[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

[Christian Pfaab]

Hej,

On 02/22/2015 08:54 AM, Kai Du wrote:
> 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.

The discussion is long overdue I think. More in a direction tho in what
way FHB should evolve.

And it will be awesome on camp :)

> 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 think we maybe should start thinking about what is realistic as
income? What needs to be paid in taxes, what needs to be paid in
insurances. My guess is, we get 20k Euro/year per job as expenses fast.
And we are not talking about giving someone 20k Euro/year, but more 1k
euro/month. Rest is (legally required) overhead.

In contrast to that, how much money do we have raised yet? Have we hit
the 10k Euro mark in total yet?


Marcel mentioned going out with a plus of a few hundred euros for 31c3.
Sorry to say this, I see no way to finance someone from that. In
contrast Boxes fall apart by looking at them, so that is where some
money must be spent sooner or later. If we damage someones food
processor at an event, I would be happy to that person for a new one.
We, as I understand it, have no finances to do that currently.

> 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.

That would be awesome. Keep in mind FHB has basicly no gear yet (unless
something has changed dramatically).

> 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.


Financial aspects are raised quite often in terms of "how to fund next
event".

In short, I doubt FHB is the right place to create jobs as it is right
now. IMHO we lack too much structure and have our homework to do in that
direction if we want to handle employees/give out money w/o doing it in
a shady way. I think we even lack decent ways of organizing ourselves to
get us through events in a sustainable matter and not be dependent on
goodwill.

Take ohm2013 as a great example. Fenkt saved our lives by giving us
power and tools. Stuff got carried to next event. How? Well someone took
care of it. We learned from that, make sure fenkt is around at next event :)

Same with C3 events. Frantisek glues a lot together, and if he would not
manage it, I would not be suprised that it suddenly turns out to be
really hard. We borrow cameras and gear, we somehow make it work. Marcel
has been a most excellent peer since ohm and Daan is most excellent too.
All in all, it is many helping hands.

We are a good example of a somewhat chaotic group, that comes together
for various reasons every now and then. Some work on different projects
during events, some between events, some do other stuff. It all works
out and it gives us a special flair.

Come over to camp. Meet many nice folks. Help us work on issues you see,
bring your ideas and maybe we can help you. In the end I am sure it will
have a positive outcome :)

Cheers,
chris