pcplantdb

[Scott Pittman <pci@permaculture-inst.org>]

Stephanie Gerson wrote:

> Sounds fascinating, Rich.
>
> The grant has been disseminated, Scott is in charge of distributing funds. 
> How much does the conference cost?  Should we all meet at one of them?  I'm
> completely serious.  I'd rather work for free and spend our grant money on
> travel for us to meet each other ;)
>
> Which reminds me of something I've been meaning to say.  Chad made the point
> recently that he'd like to take a break if we run out of money, because it was
> more fun to work for free anyway.  I'm with you, pal.  I don't enjoy
> grantwriting.  And I *do* enjoy helping out with QA, UI, information
> visualization, outreach...all of which I would gladly do unpaid.  So it seems
> pretty ridiculous to spend time grantwriting just to pay me back for
> grantwriting.  Especially if Chad doesn't mind volunteering.
>
> I would Love to discontinue grantwriting efforts, and just depend on donations
> and volunteer effort.  (If you feel you'd like to be reimbursed for your work
> thus far, you are welcome to send Scott and me an invoice.)  And then use the
> rest of our funds to travel somewhere and meet each other?
>
> What does everyone think?
> *s
>  
I think that I would have a hell of a time trying to justify the whole 
group getting together to the grant makers when I send in my annual 
report.  I am interested in the trip that Rich speaks of if it can be 
justified in terms of the work being done on the db.  While I appreciate 
Chad's sentiment of working for free, I expect that he needs funds 
occasionally to pay for something - unless he has managed to get off the 
grid entirely, and if so would you please tell me how you did it Chad.

While on a rant I would like to respond to L.L.'s idea of expanding the 
db. 

The original idea, if I remember right, was that while permaculture is a 
strong advocate of guild planting and food forests with stacked function 
and diversity that we had precious little information on guild formation 
or food forests.  I don't think that I have seen over twenty different 
contructed guilds in my twenty years of teaching and practicing 
permaculture.  Since the ideas of guilds comes from observing that 
plants in nature seem to accumulate the associate plants ,
mammals, invertegrates, and microorganisms that they need to maximize 
their productivity and health - so the obvious thing would seem to look 
at apple trees in Kazakistan forests and identify the associate life 
forms and their functions  and then replicate that system by using the 
same biota or analogs that perform the same function.  Further I know 
botanists, farmers, biologists, etc that have spent their lives 
observing and they could contribute to this collection of information - 
saving us all the trip to where ever to observe ourselves.  This in my 
mind was the original impetus for our current effort.  It certainly 
wasn't a small task - and I am frankly amazed at how far down the road 
we have progressed, and the cumulative crowd of participants is awesome 
in the breadth of their knowledge and experience and their willingness 
to work so hard to make this project a first class product out of the 
goodness of their hearts is truly inspiring to me.

Now to the chase, I don't think that this db should take on any 
additional fields of interest such as horticultural practices, 
composting techniques, or community building ,  not that I don't think 
that all of these are critical to our survival on the plantet but 
because I think that they should be addressed in another forum and 
another db, that could be, perhaps, linked to the current effort at a 
later time.  For now I find that most of the information that Lawrence 
would like to include already exists in some form on the web.  I 
certainly use information from SARE all the time.  I understand that the 
information is scattered around and needs organizing a bit but it 
exists.  There is no source for the kinds of information we are 
soliciting and collecting for the db we are currently developing and it 
is critical information if we are to survive the end of the petroleum 
economy and culture

I, personally, think it would be a big mistake to change our focus at 
this time.

my 2 cents,
Scott Pittman