Creating Better – One Community Weekly Progress Update #46

One Community is open source developing and free-sharing options for those who want to participate in creating better examples of food, energy, housing, education, for-profit and non-profit business design, social architecture, fulfilled living, stewardship practices and more… all for The Highest Good of All:

• Here’s our project overview
• Here’s our world-change methodology

CLICK IMAGES BELOW FOR OUR MAIN OPEN SOURCE HUBS

Click on each icon to be taken to the corresponding Highest Good hub page.

One Community’s physical location will forward this movement as the first of many self-replicating teacher/demonstration communities, villages, and cities to be built around the world. Here is our weekly progress update (#46) covering our development and accomplishments for the week of January 6, 2014, about creating better:

Creating Better
One Community Weekly Progress Update #46

Here is the bullet-point list of this last week’s design and progress discussed in detail in the video above:

• Creating Better intro @0:10
• Creating better education
  • Highest Good education: @1:30
  • Highest Good education: Social Sciences Molecule image research is done @1:90
  • Highest Good education: Working on Values image research (10% done) @2:30
  • Highest Good education: Relative Space Lesson Plan is done @2:47
  • Highest Good education: Working on the Matter Lesson Plan (outline is 90% done) @3:38
  • Highest Good education: Welcome Randie Gottlieb to the team @3:56
• Creating better food
  • Highest Good food: @4:30
  • Highest Good food: Food Forest page is complete @5:20
  • Food infrastructure 3-D progress finishing rafts, updating media beds, testing fountains @6:30
  • Food infrastructure initial roof engineering begun thanks to the help of Zdenek Jurik @7:10
  • Highest Good food open source portal redesign now 60% done @7:38
  • Reworked the custom food application design (see notes below) @8:20
• 75% done adding metric system measurements to all our pages @9:50
• Creating better housing
  • Highest Good housing: @10:30
  • Extensive research on Rocket Mass Heaters and alternatives @10:45
  • Hands progressing in the Tropical Atrium center of the Earthbag Village @11:45
• Creating better city center
  • Duplicable City Center: @12:35
  • Duplicable City Center: Bathroom touchups, outlets, doors to Living Dome done @13:00
  • Duplicable City Center: Finishing up the final 1st floor details in CAD  @13:22
  • Duplicable City Center: Initial details of the pool transition point @13:30
• How you can most help us right now and how anyone can help @14:10

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ONE COMMUNITY WEEKLY UPDATE DETAILS

CREATING BETTER FOOD – HIGHEST GOOD FOOD PROGRESS

We are creating better Highest Good food that is more diverse, more nutritious, locally grown and sustainable, and part of our open source botanical garden model to support food self-sufficiency, global collaboration, and bio-diversity :

• Learn about the structures: Aquapini & walipini open source hub
• See what we’ll be growing: Aquapini & walipini planting and harvesting | Food Forest | Tropical Atrium P&H

This last week the team finished the deep water culture rafts, added media bed details, and tested 3 different waterfalls:

GLOBAL FOOD COLLABORATIVE SOFTWARE

UPDATE: A PLANT APPLICATION WITH THE DETAIL, OPEN SOURCE, AND COLLABORATIVE INPUT 
ABILITY WE DESIRE NOW EXISTS: CLICK HERE FOR THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF LIFE

One Community is creating better and has amassed vast amounts of information over the past 3 years, and we’re now looking to create a database that will help structure and manage that information. Guy Fraser, our newest collaborative partner, is helping us organize it with the intent to create an open source and globally-usable and updatable plant and food resource. This in turn will enable us to make our information more freely available and manageable to the mainstream. We may also be able to find a way to integrate this in with the ACE Application design and function for seamless data input by all collaborative Highest Good teacher/demonstration hubs.

This last week was a big shift in how this application design was being planned. Here are Guy’s updated outline and strategy notes for creating better:

Phase 1: Create initial search engine

Specifically a web page that has two things: A search box and an interactive pictorial dendogram.

If user has some idea of what they are looking for, they can just enter it in the search box (common name, latin name, flower color, keyword, category [fruit, flower, veg…], etc). Suggestions will appear as they type, and when they select something the dendogram will automatically update to show their selection.

Or, they can just browse/explore the dendogram – this is very useful when you don’t know the name of the plant, you need some visual way to find out what it is… A very rough mockup is show below for illustrative purposes:

The dendogram is just an interactive way to browse a taxonomy. The orange circles above would be plants – instead of being orange there’d be a photo of the plant in them. The small grey circles (which would be bigger in real version) are parent groups in the taxonomy – they’d have photo of the defining attribute for their associated part of the taxonomy (eg. leaf shape). The blue circles are ‘collapsed’ parts of the taxonomy – click them and they expand out to the grey/orange circles.

Over time, more visual search methods would be added – flower color, fruit finder, and so on. We’d just add to it bit by bit as we get more info available.

Phase 2: Links to external data / searches

In this phase we start adding in links to wikipedia, pubmed, etc. Users can click through to external sites for more information on each plant or part of the taxonomy.

A feature would be added to allow users to suggest specific links, they’d have to provide some metadata about the link (eg. short description, etc).

Where possible, we’d harvest external links as well – eg. scanning pubmed, USDA, etc., and bulk creating specific links with the additional metadata.

Phase 3: Crowdsource photos & macro-morphology

We’d add features that allow users to upload their own photos for plants.

Working with a good photographer, we’d create some “how to” videos to show people how to take great photos of plants (eg. how to get a photo of just the flower on a white background, etc).

As part of this process we’d allow people to define what part of the plant they are photographing: Whole plant, flower, leaf, etc. As such, we’ll start to build up information about the macro-morphology of plants, complete with pictures. And this then allows us to link data to parts of the plant (eg. nutrition for the leaf, medical uses for the root, etc).

Phase 4: Add “Find sellers” / donate options

Add a way for people to donate – either their time (adding more photos / info) or some money (to go towards hosting costs, etc).

Add a way for people to search popular online stores (eg. amazon.com) to see if they can buy a selected plant online. They’d pay the seller, but via referral ID we’d get a cut of the money = like a donation.

We could also add a way for small sellers to get their sites listed (a link to their site) based on geographical location of the end-user for a tiny fee or donation?

Phase 5: Problem solver

Here we add in a problem solver – user can upload photo of the problem they are having, then others can suggest ways to fix it. Rating system allows good solutions to bubble up to the top.

Phase 6: Start adding in meaty data

This is where we start to become the ‘wikipedia of plants’. Rather than just linking to external data, which is in a cacophony of different formats and qualities, we’d start to embed data directly in our site in a much cleaner format.

We’d start with things that average end user will be interested in – such as how to cultivate the plant, how to harvest fruit, and so on. But over time we’d start adding in detailed scientific data as well…

Phase 7: Facilitate mass gathering of scientific data

By now we should have lots of people using the site and lots of great content (photos, links & info). We will also by this time have some idea where users are based geographically, which plants are most popular, etc…

We could do things like chose a state / county and then find labs with required chromatography kit and see if they’d donate some time (eg. over a weekend) so that locals could bring in plants to have them analyzed. We’d provide forms for locals so they could record date/time, geolocation, etc., with each sample. We’d provide packs for schools to get kids involved. We’d show the labs how to upload results to the site (or how to divest that task to the person who brought in the plant sample). Whatever it takes. This sort of thing could be done for soil as well.

As we start to get detailed info in for plants, directly hosted in our site, we can start to summarize that data in the taxonomy – make it easier to spot trends, etc. (Yes, we’d still try and import existing data where possible – eg. USDA, etc).

Ideally we’d want each lab to repeat this process at least twice a year, ideally four times a year, so that we can see how seasons affect the plants. We’d work out what the major costs are and find innovative ways to overcome them to avoid putting too much strain on the labs.

By getting decent metadata about lab results, such as where/when samples were taken, we can start to build up much more detailed info about plants worldwide. For example, we can start to build plant distribution maps:

We’d be able to compare species analysis based on location, soil type, altitude, season and a whole bunch of other stuff. We’d know where species are growing around the world (we could easily do a data gathering campaign just asking people to list plants in their neighborhood). We might even be able to determine changes to an ecosystem over time – eg. if a group of enthusiasts do an annual audit of plants (or a specific species) in their neighborhood, we’d be able to visualize changes. We’d be able to note that a specific region is missing data and then coordinate with people in that region to go out and find out what’s growing there… List is endless.

In order to do this sort of stuff we need armies of volunteers all over the world – both amateurs and professionals. It’s for this reason that I think we should focus first on becoming the ‘google of plants’ and the needs of ordinary end-users first and foremost. Without them, we’re never going to reach the critical mass needed to do the more advanced stuff on a bigger scale.

Of course, we would also be adding our own data to the site – eg. detailed info on the plants in the food forest, etc.

CREATING BETTER HOUSING – HIGHEST GOOD HOUSING PROGRESS

We are creating better housing. Highest Good housing is artistic and beautiful, more affordable, more space efficient, lasts longer, DIY buildable, and constructed with healthy and sustainable materials:

• Learn about the different village models: 7 Sustainable Village Models
• Visit the open source portals for the first two: Earthbag Village OS Hub | Straw Bale Village OS Hub

This last week Devin Porter (3D Graphics Design Specialist) fine-tuned the shape of the internal “hands” feature in 3-D for the Tropical Atrium. Here are pictures of the new design and placement (almost complete):

CREATING BETTER CITY CENTER – DUPLICABLE CITY HUB PROGRESS

We are creating better city center. A Duplicable and Sustainable City Center that is LEED Platinum certified/Sustainable, can feed 200 people at a time, can provide laundry for over 300 people, beautiful, spacious, saves resources, saves money, and saves space:

• Learn about this building and it’s function: Duplicable City Center open source hub

This last week the team finished the final bathroom touchups, added outlets, and added the glass door entryways to the Living Dome:

Rob Gjerde (Swimming Pool Design & Construction Expert and owner of Sorico Design and Consulting) also made progress this last week on the transition point for the indoor/outdoor pool. Here’s an image describing how this area will be closed off in the winter:

AND WE PRODUCED THIS WEEKLY UPDATES BLOG – CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE

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WHAT ONE COMMUNITY IS CREATING BETTER

One community is creating better. One Community is creating better place to grow together and change the world together. We are creating a space that helps each other live in integrity with each other and the planet as we strive to be the greatest versions of ourselves. We do this by harmoniously respecting each other, nature, and the rest of our one shared planet.

Our goal is to demonstrate what we feel is the most sustainable, healthy, and fun environment we can better create. A place based on compassion, kindness, and collaboration. This replicable community will serve as an example for what is possible.

Throughout our design process we are open sourcing and free-sharing everything needed for construction and replication. This includes what we call “Highest Good” approaches to food, energy, housing, education, for-profit and non-profit economics design, social architecture, fulfilled living, stewardship practices and more. We are creating better resources for implementation as individual components or complete developments called teacher/demonstration hubs. These hubs will help launch additional hubs as awareness and knowledge grow.

BUILDING THE FIRST OF MANY

One Community is creating better and will be the first teacher/demonstration hub. It will function as an experiential-learning model that facilitates mass participation to address humanity’s most pressing challenges through: A replicable model for expansion, building seven self-sufficient village/city prototypes, becoming the world leader in open-source sustainability solutions, and evolving and expanding ALL aspects of sustainable living.

WHY ONE COMMUNITY IS CREATING BETTER WITH THIS

The One Community self-replicating model is capable of creating better and sustainable planet within 30 years. We will achieve this by establishing successful teacher/demonstration hubs on every continent. Villages include designs appropriate for each of the five main types of climates. They also include options for even the most challenged economies. These hubs will collaborate with one another, share ideas, resources, and work together as a network to heal the planet. They will also transform the global lifestyle to a more enjoyable, fulfilling, healthy, and sustainable one.

The specifics of how One Community is creating better and accomplishing this can be found on the One Community Solution Model to Create Solution-creating Models Page. Research supporting and showing the benefits of a model like this can be found on our Research and Resources Articles Archive.

Even if we don’t achieve our ultimate goal of global transformation, a self-replicating teacher/demonstration model like this will take a relatively short period of time to positively affect millions while inspiring millions more.  For One Community residents (the Pioneer Team), the idea of creating better and sharing the social and recreational experience with visitors is also fun, exciting, fulfilling, and an additional reason why we are creating better.