[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck algoldor at foodhackingbase.org
Sun Mar 1 12:55:54 CET 2015


Hello Lotte and all,
thanks and answers in the text as ###

On 2015-02-24 06:56, Cooking Roffa wrote:
> Hi all,
> 
> Thank you Frantisek, Marcel and others for keeping the FHB going!

### happy that more and more people do the show :-)

> You asked some very fundamental and difficult questions there
> Frantisek. I can see the dilemma here. I share the same worry that
> introducing paid 'jobs' in the FHB would affect the dynamic of the
> group and it's inter human relationship in a negative way. On the
> other hand it might be difficult to carry on the way we are doing it
> now?

### I feel that if we want to keep things like now we do not need any 
major changes concerning financial rewards for people involved, it is 
rather if we want to become more intensive and do more projects etc. 
than we most likely would need extra funds for people involved.

> If we decide to pay people for their FHB work I think it should be a
> small group (and by that I mean maybe 2 or 3) of people have been with
> the FHB for a while and have, well, proven themselves worthy of it.
> That way the dynamic of the group will hopefully not be affected (too
> much) because people see, accept and understand why.
> (I would not be interested in being paid atm, just to be clear)

### Got it, smaller group may be OK, how it effects the dynamic would be 
seen.

> I'm a little weary of becoming too 'professional' though as I - in
> general - like the way we are now.

### :-) I like this way too :-)

> I hope this answers your questions more or less?
> 
> Also: I might consider visiting you in Jeju next year :-)

### Great!

> As far as the "real food hacking base facility" goes, we're trying to
> set up something similar with our company Ferme Kolen in Rotterdam.
> Partly business, partly a space to be experimenting. Our inspiration
> is the Cultured Pickle Shop in California, look them up!

### I will check it out and I actually thing that these "real food 
hacking base facilities" may be a ways how to get some funding for 
people who want to be more involved in these locations by running 
specific projects there and keep the "international" activities 
voluntary or mostly voluntary. It could be a way, just my thought.

> Many greetings from Rotterdam!
> 
> Lotte

### Many thanks Lotte,

### Sincerely,

### Frantisek

> 2015-02-22 8:54 GMT+01:00 Kai Du <info at hobbykoch-podcast.de>:
> 
>> 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
>> [1]
>> 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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