20100114
Thanks very much Sean Culman for your feedback.
I do have time during the next week especially to talk. I am leaving for Malaysia by way of London at the first of February. I will stay in Kuching for all of February and then UK/Norway all of March, getting back to Montreal for April. All this traveling with Jeraldine. Then at the first of April we are visiting Jamaica for 1 week. About mid May I will be in Arizona visiting Arcosanti for a week - this is going to be a Sola Roof workshop and should result in a working Sola Roof greenhouse getting constructed while I am there. I don't have that much detail yet about the workshop - it will be organized by Jeff Buderer - who is a leader at Arcosanti. They will invite and there will be a charge for attending - which can pay costs. I would like to see if perhaps we would be able to cover the cost of your participation - as a co-presenter with me. There could be other workshop leaders and complementary technology involved in the workshop courses.
While in Malaysia we will be concentrating on the opportunity with the Lim Shrimp Organization (LSO) and the mega-projects that they are leading in China. These are family farm scale Controlled Environment Applications (CE Apps?) - including CE Agri?, CE Aqua?, CE Algae? (waste & water treatment and clean energy) and CE Arc? (Biomimicry Architecture). These are the CE Apps? that the start up company, Life Synthesis AS, in Norway is going to be developing. The Family Farm Unit is a scale for small farmers that could run multiple CE Apps? with some synergy possible with multiple crops. This unit is based on my Sola Tunnel? that you have drawn up some time ago.
It is also possible that we will focus on a small scale version of this design for the DIY market. Although small in scale, this can be a high volume commercial market for a "kit" or pre-packaged product system for consumers (to become producers). I would very much like to work with you further and it looks like we will establish a Sola Roof Inc in the USA by about June. We are now looking at issuing a 10 % block of equity in the formation of the company and I am very interested to see key people get some of the available equity. At this time it looks like 1% of common shares will be issued for $100,000 - just for your information. I am certain that our share value in America will grow very rapidly - our corporation in Norway is going through this stage of formation and first seed investors in March and it looks very positive there for big progress.
Now the other idea the is really grabbing my interest is the need for our technology to get into reconstruction/sustainable development programs for Haiti. Previously, in the UK, Alcoa was very interested in our emergency shelters development and also the transitional community shelters - that establish long term self reliance in the wake of disaster (wake of the quake) - this should be seen as an opportunity for paradigm shift. In deed all global warming crisis should push us to move beyond current lifestyles that cannot cope or withstand climate change disasters. Thus a more robust global network of communities that have appropriate solutions and know how can be created. These communities can then become consultants and service providers to future climate refugees - thus to be certain that we deliver progressively more capable response to climate change as it progressively becomes more dangerous and affecting 10s if not 100s of millions of people.
I look forward to a deeper discussion and I would hope that we can get to work quickly with humanitarian agencies that will deliver emergency shelter and transitional shelter systems for long term recovery. Sola Roof can work creatively with any organization that has an interest to deliver appropriate innovative solutions that can build long term self reliance - if you can open any channels for discussion with such organizations then we might find the opportunity to make an important contribution to the relief and reconstruction effort.
Regards, Richard
Hi Richard,
Thank you for including me on the email list.
Let me know if when would be a good time to catch up to find out how things are going.
I still am interested in helping, particularly on the design side.
Happy New Year,
Sean,