[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

[Kai Du]

Hi Frantisek and all,

thank you and/or sorry for having this discussion started. Fact is, that 
I am really excited being involved with the FHB for several reasons: 
First is, I am trying to come to the chaos communication camp in summer. 
My first C3-event. I really look forward to meet some of you FHB folks 
and some podcast community members.

I cook for almost all my life and invent recipes for quite a while now. 
If there was a chance to get a financial model to work for paid members 
of the FHB I would be interested, too. My job situation changes rapidly 
in summer and I always dreamt of working with food for money. Though I 
am aware of the fact, that nobody (except alex) met me before of the 
existing crew and maybe a lot of core members would be interested in a 
job too. I´ve got a lot of interesting projects in stasis because of 
job/money reasons. Talking about projects: I recently created a book 
about lifehacks and I am planning a sequel about food hacks. I am 
interested in any kind of definition or suggestion you guys could make. 
Feel free to contact me via this list or directly (kai at 
hobbykoch-podcast dot de) I am looking for the funny kind of food hack, 
the one-picture-short-explanation-wow ones. I see the food hacking 
community here is more based on technological inventions and/or 
fermentation projects (which is fascinating, too), but hey.

Returning to Frantiseks question about finance I think the crowdfunding 
idea is really nice. I read, there was a successfull funding of the 
recent C3-activities. So there is a proof of concept this could work. I 
guess, there is something that needs to be offered in return to make the 
quite larger budget for paying people a loan realistic. I wondered, if a 
audio/video podcast about food hacking could be a decent teaser for a 
successfull project. I would apply for head of production, coordinating 
recordings and editing of audio/video stuff around the world. I´ve got 
some experiance in that. This could be the step from few events on C3 
meetings to a larger scale and promotion for a larger community, too.

Excuse me, I may be completely wrong suggesting this. This community may 
stay a forum, in which ideas are exchanged and financial aspects are 
secondary. I would love to do a lot of food hacking, this way or other. 
Please share your thoughts.

Greetings,
Kai


Am 22.02.2015 um 04:52 schrieb Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck:
> 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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