[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

Sun Feb 22 04:52:36 CET 2015

Hi to all and Kai,
this email became quite long and it is as I write it, no special 
wordings etc. touching many important topics. If you have been involved 
for a while or you are just keeping an eye on us, please read it and 
comment, it would be highly appreciated. Sorry for writing in length.

Concerning the fhb financial budget we just kept a track of the budget 
which we used mostly for the events - preparations, running and closing 
up. However in the last year or two we started to pay for our hosting 
service at Uberspace, security certificates (money were donated) and we 
started to invest more into projects in between the events like the 
Experimental Incubator development. So in other words things are going 
in the direction of more permanently active community which produces and 
consumes more resources and needs more energy and time to keep organized 
and funded.

Joining until know meant that someone is interested in food&drink 
related projects which have often also scientific and technological 
aspect, so people started to ask questions, post, got involved with 
preparations for the congresses and well become fhb base folk :-) No 
clear procedure, we know each other over the time. Generally people who 
are around for some time are the "main orga" for the next event if they 
have time and they want to do it, new people are helping for their first 
event and if all goes well they get deeper involved in the community 
later on becoming the orga for next event, starting to exercise the 
consensus more etc.

It seems to me that we are approaching a crossroad where we should 
decide how to move further. More and more people know about us, more and 
more people keep in touch. We can do a lot, resources are needed for 
that, mostly the human ones but financial too. At the moment I can 
imagine keeping the group smaller and operate as we do now, basically as 
hobbyist having fun and keeping it easy. Second way would be become more 
and more active, basically starting to do at least some of our projects 
as professionals, more on that later. On the  topic of membership, 
having some kind of "membership", associate membership etc. is one of 
the ways. If we go that road I would suggest not to directly relate it 
to the "membership payments", having sliding scale options etc. but that 
is just mine opinion and honestly I'm not sure, I have to think about 
that and we need to discuss that it is a big thing, however I think we 
should go through that and decide on something.

What I know for myself and can express freely and happily is, that I 
want to see fhb increasing it's activity which however means also more 
time and energy invested by people who are involved in it. Till now all 
these activities which moved us forward were done on voluntary bases, 
which was lovely however also it becomes clear to me that it is limiting 
us in a way. We tried to give people who did the work variety of 
advantages like ingredients from events, wooden materials left 
afterwards, do some social event in their local community (reciprocal 
help :-)) etc. but except my case who profited most I would say it was 
rather symbolic. I personally would be very happy to be able to get some 
monetary resources from fhb activities because I could invest more time 
in the project but I'm aware or rather worried how that would affect the 
dynamic of the group and it's inter human relationship. It seems to me 
that the effect would be overall negative at least that is my feeling 
about that. On the other hand I think I can clearly see that several of 
our activities have really big potential to really be an inspiration and 
helping a new revolutionary things to happen however without resources 
for the people who have the knowledge and experience so they can 
dedicate more time into this directly and make it happen I don't see 
this likely to happen. That is what I experience on my side when I 
really would like to dedicate more of my time and energy to these 
activities but I just cant because I have to go on the field doing some 
field work for cash to cover my living costs. I feel personally that I 
can do so much more in food hacking base if I had more time and more 
stability but it would have to become full time dedication on my side 
and I do not have personal funds at the moment to make that happen. I 
have met several people who I know would love to get involved much more 
but they would need some payment for their work or other types of 
reimbursements.

One way how we could get resources for our activities and even money for 
some modest "wages" would be to run dedicated crowdsourcing campaigns 
for given activity/project with clear statement that for example 30% of 
the funds will be dedicated to the payments to the people who will do 
the work on this project. From my point of view it is an honest thing to 
do, nothing bad to feel about and it would help a lot (for example on my 
side), also it could still keep the fhb main project voluntary etc. An 
example could be the experimental incubator project for example, or 
establishing the food hacking base forum which we talk about for a 
while. I would not suggest at least for the moment any personal vages 
etc. for the organization of the main events like CCC events and the 
bulk of the fhb activities. Also for the "wages" or personal payments if 
we go that way in the future I would strongly argue to set them in the 
manner that they are of a such hight that if you are after money, you 
would not become interested, realizing that you can get for example 
double wages in another project etc. In other words it should appeal to 
the really interested people so they could do what they believe in and 
cover their bills.

Please do note that by the late spring we plan to be done with building 
the fermentation facility, small hacker/open space and residency here in 
Jeju and it is my hope to make this available to people to come and 
collaborate. Of course running some crowdsourcing campaign or something 
like that to get some resources for the building activities, energies 
etc. would be lovely. However this could help to some people to become 
more active and keep their expenses minimal when doing so. Similar 
places and communities I would love to initiate in Europe and other 
places, sharing resources etc. This one is kind of a prototype or a real 
life field experiment :-) And yes all of this is being done and funded 
from my and Eunha's personal finances, energy and time and I wish I 
could do this way faster but did not have resources and I hope to change 
that because I think having "real food hacking base facility" is just 
cool and so much can be done!

Anyway I think that you hit Kai the nail on the head, lets see what the 
others think discussion is opened seems to me :-)

Sincerely from Jeju,

Frantisek

PS Maybe it would be good just to send the responses to the list so we 
do not copy everyone, who wants to stay tuned in is on the list by know 
anyway

On 2015-02-22 00:32, Kai Du wrote:
> Hi everyone,
> 
> the discussion about financial aspects of the FHB raised a question: I
> really would like to join - is there some kind of organisation
> associated to the FHB? Is there a membership fee, or anything similar?
> Or is the financial stuff connected to the events and further events?
> 
> Greetings,
> Kai
> 
> 
> 
> Am 21.02.2015 um 13:21 schrieb Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck:
>> Lovely Marcel, thanks! I've added percentages to the type of expenses 
>> just for orientation.
>> 
>> Sincerely,
>> 
>> FAA
>> 
>> On 2015-02-21 19:42, Marcel van der Peijl wrote:
>>>> We worked on that with Marcel, we are basically done, numbers quite
>>> fit now we have found a major flaw - 250 eu expense not added/missing 
>>> in
>>> the financial charts for wood and materials which we bought from CCC.
>>> Final number should be online tomorrow or even late today, up dated
>>> sheets are here.
>>> 
>>> https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Bj_60w8B7EmbdfyCZSivt-29vKM1ZA22c6bSuafwCZc/edit#gid=0
>>>> Our final profit from the event will be around 250 eu, plus 360 eu
>>> frozen on my PayPal account and 50 eu in bitcoins, which totals at 
>>> 670
>>> eu food hacking base ready for the next event and projects.
>>> 
>>> The sheet is not fully finalized, I suspect there may be two
>>> corrections missing but they roughly cancel out, but will make a
>>> change in workshop vs other cost. I grouped the expenses (end of
>>> sheet) into different categories to show where money went - 
>>> inventory,
>>> transport, food ingredients, and workshop-specific expenses.
>>> (whiskeytasting was expensive! But it did bring in almost all the
>>> money of day1, I counted before and after the event, so roughly break
>>> even on that one - must be kept cheaper next time).
>>> 
>>> I also did not patch up frantiseks subsheet, sorry.
>>> 
>>> I will be preparing a sheet with our total budget/balance, and a new
>>> sheet for upcoming event. "big spenders" like me and frantisek will
>>> get their own subsheet, and I will try to eliminate the need for
>>> double entries like there was on this one.
>>> 
>>> Marcel
>> 
> 
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-- 
Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck

biotechnologist&kvasir and hacker

http://www.frantisekapfelbeck.org

"There is no way to peace, peace is the way." Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi

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