Donate to the central platform! Pimp out your houseboats!
Matt Bell
Two administrative matters to report:
(1) Ratha has put up the kickstarter for the central platform. The
central platform will be a standalone (float-alone?) community space
separate from the houseboats. It's part engineering experiment in
cheap easy-to-assemble floating land and part social experiment in
choosing how to decide on use of said land. Here are some reasons you
should donate to it:
- It's an experiment in applied government. You get voting rights on
the land's use that scale based on how much money you donate to the
project and how much volunteer time you put into assembling it. If
you want to play soccer on it, hold a dance party on it, set up your
funky water sculpture on it etc, you should make sure you have the
votes to make it happen. Like the US government, you can buy
influence We're just a lot more transparent about it. :-)
- It's proof that we can scale the event beyond the HouseBoat Rental
Limit, which is currently a cap on our size. We wish to not cap size,
in more ways than one. :-)
- In some tiny ephemeral way, it's Actually Seasteading.
- If you want to rough it, you could buy the necessary materials and
add your own private 4x8 foot or 8x8 foot section to the platform for
personal use. On its own that platform would be unstable, but as
part of a larger whole, it's a social cohesiveness metaphor reinforced
by a physical reality.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/190669728/not-ephemerisle-2011-central-platform?ref=live
By the time you read this message, the project may have already
reached it's funding target. HOWEVER, that target was deliberately
set low so that we had a minimum platform size as a fallback. Really,
a 20x24 is way more fun than a 12x16.
--
(2) We're a bit more than a month away from the not-Ephemerisle
not-event. While the adventurous ones among us are planning on
sailing there on their own craft or building our own land, the
remainder are going to be sleeping in houseboats. Let's face it...
houseboats are to not-Ephemerisle what RVs are to Burningman --
convenient and comfortable, but dull and impersonal. Let's not have
another floating cookie-cutter suburbia! I think we should all put
some work into making our houseboats unique and memorable. At the
very least each boat should make a sign so we don't have to count
houseboats down from the end to recognize what boat we're on.
Last year we had a couple of cool-looking boats, but that was about
it. Let's do better this time. :-)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/9055206@N06/5025172244/sizes/l/in/set-72157624590072806/
- Matt