i've arrived!

currently writing this out from the ground base that is conjuncture - a fantastic mellow co-working space in austin texas.

arriving into austin around eight last night as i missed my 3:30 connecting austin flight from houston i got put on standby and did not get going until around 7:15pm - landing just after eight at the austin airport.

i then got chatting to a great guy on the information booth about austin - he gave me a bunch of places that i should check out over the course of the week. feels great to have a conference that i can go to and then explore austin around the edges.

for the first time i also braved out a different method of transport from the airport - the $1 flyer 100 from the airport was super simple. i'll be using that on sunday to get back to the airport no doubt.

wandering over to the hilton last night to see if i could grab the mifi from the ups hosted at the hilton (it was closed too late) it was interesting to see a quieter southby.

the buzz of all my adventures of this city however remain with me so i was painting in the visuals of the crowds regardless. i feel blessed by my sponsors for making this happen.

i'll be trying my upmost to get as much coverage out over here about our livingARK project but also learning a lot from the sessions and the speakers who are in attendance this week.

if your here to demo a product, project or service for sxsweco and we are not following each other on twitter do follow back and check out the ark site - ark.me.dm for more details of where my content from this week will be heading too.

right now, i'm heading out for lunch at the iron cactus i think. i love that darn place, a beer or two and a bit of a lay down in the park near the river till after 3pm when i'm hoping i have a place to crash for the week in downtown.

connected with friends local old and hoping to meet the new ones over the coming days - feels good to get a virtual break of sorts too.

feels like i'm back home.

quicklink | ian dearman media and photographs

i had a taste today of how it might feel at the ark today.

i recorded some audio but without a wind guard on the zoom h1 it literally picked up everything - i should know better.  looking at guards now.  it's also made me realise how much money is a factor for making things happen at a pace that you want to run at.  i'm literally pulling together money for transport, flights, places, people, connections at a rate of knots recently.

i'm doing more and more media work than before, the verisign work is brilliant and the local bbc radio nottingham shows are always fun, being able to eat and do things again is fantastic - having so much support and meeting great people to co-work with.  it's just been very hectic but really encourgaging.  i'm always forcing myself to balance everything out.

but today, today i felt a grounding at the site.  i sat down with my ipad and zoom h1 and felt for the first time what sitting outside might be like with the sounds of the mini forest all around me as ian did some wide shots.

let me tell you it felt. amazing.  we should have some video edited tomorrow that i can post on my ulule campaign - i'll be putting out a link in the newsletter and i hope you can find a bit of spare change to chip in towards it.  i'm gonna be straight talking here - the sxsw eco event is a want not a need, if you support me in going thou it will amplify the project x100 more than i ever could with some my network as it will allow me to have those face to face connections 'ontheground' in austin in early october.  

it's a bit of a rush about but i feel the project deserves it.  heck, the national forest deserve it for the determination they are showing to get this off the ground.  it's given me a sense of place, purpose and renewed order to my day to day that i was missing i guess.

stability, place and rounding the purpose of being a dad by providing an interim space for me and ella to talk, play and be learning together.  these visual moments together will leave a huge legacy for her that she can look back on.  i'll no longer be chasing purpose and will feel complete in the achievement of laying a foundation i can be proud of.

signing my digital signature into the unknown future.

it's been a while since i got over to conkers.

great to finally see gerry again and to sit in the ark space and listen to nature. totally relaxing and you can just switch off there for a short while. brilliant. after catching up with gerry we decided on shooting a few pieces to camera about the last few months, the pond had dried up near to the location of the ark but other awesome new additions to the site were covered too.

i managed to record a video about the ulule fundraising we need to do to get me over to sxsw eco in austin texas for october. i really want to go to push hard/home the project and to get as much contacts and exposure for the project outside of my existing network. i need to go to this event - basically my zen master mr jason jarrett made it happen indirectly. so yeah, gotta do it! :)

i worked with ian dearman from @iandearmanmedia today and it went really well. he's got a great eye and made me think about the canon 550d - a very capable little camera i have to say. we tested out a steady cam and did some nice pieces to camera which i think will edit really well once he gets them into final cut.

quicklink | feasibility report, oak tables and mailing list

looks fantastic right? - that's the kind of size the ark will be - the table and chairs next too it are going to be a gift from livingARK.  we are super pleased and chuffed by this offer as it gives me and bella somewhere to sit and play, talk and eat and just enjoy each others company.  i'm actually thinking of taking up lessons for an instrument (guitar or something maybe) - yes yes, i know it sounds uber hippy but i do need the polar opposite of my super fast existance balanced somehow! :)

it's been a bit quite on the ark front over the last four weeks.

a waiting game, sitting waiting for someone to tell us if we have the signoff for the ark project or not.  behind the scenes livingARKs are gearing up for the go and they are scrabbling around making the process as sustainable as possible for it to happen. that sort of planning i find out costs additional admin (seems most things in the world have costs that don't get factored in i guess) so we are trying to resolve those small hiccups with offsetting of products, services and ramping up our output and services here in the fibrecamp studios - slowly things seem to be aiming in the right direction.  with a few clients under our belts for pcmprojects with me working as a volenteer in the space it's time i sorta had a job position again.  that's looking like it might be a possibility after getting the studio to this position.

i'm not actually sure how i would have coped if the ark was built now adapting to the proposition of a partner in fibrecamp and being true to the ark so i'm starting to the think the timing of things is actually better.  i have two crucial stages right now and that's a regular income and transport.  the transport more than anything in at least i can be visiting conkers twice a week and at the same time picking up my daughter and getting her familiar with the site.  she's been before but we need to be going very regular.  i'm still super excited about what this project can bring and i'm hoping that unofficial cradlepoint group will pull a lot of my thoughts together about people on the move, on the grid and in the clouds but actually disconnected from other things.  i'm hoping cradlepoint see it and get behind it.

gerry from conkers (the ranger - go follow him on twitter he's awesome) put together a fantastic detailed feasibility study for the area/land/space where we want to locate the ark - i still have to re-read it but give it a blast it's brilliant.  i do hope very much that i'll be able to work with gerry on his bushcraft skills work that he does at conkers - that guy has so much passion, he's the next web tv celebrity when we up the quality and output.  very keen to get started and tell gerry's story.

Click here to download:

feasibility-report-livingark.pdf (1.41 MB)

another thing i quickly wanted to talk to you about was these oak table sets i've included in this post.  they are normally a tablet set that goes along with every ark that is sold but at the moment as they are building a variety of prototypes they really need the space and they have about thirty sets of tables to sell.  we have managed to get an agreement sorted with livingarks where 15% of every sale of a oak set will go towards the arks admin fund i was discussing at the top of this email.  i'll have more details about this soon but if your interested they normally retail at £1500 (pure oak remember) but we can get a much better price than that on them.

Picnic Oak Set 1.7m price: 540.00;  RRP (recommended retail price: 999.00+)
Picnic Oak Set 1.5m price: 490.00;  RRP (recommended retail price: 999.00+)
Delivery & Assembly price: 150.00

Crafted with passion and the utmost respect for nature, this truly individual furniture is made using seasonal oak - rustic, natural and gloriously unadorned, it looks almost as much a part of the landscape as when still a tree. Custom-made to order exclusively at livingARKs LTD.

drop me a line if interested - remember 15% of your purchase will go towards helping our admin costs for the ark project.

the new ipad autotrader application is awesome. really nicely made, good skills whoever pulled that together.

i've been looking at a variety of different transports, eco, diesel - small and large and all with a variety of reasons from backup living quarters to nippy, good on fuel 'runners'

problem is insurance, mot and tax. i could probably find money to pay for fuel three times a week to get back and forth but the rest is just so beyond my means at the moment - that's a problem. because i NEED transport to make the ark happen.

not having a proper address is difficult as well for getting insurance. i've lost all my no claims discount and so i'll be very problematic to insure i'm guessing - when your away from the grid your an unknown calculable quandary to the system.

keeps you contained. keeps you local, trackable. i'm still perplexed as to how RV owners who travel around a lot get on with insurance. i'll keep looking. ..