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 fields, tend to be developed in relatively closed environments. Historically, documenting and sharing solutions involved costly and time-consuming publication, whether peer-reviewed articles in academic press, or mainstream publishing, with little benefit to the author. Similarly, the difficulty in tracking down 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.

A single shared infrastructure is needed so that the existing disjoint 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 and develop them further, or collaborate with interested parties that can extend the project's reach beyond the domain of their original creators. Different regions, cultures, materials, weather, geology, crops and animal species are all variations which lend themselves to adaptation of existing solutions in collaborative ways.

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 will explode the problem solving and dissemination of best practices leading to widespread adoption of sustainable behaviors and lifestyles.

Our vision is built upon the remarkable success of Wikipedia, but there is a real distinction. Wikipedia has demonstrated the power of collaborative web-based information centralization (and the development of collaboration policies to make that information solid, referenced and reliable), capturing what is well-established. Appropedia is expanding this concept to include collaborative research, development and problem-solving, incorporating real-world experiences and both amateurs and experts, plus policies to enable critiques, commentary and scoring of solutions.

Service learning and other student assignments are usually not published, and very rarely published in an accessible form. Thus knowledge is created and lost every academic year. This knowledge should be preserved; old projects and research should be used as the starting point for more ambitious projects and research - going further each year.

Case study

Possible addition of a case study to this section - the form might look like this though all details could change. It's ended up running on - perhaps some highlight can be picked out, if desired. (We can use it to inspire a blog post some day, anyhow. --Chriswaterguy · talk

A team of volunteers travels to a poor village in a poor country. They find that children in the village suffer a high rate of diarrhea, which the visitor attributes to the polluted surface water which is used for drinking. They know that either an alternative source or method of treatment is needed. Normally, finding an appropriate solution would be a mammoth task, and very likely a relatively expensive solution would be chosen out of the handful of options they are aware of, because they are the only solutions visible to the volunteer team and their support team. An expensive sand filter with a solar electric operated pump is installed, which helps the residents of this villages, but not the hundreds of other villages in the region. Furthermore, it breaks down not long after they leave and cannot be repaired in the village. The villagers return to drinking surface water. Sanitary practices that contribute to disease continue unchecked, as the volunteers did not know how to teach hygiene effectively while respecting the local culture.

In our vision, that volunteer (or one of their immediate circle of contacts and supporters) will know that in Appropedia there is a place they can find comprehensive, structured information, with hard data and project information, design information and clear "how-to" guides, in multiple languages, as well as a community of experienced and professional people with expertise in these areas. They read of an innovative public health program, and draw lessons from that; they download a health education package is used by the volunteer organization to work with the villagers in identifying sources of disease, and alternative practices - a grassroots developing understanding and motivation for change, rather than giving instructions. In the end, they work with the community in choosing a a water filter design which can be made locally without a need for subsidies. When other villages see the changes in the target village, their clean water and healthier children, they begin to copy these designs and practices.

When the volunteers finish their initial program, they share their experiences on the online forum, and are encouraged to create a page outlining their experiences. They also contribute to the topic pages on public health education and water filters, and add their translation of the educational material into the local language of the village they visited.

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 sustainability 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.

Independent experts like George Dappilly are able use Appropedia as their web page. George has transferred his documentation on Mosquito Abatement methods [need accurate info] to Appropedia and expands and updates that information regularly. Users post questions and are able to reach George through contact info.

Educators such as Prof Joshua Pearce are able to use Appropedia as the surface on which their students construct assignments - in the process creating valuable resources on sustainability. Lonny Grafman co-leads an appropriate technology summer program in Northern Mexico, and participants write up their projects on Appropedia.

A brief project timeline:

• April 2006: Site created
• October 2006: 82 registered users and 128 article pages. 74,000 pages delivered to site viewers
• March 2007: 186 users, 3,356 article pages, 439,000 pages delivered. Several active partnerships.
• April 2007: The Appropedia Foundation filed Articles of Incorporation.
• July 2007: 418 registers users, 3400 articles, 1.1 million pages delivered.
• October 2007: 518 users, 3581 articles, 1,645,000 pages delivered.

The momentum is growing, which is very positive and also requires more active coordination and management. We seek 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
• Establish structured information about existing projects to improve searchability
• Develop tools for automated maintenance of content to reduce tedious manual work.

Additionally, the two full-time Appropedians will work with information end-users to improve the site's usability and utility. They will enhance Appropedia's community tools (including the new forums and blog), partner with key individuals and organizations to bring 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 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 existing ad hoc / part-time work by focusing full-time talent. This focus will establish a critical mass of awareness and support in the community by highlighting the viability, validity and credibility of the effort.

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

The Appropedia Foundation is a nonprofit California Corporation with California 23701(d) tax exempt status. Federal 501(c)(3) tax exemption status is pending.

The work of Appropedia is currently carried out by volunteers, with costs such as hosting and filing fees being paid directly by donors. 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.

While it would be possible to incorporate a fee structure into our effort, this would effectively discourage either the contributors or the consumers of the solutions, directly counter to our goals. Our preference is to sustain our low-cost operation through donations and grants. We will consider some forms of advertising and corporate sponsorships but will need to avoid conflicts of interest. We note that Wikipedia, a much larger site, has sustained itself through support without advertising.

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).

The core members of the Appropedia team are:

• 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.

In a very real sense, the above team members are “project coordinators”. The real value and expertise that provide the solutions is the growing community of individuals and organizations. The next stage of development is occurring as they join in and include their projects and share their knowledge, 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.
• George Dappilly of India, who developed the GEM mosquito control (a low-cost, non-commercial, chemical free method).
• Gerry Baron (Home Biogas), Philippines.

Strategic partners Existing

• Demotech
• 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)

University Collaborations and Service Learning

Appropedia benefits service learning implementation by acting as a repository for appropriate technologies, systems, and policies, it will also act as a clearing house for collaborations. Service learning is “a teaching method, which combines community service with academic instruction as it focuses on critical, reflective thinking and civic responsibility. Service-learning programs involve students in organized community service that addresses local needs, while developing their academic skills, sense of civic responsibility, and commitment to the community” (Campus Compact, 2000 p. 17). Collaborative service learning opportunities assist in the training of future leaders, engineers and entrepreneurs through offering leadership opportunities, civic engagement, real life design experience, immersion in the political, economic, historical, and sociological contexts of design projects that few other teaching methods allow. Engaging in collaborative team building and team design efforts with geographically dispersed teams is challenging, but reflective of where the field is at, and headed.

For example,

• Parras from Humboldt University which post their project writeups on Appropedia) - creates 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.

and (other groups... programs such as...

Campus Compact National Center for Community Colleges. 2000. Introduction to Service Learning Toolkit. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.

Partners who have endorsed Appropedia through sharing content:

• Practical Action
• Village Earth
• International Rivers Network and American Rivers

Prospective (negotiating):

• The Web of Hope
• AIDG

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

Footnotes and references

Other sources of inspiration

• Hexayurt application