[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

[Christian Pfaab]

Hej,

On 02/22/2015 04:52 AM, Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck wrote:
> 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.

Thanks for the writeup!

> 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.

Just to make it clear, technical budget for hosting/computer stuff is in
the 10s of euros/year, events easily get "carried away" in the 4 digits
(and probably hit 5 digits easily if we get the money ... somewhere ;)
(ohm2013 budget had iirc tent rental for 400 or 500 euro to begin with)

What I have no clue about is the project costs of long running projects
which probably are as variable as can be.


I am missing an important budget point as well:
- Building up stuff for permanent use in events.
I have not been at 31c3 during the event, just day -1/0 and last day
during teardown picking up stuff from me, which was ... impossible.
Impossible not because you did a bad job, but because of "dare to touch
this carton box and suffer the consequences". We really should invest in
decent material to carry over the stuff from location to location w/o
the fear of running out of ducttape to fix it. I did not dare to touch
the pile as it was looking rather fragile.
(In the end my stuff probably was already packed away neatly somewhere
else, which is fine as well)

So I strongly suggest putting in money for getting a decent stock of
items and ways to get them transported (boxes etc). Everyone in the
tearup/teardown process will profit from it, every time. (Big thanks to
the buildup/teardown crew, doing an awesome job every time)


> 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.

I like that model :)

> 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.

We have another point in there, whether we need a legal entity.
Currently Marcel and Frantisek do use their _private_ accounts for
handling a lot of it. I certainly am fine with them doing it this way,
but I wonder whether there are situations where a legal entity (German
verein?) might be beneficial. We might even set up an european coop
easily. We then can get charity status and ppl can donate tax deductable
in the EU (no matter whether eu or country specific charity) Which might
make donating to us easier for them. (Donate money, get it back from the
man!)


> 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.

>From my experience with student councils from university it is a huge no
go to pay "some" members. We should not kid us, we do not have the
resources to reimburse everyone for all their time and effort.
Reimbursing some means arbitrarly deciding against some people and
creates bad feelings in the long run. Reimbursing all means "thanks you
came here and worked many hours, here is your 5 euro". I personally do
not think that reimbursing volunteersh with money is a good way. Think
of 31c3, the angels came and helped and all they got was some place to
sleep, some basic food, some drinks, and a lousy tshirt. And damn, they
love that tshirt. (I personally do see some specific funding to be more
useful, like helping with travel cost/tickets/storage)

> 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.

Funding people full time is a huge PITA. The amount of cash needed is
immense, especially in your case with being Korea based (travel costs
for Europe/USA). I really am unsure whether we can pull something like
this off at this point of time, as it means getting in a good deal of
money on a regular basis. I am sure everyone had this discussion with
starting a hackerspace and realized it stays a hard problem. Haveing
"member fees" to pay someone else from the community is IMHO a no go. (I
see myself and others fall into the trap of "but he gets paid, so he has
to do it" thinking)

That said, I would love to see people make a living off the things they
love.


> 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.

Depending on the project you should even raise that percentage. And of
course, always raise some money for the mother organization ;)

> 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 wages 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.

I like project attached reimbursements for people. W/o reading the mails
concerning a forum I am somewhat suprised to see a forum as an example
to put money to, yet I unfortunately understand the reasoning. With
hardware projects I do see it more clear, as you sometimes blow some
equipment, have wear and tear. And of course, we all fuck up in
cooking/food stuff sometimes :)
I can only speak for  myself and I know how I spent and plan to spend
reimbursements from projects, which mostly is put the money forward to
new projects. It always gave me freedom to do more stuff, so I fully
support that.

All in all I am not happy to think about giving money out from fhb  w/o
it being properly secured with saveing to pay for damaged stuff from
folks, handle unexpected costs, do advance decisions. Take ohm2013 as
the best example, a lot of money upfront was needed to pay for the
tents, and moreover the certainity that the money would be there in time.

I think first build up a solid fhb structure that can live on with any
person failing, get some saveings and get then to the point to
pay/reimburse/thank people for time somehow. (It starts with
inventory/boxes/transport/storage and ends with legal stuff like bank
accounts/finances/accounting (sorry for the persons doing that))

> 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!

Awesome work!

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

will reply to that mail soonish.

cheers,
christian