pcplantdb

[Chad Knepp <pyg@galatea.org>]

Scott Pittman writes:
 > 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.

This is true; the needing funding thing.  On the other hand I struggle
being organized about it and maintaining creativity when there is a
direct monetary connection.  Receiving donations either because what
we made is useful or because the donor wants functionality added
sounds like something that might work better for me.  I'm really not
very motivated by having a *job*.

I should be off the grid completely sometime this winter.  In my
observation this is not the less expensive option.

While I dislike travelling, I would like to invite everybody to REF
for the first week in Sept. 2007... you now have two years to plan!

 > 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

I don't think anyone is suggesting that we do something different pre
1.0/Threshold commitment.  On the other hand, I think that when we
have the necessary infrastructure to handle plants and their
interrelationships well, it will be a fairly simple matter to add the
structure for animals, articles, etc.  I don't think this would
detract from the over all goals of PIW in anyway and may end up
creating the wikipedia of permaculture (my dream anyway).

One of the ways I see PIW moving is to more of an onion type data
model.  While the permaculturalist may spend a lot of time on one
layer of the dataset specifically the Genus species level.  The market
gardener/farmer may spend most of their time on the cultivar level of
particular plants.  Individuals involved with large scale land
management may look at layers of information on the guild/plant
community level. 

Cheers,
Chad

-- 
Chad Knepp
python -c 'import base64;print base64.decodestring("cHlnQGdhbGF0ZWEub3Jn")'