[foodhackingbase] future possibilities and directions for food hacking base

[Frantisek Algoldor Apfelbeck]

Hi to all and Christian,
many thanks for comments, responds in the text as ###

On 2015-02-23 01:12, Christian Pfaab wrote:
> 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!

### pleasure :-)

>> 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)

### understood, agreed.

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

### as you say depends projects from a project, same impression

> 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)

### I definitely agree on the need for proper packing options, it is 
overdue and partly by me not paying enough attention to that. Thorsten 
point out similar things with the way how we build the infrastructure 
like electricity and water etc. during the events, pushing for better 
planning and processing, I do agree too.

> 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)

### Yes lets make it as a "to do" for CCC camp in the summer, have to 
think where to post about that, probably "next event" on our fhb wiki.

>> 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 :)

### great seems working so far, I think we are kind of copying CCC 
style.

>> 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!)

### Legal entity will be a good decision in the time to come, I think we 
should start to prepare for that, like doing changes moving that 
direction. Using private accounts is doable, but for example my PayPal 
is frozen for over a year with 360 eu of fhb funds on it, which sucks, I 
don't like that, it something unnecessary.

>> 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)

### I also feel that deciding who would get some funds and who doesn't 
would not be easy and it would probably make some "scars" which may not 
be worthy. Especially this applied for management and running of fhb at 
"international events" like CCC ones. The travel costs and alike funding 
seems to me as one of the options how to help if needed, we should talk 
about that more in the future.

>> 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'm certain that we do not have enough resources to cover any full 
time positions at the moment and alike bigger travel costs.

> 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)

### As mentioned above, for preparations for international events it 
would be pitfall I think, to run the things around fhb at the moment is 
doable without payments still, but if the things grows and more time is 
needed we will have to find either how to get more people/volunteers in 
for these activities or come up with another solutions.

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

### Same here and I think fhb should help to that in the related fields, 
but as discussed here and in other emails it looks like more and more 
that it should not get "directly involved" with any wage payments. Seems 
to me that fhb could function more like an "umbrella organization".

>> 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 ;)

### sound good, and yes some percentage for fhb mother.

>> 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.

### if I understand properly you mean build up a budget, reimburse/repay 
what necessary do more stuff, make bigger budget etc. right? We need to 
do that, it is definitely one line which we should keep growing.

> 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'm not sure if I understand you here. Especially for the camps 
larger sums of money - like over 1000 rather 2000 eu are needed for fhb. 
Easily few hundreds are needed during the event and after for "issues", 
these resources are easy to accumulate during the event. I would love to 
see our budget in plus number on a Day 0, that would be lovely :-)

> 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))

### that point about "any person failing" is crucial and I hope we are 
there for the upcoming CCC camp already, it is crucial for the further 
development of the fhb project. Yes building up solid fhb structure 
sounds good to me.

>> 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!

### Well still in progress but thanks :-)

>> 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

### Thanks Christian, sorry for the late replay, had some issues here.

### Sincerely,

### Frantisek

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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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