sur-viv-al-ist??[ser-vahy-vuh-list] Show IPA
–noun
a person who makes preparations to survive a widespread catastrophe, as an atomic war or anarchy, esp. by storing food and weapons in a safe place.

I’ve been telling people lately that Collab21 is going to start hosting workshops and videos on survivalism. When I talk about this, I am not in agreement with the definition above. This definition is solely in regards to a person who “make preparations to survive a… catastrophe.” I’m not thinking about any specific events that could case one to have to be prepared. I’m thinking about acquiring this knowledge to add to my arsenal. What happens if you are found quitting your job to follow a dream of living in the country?

A true survivalist knows that the food and ammo runs out, that using a weapon too much will cause it to degrade and become useless. They know that storing food, ammunition and weapons will be of less value when it’s needed than when it was stored. A true survivalist thinks about how to forage foods, how to build fires, how to find water in the desert, how to live underground or under water and how to build communities so that they won’t have to do all of the tasks necessary to sustain humanity.

But at it’s most basic, survival is doing what you know to stay alive. We all do this every day. We buy food and we work to pay for the other things we need: water, shelter, clothing. Possibly more importantly – we build and maintain relationships.

In the book Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies, I read that agriculture is one of the man’s original inventions. Without it, we couldn’t have had written language. Agriculture allows non-farmers to do things outside of farming. At first, this was helping the farmer trade and sell his crops by providing technology, commerce and accounting. I cannot imagine any of this being possible without the right relationships.

What I mean when I tell you that we are planning workshops relating to survivalism, I’m talking about what would happen if you were one of two people left on the entire planet, and nothing that you knew today existed. How could you maintain humanity? I know this will never happen, but I think the knowledge required to be self sufficient, collaborate affectively and of the fundamentals of society are key to knowing how to succeed in other areas of life.

I am not the type to wax poetic on existentialism. Self reflection is at such an exponentially greater state than is self sufficiency that it’s not worth combining the two (although they are closely related). I think if we stick to sharing knowledge and in rediscovering lost knowledge, that we’ll be moving to a good place.

What do we expect to gain? It’s simple. I’m not the only teacher here. All of us has some knowledge that not everyone else has that can be examined, recorded and shared. When I saw the movie Walkabout, I realized that people you think least likely to help can help the most. In the movie, a native was able to find water in the desert. I don’t know how to do that, but I’d love to find out.

The things I know I can teach people about are things like fermenting foods to preserve them, beekeeping and some level of vegetable gardening. The skills I’d like to know more about are community fundamentals, building houses from scratch (trees and rocks, clay and water), first aid, hunting and field dressing and animal husbandry. There are plenty of other subjects I’d like to have covered in our Survivalism workshop series, but we’ll be moving slowly for now.

Survivalism and Collab21 is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

Our renewed focus is going to be on reaching short term goals rather than our current main goal of moving into a space. Some of these short-term goals are a result of a question posed to me by a principle of the company I work for, “Say you get a space, what are you going to do in it?”

I responded, “I have a prioritized list of 1000s of things.”

“Do those.”

Ideally, I would have a prioritized list of 1000s things to do. In reality, the list is closer to 50. Some of the things on the list actually require having a space, a kitchen, whiteboards, microphones, computers, etc. So I had to eliminate most of the ideas as post-space goals. Of the ones leftover, there were a couple that really stuck out to me:

1. workshops/classes/collaborative work sessions, and
2. Video podcasting

I’ve been working on re-designing our Wordpress theme to fit with the palette of our company’s website, with the idea that it will be the primary site, but will park on top of this one. Ultimately, this will be our primary website.

One of the Wordpress Plugins I added is called Gigs Calendar, which is designed to be used for displaying a list of upcoming gigs for band websites. It was the best calendar I found for free (leave suggestions for others in the comments).

I’ve so far only set up two events. One is a learn to make beer class, the other is collaborative and will be ongoing from now on. My idea of video podcasting is to film the classes, edit them a bit and post them on the blog for free. There will be a list of all classes on a separate page. I think this will be a great benefit for Collab21.com and for the community. Most of the topics I want to have classes on are passions of mine. I’m sure these will inspire more as time goes on.

Jesus teaches survivalism through parables

Finally, I’d like to announce that there will be an ongoing theme of our classes/workshops, which will be roughly related to survivalism. Call it self-sufficiency or life fundamentalism, it’s learning how to take care of your basic needs with limited or basic resources. I live in a city that’s obsessed with local food and I think that is a good thing. People are looking back at their roots. Farming is what made it possible for us to not have to hunt and gather. Our country has for too many years been separated from the things that sustain our lives. Things like water quality, food production, soil, air quality and shelter are extremely broad topics, and it’s few and far between when I meet someone who can speak to all of these things. Our goal is to learn and teach about topics that will change this.

Wheels are Turning is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

A foreclosed home “trashout” business employs 73 people to empty 15 houses a day, and puts it all in the dump. Look at how much good stuff they’re wasting- I’m disgusted. (Also jealous- why not stash it in some of that empty property and have an auction?)

Meanwhile, Tent cities are growing with unemployed people left in the dump by corporate america.

There could be all kinds of benefit from those destroyed goods, but nobody has a chance to collect them. The cleaning company wouldn’t pay workers to do more than blitzkrieg the houses. The banks who own them don’t care. Expensive stuff doesn’t get saved from the dump. The homeless don’t get work or help.

In cases like these, the saying “capitalism is self correcting” means “people who own the system can screw it up without correcting the problems they make”. It’s someone else’s problem.

Accountability- what a great idea.

The guy who owns the trashout business has a good idea too, too bad it only makes private benefit.

For people interested in business opportunities, stories like these make a good reminder about human costs and costs to the planet.

—————-

As Susan Strasser noted in Waste and Want: A Social History of Trash, shameless landfill-stuffing practices are a product of modern consumer society. Previous generations left room for institutions like the house-to-house rag-and-bone man (who could now be the rag-and-bone-and-ebay man), but today’s corporations would rather create mega-waste.

This reminds me of Michael Pollan’s critique of modern industrial food production. Previously, cattle fertilized crops that fed cattle that fed people. Now, on one end we pump chemical fertilizer into the ground for unsustainable monoculture to fatten sick mutant cattle. At the other end their toxic waste is killing the gulf of mexico. Workers such as migrant meat-packers suffer the harshest conditions. Consumers experience a national eating disorder with a glut of artificial food-like substances.

The loops are broken, bent into weird fragments through abstract bottom-line thinking. Crazy, huh? Smart thinkers who solve these problems will create the businesses of the future.

Here’s a cool example: At Burt’s Bees, “employees waded through two weeks of garbage and found recycling opportunities that cut the company’s waste in half while generating $25,000 in estimated annual savings.”

—————-

I think good business means making things (or re-making things) instead of wasting things. As a dealer, that’s how I try to work. (OK… I just can’t help being a pack rat too). When I left the east coast, some industrial shelving that I salvaged free from a bankrupt business was good enough to bring 3000 miles and keep using in San Francisco. When it gets full, I make room by trading away stale stock. Today I spent a beautiful morning hitting moving sales and stocking up. Then I hauled a load of old leftovers to a swap meet, and came home with free cases of mailing supplies that I usually pay for. A trade like that just feels good.

My disgust about the house trash-out situation inspired a funny thought. Bad bank execs and people who sold phony mortgages should be required to do community service, to boost good business and repay bailouts. There could be a 1930’s WPA-style program that benefits homeless people and gives them work on foreclosed property. The execs could be their assistants, and their sentences would be over when they pay back the bailouts with sweat, counted at minimum wage. Take AIG, who got $180 billion: with federal minimum wage at $6.55, payback would only take them 27 billion man-hours.

Since this is a somewhat silly post, in conclusion:

Trashing out houses while homelessness gets in-tents is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

Money

Solutions

I can think of a few ways to fund a business: take out a loan, borrow, throw a fundraiser, use savings, steal.  But good businessmen will use their experience to add to this list and will also know how to improve what already works.

An example of this is Gary Vaynerchuk’s Wine Library TV.  I’ve used Gary as an example before, but I can’t stop watching his video podcasts, and reading all of his twitter posts.  I’ll admit that I’m a little fanboyish.  But I guarantee that I’m not the only one.  Gary admits that WLTV wasn’t making money for at least a year.  He used his earnings from the success of building Wine Library, a liquor store in New Jersey, to fund WLTV until became sustainable.  Now he’s adding to his business in ways unthinking to him when his business was young.

Not everyone has that opportunity.  Collab21, for example, started with 7 people living paycheck to paycheck or worse.  Until I realized that we needed better focus in terms of wealth, wisdom and work, we were just hoping that our goals would come to life out of thin air.  Starting and running a business means catering to those three things simultaneously.

A bank is not going to give you money unless you can prove to them that you’ve done your homework and have goals.  Don’t confuse a desire with a goal.  Desires are those that fade, mutate, or aren’t achievable.  Winning the lottery, chocolate treats and a predictible stock market are desires.  Goals are described in a previous post.

Use your goals to think of creative ways to fund your business.  If using a bank is not an option, think about fund raising opportunities.  If you do not have time to plan or host a fund raising event, how long will it take to reach your goal by saving?  What else can you do (work) to raise funds (wealth) so that you can sustain your business to reach your goals (wisdom)?

Documentation

When capitalizing a business, it’s important that you document money coming in and going out.  I would personally recommend following GAAP.  It will get you started on the right foot, even if you’re only saving $100 a month.  The research required in setting up and keeping books with carry a lot way in your business.  Without doing the due diligence in the beginning, this topic will be ignored and could lead your business down a path of trouble.

Question

What creative decisions did you make in your business that affected it?

Funding Our Business is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

1. Wealth
2. Wisdom, or
3. Work

If you are considering adding more board members, make sure they are one of the three things.  You can test the last two by giving them tasks, or by applying their experience.

The people you ask to join the board who are willing to work, actually have to work.  The catch is that they don’t necessarily have to be doing as much work, or have as much passion as you in the beginning, but they should be totally bought into the goals and mission of the company.

Board Members: Who We Look For is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

This cycle starts with Setting goals.  Once the goals are set and dates are applied, it’s important to monitor performance.  Depending on how things are going, the feedback will be in line with that.  The team should evaluate how to proceed and act based on the direction of the feedback.  New goals can be set if things didn’t go as expected the first time around.

Tips for setting goals were also discussed in this meeting.  Goals should be all of the following to be effective:

1. Specific
2. Measurable
3. Achievable
4. Relevant
5. Time-bound

When setting goals, re-evaluate each goal by making sure it doesn’t fail any of these criteria.  Goals drive performance.  How are the Mission101 goals for the Collab21 members progressing?

Managing Performance is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

Some of the Collab21 folks and I are going to be working on redoing our web presence.  We have a few sites set up right now:  Sharks in the Park, Collab21 and this site.  We want to consolidate our business use and public face with a standard design and access it all from one site.  We’re going to sit down next Thursday after our jobs and crank out as much work as we possibly can.  Hopefully it will carry into the weekend so we can have something by the following Monday.

Collaboration

I think this is what collaboration is all about.  Get together as a group, come up with 100s of fantastic ideas, get a few of them started, then buckle down and focus the better ones.  We’re finally at a point where we can start to focus on business.  It took a while, but I’m ready to start exploring new experiences and growing and sharing collectively.

Someone asked me today what the vision of Collaboration Chronicles was.  What is the purpose?  I found myself stuttering.  I started to explain that we’re using to blog about collaboration.  But then I realized that we haven’t really blogged about collaborating between all of the members of the group.  There are some posts about this topic, but the majority of our posts are about individual passions.  Therefore, I’d like to modify my response to include the following five things:

1. Collaboration – working together to solve problems
2. Inspiration – we are inspired in order to inspire others someday
3. Contribution – actually doing the work
4. Communication – transparency in projects and business and open feedback policies
5. Vision – understanding goals and realizing them

Collab21

We’ve met almost every Wednesday since October 2007.  We’ve missed maybe three of the Wednesdays.  We haven’t always had a formal meeting.  It started out with me emailing everyone I thought could contribute and may be interested in this idea I had of mashing The Tech Shop in Menlo Park idea with Hat Factory.  We organized and filed for an LLC, drew up some ByLaws, had some shuffling of members, attracted the attention of a member of Hat Factory to give us some guidance, sold snowcones in Dolores Park on a cold day and brainstormed down to our spinal columns.

What is the result of this?  We have some money in the bank.  We don’t have enough to get into any type of Industrial or Commercial space in the city.  None of the members really need the space to do their work anymore.  But we’re all still very passionate about having some space to do projects in, and potentially use for freelance work.

We have a mailing list with more than 50 people on it, but only two or three have actually shown up to events we hosted in the past.  We wanted to keep hustling this, but got discouraged and started doing other things.

Then I had an idea that we would host mini workshops in my apartment instead of having meetings every Wednesday.  I thought I would called them “Workshop Wednesday”, and the premise is the same as any coworking place: bring your laptop, drink some coffee, get your damn work done.  A couple people showed up to these as well, but nothing really significant.  We don’t have any drawing power.  The experience isn’t really there.  We’re still really just a group of friends who have big dreams and no capital to even being to realize them.

I’ve been inspired since the first to do greater things with business.  We’re going to rebuild our site and our brands and start invisioning our futures better.  We know what we can do, now let’s do it!

The first thing we’ve discussed is hosting real workshops with a real marketing campaign.  There’s a lot of prep we’d need to do to get this going.  The website redesign is the first step.  Keep reading if you’re interested, because we’re not done yet.

Collaboration Chronicles and Collab21 is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

Taipei 101

1. Obtain work/studio space.
2. Consolidate websites and web presence.
3. Get $10k in the bank before looking for space again.
4. Be self sustaining in all regards – mainly financially.
5. Make more creative stuff.
6. Offer free hosting to paying members.
7. Set up personal websites for board members that do not currently have one.
8. Host Workshop Wednesdays once a month.
9. Bring http://sharksinthepark.com/ back!
10. Set up social media tools for all members (twitter, facebook, delicious, basecamp, google apps) so we’re all on the same page.
11. Set up google Adsense and Amazon affiliates for http://collaborationchronicles.com
12. Active seek and obtain sponsors.
13. Finish bylaws and get approved by lawyer
14. Finish business plan for pitching
15. Make consistant brand across all sites and documents.
16. Fogcitygardens.org – add to C21 portfolio and work out agreement.
17. Get paid team project(s).
18. Atract more pre-space members
19. Have all board members do a person “Mission 101″ which contains goals related to their passions.
20. Formalize a marketing plan.
21. Make connections by hustling on and offline.
22. Make and post 20 DIY videos.
23. Get a lawyer.
24. Get an accountant.
25. Automate taxes and bookkeeping better.
26. Make a list of workshops to do for a year in advance and keep the list queue up to a year’s worth
27. Give a Pecha Kucha talk as a group.
28. Attend 5 basecamp-like events as a group.
29. Make Collab21 T-shirts and sell on website.
30. Make stickers and flyers and handout.
31. Come up with incentive for people to donate.
32. Get work out and get donations.
33. Organize a Collab21 “vacation” to work and do something else active.  (e.g. “Complete a Collab21 project/task in TAHOE!!!”
34. Do a chaulk drawing event with Collab21 (or something similar).
35. Come up with Collab21 product line to help collabortors.
36. Make list of Collab21 products and services that we can offer right now.
37. Feel good about what we’re selling.
38. Help people out – provide something for people at a low cost.
39. Free or cheap rent for board members.
40. Network better.
41. Have monthly meetings (at least).
42. Find places to host workshops (kitchens, toolshops, art, lecture halls).
43. Blog more on http://collaborationchroncles.com
44. Blog more on http://fogcitygardens.org
45. Post resumes of members on Collab21.com
46. Update NEWS tab on collab21.com
47. Redesign webiste with Django or HTML.
48. Zach and Beth to convert wordpress CSS file to Zach’s designed theme.
49. Make business cards.
50. Take pictures of everyone.

So that’s it so far.  We’ll have more a lot later.

Collab21’s Mission 101 (101 Goals) is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

A couple of good friends of mine, Walter Yu and Sean Neprud share my interest in developing passive income streams. We’re all smart, hard-working and ambitious, but making the transition from active income (work-by-the-hour) to passive income (log in, count your money) isn’t as easy as we think it ought to be. Then again, if it were easy, everyone would be doing it!

In any case, in late December, we were tossing ideas around on Twitter and decided we should hang out for a whole weekend and get some work done instead of just talking about it. We felt we needed to gather in the same physical space for an extended amount of time to hash out features and conceptualize our various projects (hence the name “incubation”). We picked the first weekend in January, from Friday Jan 2 to Sunday Jan 4, and met at Dos Palmas (that’s my place!)

Stirfry Startups is born!

Our first-ever “weekend intensive” work session focused on affiliate work to monetize our websites. Attendees included Dave Doolin, Walter Yu, Sean Neprud, Rowena Ip and Joshua Hurst.

1/2-1/4/09: Websites affiliate “Incubation”

Walter was the first to arrive, on Friday afternoon around 5 pm, laden with huge bags of produce and groceries from 99 Ranch.

I stir fried gai choy Friday evening, a great excuse to break into a jar of fermented bean curd.

Friday night focused on Adsense affiliates, which we tackled from a practical, implementation point of view. We set-up our Google documents to take down info, and the Stir-fry Google Group (http://groups.google.com/group/stir-fry-start-ups) went live the following week.

Walter stayed over Friday evening, and we got right to work Saturday morning, after a big breakfast of bacon, scrambled eggs, and humongous mugs of coffee laced with heavy (whipping) cream.

Saturday was devoted to Amazon affiliates, which we again implemented rather quickly after working as a team and grinding out the details. We got our widgets setup with reading lists, and Walter also added a Pandora widget to http://walteryu.com.

By mid-day Saturday there were 5 of us: Sean, Rowena, Josh, Walter and myself. Sean worked on content for several of his many blogging ventures. Rowena learned some Wordpress configuration and set up email for a new domain. Joshua outlined a documentary film project.

Then, more gai choy, coffee, and lots of hot spicy tea. I have a several sizes of stovetop espresso makers, a French press and coffee cone. Everyone gets it how they like it!

Sunday consisted of broader topic research, mainly web marketing. Walter and David stormed the El Cerrito Plaza Barnes & Noble with notepads in hand to jot down relevant sources and ideas.

Highlights of Stirfry #1

• Items implemented: Google Adsense banners, Amazon Affiliate widgets
• Items refined: Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, WP plug-ins
• Grub: Peet’s espresso w/heavy whip cream, gai choy stir-fry, chicken-curry noodles, eggs/bacon/oatmeal breakfast
• Tunes: Lots of electronica and related: Ben Watt, Bassnectar, Chilled C’quence, Tripswitch. Good stuff for cranking out work!

Yes, there was stir fry!

What We Learned

The weekend intensive was a great success. Here are the lessons we learned:

1. Clear agendas: setting work session agendas very clearly before it starts, then holding to that structure during the weekend.
2. Documentation: getting all our notes on the collaborative work we’re doing during and post-session
3. Follow-up items: following up the agenda with action items to do in our areas of work after the weekend.

1/9/09: Mind-mapping Friday Night Incubation

Walter and I followed up the next weekend Friday evening 10 Jan to brainstorm some new website projects. We hashed out ideas and implementation using Freemind, which is a mind-mapping software with potential use on our various projects. Walter gained familiarity with the program as I plotted out some website structure. We discussed additional ideas for our upcoming “Stir-fry Seminar”, which is in the works.

I also learned that the Thai dish Larb is ridiculously easy to make, provided you have the fish (or shrimp) sauce and some limes. I also roasted some leeks, something I learned from FOAF Simone Fung at her recent BBQ & oyster roast. (Lightly brush olive oil and herbs on leeks. Cook at 350 for 30 minutes, then broil for 5 minutes.)

Stirfry Startups — Home-grown entreprenuers fueled on home cooking is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles

If you don’t get a regular check, a cash crunch can be devastating.  A lot of people have a very limited safety net.  If you fall through it, you might have to swim upstream just to get back where you were before.   Some people don’t make it.  Other people call parents for help.   Who wants to do that?  Even if there’s never a cash crunch, living on unreliable income can cause worry even when times are good.

Here are 3 things to do for more security:

1.  Have a portion of income be dependable, even if it’s lower-paid than other work.  If it’s passive income, great.  It could be a part-time job that doesn’t crowd out other things in your schedule.  Hopefully it can bring other benefits and synch up with other work.  Working-at-work can make time spent at a poorly-paid job even more valuable than time spent on better-paid work at home.  Night clerk jobs are decent for this.  Personally, I watch a lab at a college on weekends.  It allows very useful student discounts; free classes; access to resources for my animation freelance; U.I. (hopefully- I’ll find out on summer break); and a place to work that’s often more relaxing than staying home, where there’s always distraction.  Don’t mention this to my bosses (who are great), but I was also able to negotiate the most beneficial schedule possible, by mentioning my home business (that I work on at work).  I can call it a commitment if I want to, and it pays more than the part time job, so if they really want me to work there…

2.  Have some flexible income.  This work doesn’t need priority, and you can drop it if other commitments come up.   When you decide to devote a lot of effort, it can pay off well.  Maybe you don’t want to do it forever, or it’s not worth devoting too much energy to make it grow, but when it pays it helps a lot.  Personally, this describes my home book dealing business.  The main work is locating stock- after that it’s easy.  So, some weekend mornings if my calendar is free, I stock up to cover the next few weeks or months.

3.  Have a higher goal — a plan or a project to work on that might advance your career, expand your business into new areas, or lead to a higher level full time job you’re not ready for yet.  It can be something to work on when working is easy, like a personal project for the love of it.  Or it can be another kind of flexible income that you will want to do forever.  Personally, that’s animation freelancing.  In the past it has been full time employment- maybe it will be in the future.  If I get spare time I can work on personal film projects that help with skills.  It’s feast-or-famine and competitive, so I don’t expect it to come when I want it (unlike the book business), or know how long it will last.  But, it might have more long term career potential than the other work.

Having 3 (or more) occupations going on means that you can lose one and still be OK, or take time off when they get too demanding.  You can lose 2, and have some resources to look for another without too much worry (or wasted time standing in line for food stamps- it’s a lot of work to be poor.)   Or you can focus on one exclusively when a great opportunity comes.

A triple strategy for staying afloat with self-generated income is a post from: Collaboration Chronicles