiable — able to withstand rigorous empirical testing.

Our policy on rigor - Appropedia:Rigor.

Usefulness demonstrated by:

• (growing) popularity (a necessary but not sufficient indicator of effectiveness).
• Feedback - people applying what they learn.

Replicable — capable of being readily undertaken by others.

• Replication of ideas documented at the site
  • Successful Projects are meant to be replicable.
  • Projects that are less successful are opportunities to learn
  • "How-to" pages are aimed specifically at replication
• Extension of ideas
  • Often a project in one region requires modification for replication. Wiki simplifies that extension, aiding replication
• Replication of article concept
  • It's easy for members of the community to repeat the documentation
  • Partnering approach accelerates replicability of solution collaboration by established groups and experts
  • Indeed, wiki enables and promotes a systemic boost to replication and extension of sustainable ideas

Achievable — likely to be implemented successfully and broadly adopted.

It's happening already.

• Low barrier to use - shows up on Google searches (increasingly prominent).
• Low barrier to participation - philosophy of openness (and diligent spam and vandalism prevention and surveillance) allows anonymous contribution.

Outline - what needs to be described

Within the context of these criteria, please address the following: (*)

1. Describe the problem(s) you intend to solve and/or the preferred state you intend to achieve.

Efforts in sustainability and development technology, like many other technical-related fields, are usually developed in relatively closed environments. The activation energy needed to document, share, and find existing solutions to appropriate technology problems has led to engineers and fieldworkers wasting time, energy, and resources solving the same problems over and over again for lack of a workable, open-licensed solution.

A common place and infrastructure is needed so that the existing distributed community of appropriate technologists can more easily and openly collaborate on their projects. They should be able to share their work with others who wish to apply them directly, study and develop them further, or collaborate with interested parties that can extend the project's reach beyond the domain of their original creators.

We envision a world where people work together to solve problems and share solutions, internationally and multilingually. The complexity of sharing has been a barrier; an established infrastructure will enable a cultural shift toward more sharing and collaboration throughout the community of organizations and individuals.

The "trimtab" concept is demonstrated by the leverage that can be achieved by sharing of information at zero cost to the author or reader. Creation of this infrastructure is going to explode the problem solving and establishment and dissemination of best practices that will lead to widespread adoption of sustainable behaviors and lifestyles.

2. Describe your solution and your plan to implement it.

To a large extent, our plans for implementation are already underway, thanks to the efforts of a large team of dedicated volunteers working on an ad-hoc, part-time basis.

We call our solution Appropedia. Appropedia is an online, wiki-based clearinghouse for ideas, projects, questions, and designs in the domain of sustainable and development work. All content on Appropedia is released under an open license, enabling people to extend, share, translate, and use it freely and at no charge.

A walkthrough case study here on what the Appropedia experience is like for various types of volunteers would be fantastic.

Statistics here on how many pages, projects, growth-over-time, etc. Appropedia has had would be fantastic.

We're hoping to accelerate and expand the work that's already being done by providing fellowships for two volunteers from the existing community to work on Appropedia full-time. There are a number of problems shared by many appropriate technology organizations who want to collaborate with others online, and we'd like to develop open-licensed solutions for this and share it with the community free of charge. A partial list of features follows.

• Provide mechanisms for scoring / ranking of projects and ideas in order to promote the most rigorous solutions
• Promote open licenses (Creative Commons, etc.) for technologies as well as code and content. In particular, it is important to offer licenses that offer the ability to protect key shared publications from alteration, and licenses which encourage open publication using "copyleft" and public domain content
• Offer structured information about existing projects and software tools to work with such, so automated systems can more easily search through and manipulate microformats rather than having to get people to laboriously read through all the pages on the site.

In addition to acting as stewards in the creation of the above resources, the two full-time Appropedians will enter into a constant dialogue with information end-users on how to improve the site's usability and utility to them.They will aid community efforts to enhance the visibility of Appropedia's community tools (including the new forums and blog), partner with key individuals and organizations to port their content to Appropedia and simplify their ability to share information (the process has already begun with one of our partners, the Open Architecture Network), and recruit, support, and encourage new users from existing appropriate technology groups. The translation and internationalization effort is also an important factor; the site is currently largely in English.

In many ways, we will be largely accelerating the work that has been done in ad hoc and part-time ways by focusing full-time talent. This focus will establish a critical mass of awareness and support in the community by highlighting the validity and credibility of the effort.

3. Describe how you will finance your solution and make it economically viable.

The Appropedia Foundation is 501(c)(3) (pending).

The work of Appropedia is currently carried out by volunteers, with donations covering costs such as hosting. The ability of the effort to deliver well over 1.5 million pages of content for a net cost of around $3000 is evidence of the tremendous leverage power. Additional funding will enable us to employ staff and expand our work in several important areas. However, sustainable operation requires very little funding. Our preference is to sustain operation through contributions and grants, but some forms of advertising and corporate sponsorships are acceptable alternatives.

4. Describe who will take your solution to the next stage of development (include your qualifications and/or those of your team, and any strategic partners).

Describe the roles we will take within Appropedia?"

• Lonny Grafman - 4 years instructor in Appropriate Technology & environmental engineering at HSU; Executive Editor of International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE); Initial Founder of Appropedia.org website. Fluent in Spanish. Member, Board of Directors, The Appropedia Foundation
• Chris Watkins - MEngSc in Water and Sanitation, Fluent in Indonesian. Member, Board of Directors, The Appropedia Foundation
• Curt Beckmann - BS Physics, MBA. Filed Articles of Incorporation, Tax exemption for The Appropedia Foundation. Member, Board of Directors, The Appropedia Foundation
• Ryan Legg - BS in Civil Engineering, Program Manager at the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise
• Vinay Gupta - Founder of Hexayurt, STAR-TIDES (Vinay can augment this obviously)
• Steve McCrosky - Masters in Science of Nursing, experience in public health, appropriate health technology, wheelchair construction and community development.

And yet, in a very real sense, it is the community of Appropedians, both individuals and organizations, who join in and include their projects and share their knowledge, who are fulfilling the vision, taking it to higher stages.

Active members of the Appropedia community who do not have official roles (as admins, board members...) include, by way of example:

• Joshua Pearce, Assistant Professor of Physics, Coordinator of Sustainability: Science and Policy Program) and Coordinator of Nanotechnology at Clarion University of Pennsylvania, and the manuscript editor for the International Journal for Service Learning in Engineering (IJSLE). He is using Appropedia as a venue for his online teaching, creating content and connecting students to the effort.
• Mel Chua, electrical and computer engineer, educator by passion, intern with One Laptop Per Child. She is one of the people who provides technical advice on the running and development of the Appropedia site.

trying to give a good impression here, without naming the whole community... good to add one or two of our non-english speaking background people like User:LeissKG or... demotech people? if only we knew more about them...

Strategic partners

• Open Architecture Network - similar concept of Open Design, specifically for housing
• OLPC - important way of distributing content (and finding new contributors) and connecting with communities.
• Engineers Without Borders (Australia) (other groups... programs such as Parras from Humboldt University which post their project writeups on Appropedia) - engagement with students, empowering them, involving them, giving them an outlet for their passion and compassion for the developing world and for the state of the planet...

see also Appropedia:Partners - if there's any more than can be made to look interesting here.

Footnotes and references

Other sources of inspiration

• Hexayurt application