GLOBAL GUERILLAS 8/16 LINKS

JOURNAL: Grey Market Fairs

As the US and Euro economies unwind and their middle classes fail, we are likely to see the rapid growth of massive "grey market fairs" develop outside most major cities.  These grey market fairs will likely be modled on Argentina's La Salada (it's huge with over 30,000 stalls).

This fair has been around since 1991, but saw his most significant expansion after the 2001 Argentina Debt Default, where Argentinean Peso devalued 400% and 5 presidents were overthrown in 15 days. At that point; Argentinean middle class saw the need to acquire clothing and other products at one fourth the price. The fair's yearly revenue grew from under 100,000 the early nineties to 15 billion in 2009 according to the official statistics institute INDEC.

Fairs as big as this will grow quickly as people sell many of the used consumer items from their current middle class lives.  As things worsen, it will be a great place to sell new DIY systems and fabricated prototypes -- or -- trade for parts/materials needed to build/fuel new things.
Think about where the fair will be outside the city near you...  Lots of business opportunity there.

Posted by John Robb on Tuesday, 16 August 2011 at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBack (0)

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Tuesday, 16 August 2011

JOURNAL: Entrepreneurs and Open Source Hardware

One thing is for certain, as jobs continue to evaporate:  to make external income in the future, you will need to be entrepreneurial (that's the word that describes people that start new businesses).  For many, that will mean building ventures to produce local energy, food, and products/services.  For others, that means building new things (from simple DIY systems to complex 3D fabricated devices) that have potential in in the global marketplace.
The best way to succeed doing this, in an increasingly dire global economy, is to fully embrace the idea of open source hardware.  Here's what this means:

• Start and stay small.  The entire point of this is to: make an external income for you, your family, and the people that helped you build the product.  
• Don't become indebted.  Don't take capital from financiers.  Resilient entrepreneurship is not about layering on debt/leverage or growing to a size large enough to attract the attention of an increasingly corrupt economic, legal, and financial system that will crush you like a twig.
• Build a prototype as a proof of concept. Document how you did it using video.  Even better: put it all on a page in MiiU.  NOTE:  If you need money to prototype something that's interesting/useful to a large number of people, ask for donations to build it (ala kickstarter).  It's important to note that these are not really donations since you can reward the people that contribute with early versions of the product).  
• Release the plans/diagrams/videos for how to build the prototype for free (so it can be manufactured locally by those with the capacity for doing so).
• Host a community on-line for those who want to build it.  Use the community that develops around the prototype to build advanced/better versions of the device.
• Sell/trade/barter finished versions of a productized version of the device/item to those that can't build it themselves.
• Develop a reputation.  Do this successfully enough times and raising money for prototypes and selling finished versions will become easier and easier.  Note that reputation works in reverse too.

Posted by John Robb on Tuesday, 16 August 2011 at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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LINKS: August 16, 2011

Some items of interest: 

• Fiskar's splitting axe.  Boy, I wish I had this back when I used to do lots of wood splitting.  Very slick.  Any experience with this?
• Simple "Green Curtain"  Nice for keeping out summer heat (payback looks like it could be in days once established).  I have a deck I'm going to try this on next year.  NOTE:  looking for a replacement for the Morning Glory (it's a weed) that's recommended in the page.  Any ideas???
• GEK wood gasifier.  Fantastic resource.  Need to get this up on MiiU.  User pages and run reports.  They also sell kits that start at $1.29 a watt.  GEKs around the world:
• Small towns in Canada, facing extinction, innovate. Cooperative businesses, geothermal, and community-based new industry. 
• 15 minutes of exercise per day increases life expectancy by three years.
• Mobile app to find local food. 
• Salt Lake City leased urban farmland with the condition that resulting produce would be sold locally. Received bumper crop.
• Bay area cities are starting to enable home producers to sell what they grow or raise.
• Movies: Growing Cities is about urban farming across the U.S. Urban Roots focuses on Detroit's plight. 
• Resin from recycled PET bottles to detect radiation. Plates that sense irradiated food. 
• Swarmanoid. Hand-, foot-, and eye-bots that swarm on an objective. In this case, a book on a shelf in another room.