Diary of an EcoHacker
Entry 2, August 20th 2015
Dear Reader,
The geeks have officially stormed the castle.
Over the past 9 days, a small army of approximately 50 builders, makers, volunteers, organisers and media-folk have worked to transform the majestic old Chateau Millemont into a sustainable innovation hub: POC21.
FYI you are reading entry two of my weekly POC21 diary; see entry one here.
The gold-trimmed interior of the castle, with its high ceilings and ornately painted features, has been loaded with beds, sofas, beanbags, 3D printers and CNC-fabricated plywood tables. Thick wires carry voltage around every corner, while satellite dishes and transmitters pump precious data throughout the camp. The old servants quarters have been converted into a media room full of cameras and video editing equipment. The gardens, surrounded by a sprawling 100 hectare forrest, have been dotted with 30 large canvas tents, solar panels, and fairy lights to guide the way in night time darkness. An ancient cob-webbed hall on site has been hacked into a kitchen fit to feed and shelter 100 people during rainy mealtimes.
Most impressively perhaps, the old stables courtyard, previously filled with years of accumulated detritus, have been emptied and replaced with a wood shop, metal welders, and a catalog of high tech digital fabrication tools to make almost any micro-development project possible to realise.
Several nights ago, a party celebrated the completion of the bathroom structure, built from scratch and equipped with 5 individual shower stalls, hot water and a lengthy communal sink. The group danced to samba and limbo’d under a pulled out length of fairy lights. Nights earlier, the Chateau owner unexpectedly arrived to a similar gathering (this time celebrating the completed dry-composting toilets) and generously distributed a bottle of ancient Armagnac. A tribal episode ensued, with the group ecstatically banging makeshift wooden sticks and bare hands on surfaces while wailing to the moon. The combination left many feeling sore, splintered, but nevertheless elated the following morning.
What has been achieved in this short time is impressive. Young, optimistic creatures from many corners of the world have congregated, for the most part unpaid, to create this space together. Brazilians, French, German, Spanish, Italian, Swiss, Americans and a couple of English boys and girls work together (all speaking fortunately — for me — in English) to dust off the old and install the new. The gender balance feels equal, and the theme of constant improvement and self-managment is shared. New infrastructure is constantly being constructed and improved to raise the quality of life and efficiency of work.
A designer named Paul has in his spare time been creating 3D printed toothbrush holders, laser cut storage cubbies, and this morning proposed a 3D printed bean blender to help manage our surplus coffee (this may, on reflection, have been a joke). Pallets of all shapes and sizes have been hacked together into recycling bins, shelves, and information signage, while neon orange strips of tape (POC21’s signature prop) decorate everybody’s personal belongings to indicate their rightful owner.
A special attention has been paid to practicing what the camp preaches — composting, low water usage and waste material re-use are all being embraced here as thoroughly and creatively as possible.
For sure, this experiment in co-living and co-making has not been without bumps. An intentional absence of hierarchy means POC21 attendees must learn to take responsibility for themselves and sometimes for others. If something is broken (a shelf for example) there is usually nobody telling you to fix it — there is the option to either act, or allow the problem to continue until somebody else does. This creates an unique culture of pragmatism and shared responsibility throughout the camp. Unlike the outside world where everything has its assigned experts, roles, and structures of accountability, it is not uncommon to find people defying their category; a photographer emptying the compost toilet, a computer hacker pitching tents.
The cross pollination of skills, knowledge and purpose seems to nourish POC21 attendees, smoothing the community from a solid pyramidical structure into something more like a shape-shifting sphere. Those who arrive fresh off the boat from the old world seem to take a few days to adjust to this informal structure and governance, but ultimately find exuberance.
After a week of set up, the camp is ready to begin doing what was intended: incubate new tools to create a range of sustainable, open source lifestyle products.
The full 12 projects (one — AKER — of which I am a member) arrived on Saturday to a relaxed start of introductions and reflections on our intentions at the camp. This was exercised with a ceremonial walk to a large tree, where POC21 attendees wrote poetic interpretations of their reasons for coming on a small piece of wood, and hung them on branches.
As the new week began, we have been invited in POC21’s organic style to begin a loosely organised collaborative process. This has seen the projects express the synergies of their ambitions at POC21, and how they might work towards common goals. The energy teams for example, consisting of solar concentrator developers Solar Rose, windpower makers $30 Dollar Wind Turbine, bike-energy hackers Velo M2, and Open Energy Monitor toolmakers, have started to agree on standards that can be shared to charge lithium ion batteries. Similarly, the food projects Own Food, Biceps Cultivatus and our own project AKER are flirting around ways to integrate with each other.
Yesterday, my co-founder and I sat and learned how to use parametric tools which will allow our designs to be automatically reconfigured for different materials (a task which would normally take a skilled designer several hours). We then prototyped our super-simple plant bed the GrowSquare in the Factory using the CNC routing equipment.
But this is only the beginning, and I anticipate a many more integrations, stories and surprising characters to turn up in this unusual space we have created together.
Stay tuned for my next update.
