Pictoral Pit Bio Char Process

This is a link to a bio char pdf

Oasis may experiment with this type of kiln near the chicken area to burn the weedy mass and turn into a fertilizer and soil amendment. The free standing kon tiki is supposed to be more efficient but this is a more basic technology.  In addition the kon tiki is mobile reducing labor of moving the orchard trimmings.  Although it was my intention to burn the plywood I am advised against it as the process could concentrate toxins.  It would be better to chip them as the leaching and digestion of chips will be diluted more evenly across the landscape instead of in our vegetable patch.  The formaldehyde glue in this product is an antibacterial and thus is ill suited for compost and bio char but as a dilute layer I am certain it will digest over time in contact with the soil. This method will have less overall effect on the environment because it is kept local.  Additionally the areas covered are paths so that the modest antibacterial action of the chip will not matter much.  Over time as we eliminate plywood and chip board from use the microbial action in soils under the paths will recover as the planet is a giant digestion machine.

Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons

There is a good book in the amazon cue on this and also I see conflict in the problem historically that cities undermine sustainability and exploit the country side as.  Also long term there is the question that the high population of "cities are the future" may not be sustainable of the planet, see Toby Heminway.  This none the less is a very active debate and neither of us will turn out to be right.

"The concept of sharing cities is getting considerable traction with grassroots groups and city governments around the world. Seoul, Amsterdam, London and Milan are just four examples. While these efforts share commonalities, the sharing city concept is not well defined. This presents important opportunities (and risks) that are being addressed by communities large and small around the world. This presentation will highlight people, projects and policies working to create real equitable Sharing Cities. This presentation will highlight replicable projects and policies which are currently supporting city wide resiliency. The work that Shareable does focuses heavily on connecting people and projects working on similar things around the world to strengthen the movement as a whole.Tom Llewellyn will be available before and after (both the presentation and event) to answer questions and make connections on a global scale."

Friday Oct 6| 3:30pm| Hops Tipi

Tom Llewellyn is the Organizing Director at Shareable.net, and a lifelong sharer, commoner and story teller. He coordinates the global Sharing Cities Network, #MapJam, and other community sharing campaigns, in addition to collaborating on Shareable’s weekly publishing, co-editing the Shareable Guide to Sharing book series and speaking internationally about real, equitable sharing cities.

Previously, he was the Education and Activism Director for Sustainable Living Roadshowco-leading the touring organization across the U.S. for 5 years producing eco events and actions promoting environmental, social and economic sustainability. Tom has co-founded several community and sharing based initiatives including: A PLACE for Sustainable Living, Asheville Tool Library, REAL Cooperative (Regenerative Education, Action & Leadership) and the worker cooperative Critter Cafe.Sharing Cities: Activating the Urban Commons:

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Compost toilets, parasites, and social change

The urgency of leaving water in our rivers means we need to rethink our flush toilets.Many of us are experimenting with homemade composting toilets.
Let’s compare notes about best practices in processing “the material” and get clear about what precautions are in order.
Come prepared to share about your own “research”–what has and hasn’t worked.
Let’s share best practices and precautions in the processing of homemade compost toilet “material”.
Water is a critical resource in CA and there’s not enough being left in the rivers.
Many premies are forgoing flush toilets and experimenting with composting toilets –and using a variety of methods to process the material to make it “safe” to put in the garden. This is important hands on research but also requires some responsibility.
This workshop would give us a chance to compare notes, learn from each other, and perhaps to self correct in case some methods are not recommended.

Sunday, Oct 8| 11am| Zocalo 

As a plumber Christina has earned the right to have an attitude about flush toilets! The nutrients in our excretions need to nourish the soil, not pollute our waterways! As an eco artist she creates artworks that spark awareness about environmental issues (and solutions), especially related to water. She believes wholeheartedly in the power of art to wake people up and stimulate change.
see some of her mischief at https://directory.weadartists.org/artist/christina-bertea As a water activist she has been teaching greywater and rainwater installation workshops (and directly doing installations) for almost 10 years.

Nik Bertulis wants to reinstate abundance for all life via empowering humanity’s intrinsic regenerative potential. He studied permaculture with Bill Mollison and is a certified permaculture teacher, wildlands firefighter and emergency medical technician with a B.A.S. degree in ecological design from Colorado College.

His professional accomplishments include helping develop and teaching permaculture and regenerative design programs at Merritt College in Oakland and the San Francisco Art Institute. As an artist he co-founded the award winning public arts collaborative Monsoon Arsenal and as a designer-builder he was cofounder and CFO of the successful permaculture design-build company the DIG Cooperative where he helped pioneer some of the first permitted constructed wetlands and rainwater recycling systems in the bay area. His clients have ranged from Mexico City’s Ministry of the Environment to Los Alamos National Laboratory. A deep love for non-profiteering led him to co-found several non-profits including Urban Biofilter, PLACE for Sustainable Living and most recently the California Center for Natural History. He also serves on the board of the Watershed Alliance of Marin and the Dietrich Institute for Applied Insect Ecology. He currently serves as CEO of the Oakleyville Cooperative in Oakland, CA.

Most of his free time is spent tinkering on regenerative living systems, transformative scenario planning and invertebrate macro-photography. More examples of his work can be seen at nikbertulis.com.Compost toilets, parasites, and social change:



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Food Forest Gardens

This is part of our mission

"Grow your own! It doesn’t get more local or fresh than your own yard. Want to create a personal Garden of Eden for you, your clients, or your community? Want to eat fresh, local, organic produce while reducing your environmental footprint? This workshop will focus on the how-to’s of creating a beautiful, functional and food-generating garden, no matter how much space you have. There will be an emphasis on incorporating ecological principles, such as soil building, using perennial edibles, and planting for habitat enhancement. The more food we grow at home and in our neighborhoods, the more food resilient we become, relying less on remote agribusiness and for-profit supermarkets. We reduce our environmental footprint by using less fossil fuel, less water, less fertilizer and fewer chemicals. There will be a power-point presentation, a group brain-storming session, and sample plants followed by a question-and- answer session as time allows."

Friday, Oct 6 | 12:30 PM – 1: 30 PM | Zocalo

Mike Boss is a plant ecologist and garden maker. He founded the award-winning company Rock & Rose Landscapes in 1989. His home garden is one of San Francisco’s oldest food forest gardens. He took his first PDC in 2014 at The Occidental Arts and Ecology Center and his second with Toby Hemenway and Daily Acts in 2016-7. He recently founded The Edible Nursery Project in San Francisco which makes available to San Francisco and Bay Area residents perennial plants that produce edible roots, fruits, and shoots.Food Forest Gardens:

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Beyond Diversity to Liberation: Intentional Communities as platforms for social justice

Very relevent to our families issues and clearly with all minorities

In this workshop, we will explore the historical roots of black intentional communities movement highlighted by Jessica Gordon Nembhard in her book Collective Courage, and The Arc of Justice, which chronicles the remarkable journey of black farmers and the first land trust that grew out of the Civil Rights movement. We will also highlight visionary present-day community & co-housing projects that are grasping at the root causes of racialized displacement, environmental racism, and wealth inequality by building cooperative and participatory housing models that are led by communities of color, indigenous peoples, LGBTQ-identified communities and low-income communities. Among those is the Permanent Real Estate Cooperative, a scalable model that can raise funds through investments and is designed by its members.

Saturday Oct 7| 2pm| Hops Tipi

Marissa Ashkar is from The People of Color Sustainable Housing Network (POCSHN) is a resource network for people of color interested in building intentional, healthy, and affordable housing communities in the San Francisco Bay Area and beyond. Since starting in February 2015, it has grown to become an intergenerational network hosting quarterly potlucks, tours, study groups, and educational workshops. The network was established in response to extreme increases in housing costs, rapid gentrification, and the lack of socio-economic diversity among the intentional community movement across the United States.

Beyond Diversity to Liberation: Intentional Communities as platforms for social justice:



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Ecocentro Ipec and the Ecozoic Biofilter Toilets

"The Biofilter toilets used at the last Global Eclipse Gathering in Oregon, organised by Simbiosys Events, with 30,000+ attendees was the crowning of an experiment in mobile ecological sanitation that started in 1999, in Brazil.
Ecocentro Ipec is a multi award winning institution displaying more than 30,000 sq feet of natural buildings and 60 acres of gardens, food forests and sustainable technologies in the heart of South America. Ecocentro Ipec first started to develop composting technologies in 1999, and some of the sanitation solutions developed include the Bananaloo, an awarded technology and the Biofilter toilet for urban zones without sanitation infrastructure.
Composting toilets are not new technologies. In fact, the reuse of human waste for agricultural purposes has been part of our society almost as long as agriculture itself.
The technology of composting toilets is simple to reproduce within the scale of residential family life or small rural holdings. But the same cannot be said when we consider the scale of the metropolis or the intensity of large scale festivals such as the Eclipse Gathering, Burning Man and others.
The world is expected to have more than 40 megacities ( +10 million people) in the near future. When it comes to sanitation,  the reality of high density living is similar to the temporary reality of large scale music and art festivals: tens of thousands of people that need food, water and sanitation within limited space.
The Ecozoic Biofilter toilet uses the action of microbes to digest and process human waste without adding water or chemicals. By replicating the conditions of a healthy forest floor and without compromising on the comfort level to the public it is possible to offer a mobile technology that achieves a level of onsite treatment similar to tertiary centralised biological sewage treatment systems without expensive underground infrastructure.
The Ecozoic Biofilter toilet can potentially replace the dangerous and controversial sanitation technology used in large scale events: the infamous port a potty.
The final product is biofertilizer that could be applied to grow food or forests.
This workshop will tell the story of Ecocentro Ipec and the journey to develop Ecozoic Biofilter toilets as a Permaculture solution for ecological sanitation in high density populated areas, including festivals and mega events.
We will see some inspiring images and revisit the natural cycle of digestion and flow of nutrients to identify design patterns that apply to the requirements of such environments."

Ecocentro Ipec and the Ecozoic Biofilter Toilets:

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Closed Loop Designs with Green & Solar Tech for Greenhouses

We are going to build a model Green house and will use this workshop to help plan and get resources we need.

          "Solar and Energy Tech for Sustainable Greenhouses"
     Chaz Peling of SolSolutions will share some examples of how new appropriate technology and design can be used in greenhouse systems for year around food and herb gardening. Using the principles for closed loop system designs applied to greenhouse environmental systems, there are many new ways to use solar energy and super efficient applications for season extension of growing plants needing, cooling, air flow, lighting, heating and water, that can be created with a low earth and energy footprint. Local, clean and low energy year-round food supplies are the goal, for any location or climate.
     Expands some of the goals of permaculture and resilient communities. More ways to grow local food year around. Reducing carbon footprint and energy use for agriculture. Hooks up solar advocacy and energy efficiency with farming. Empowers folks to own the means of energy production. Will have sharing sessions to understand personal power footprints, and ways to self-install and design such systems.

“Chaz Peling founded and runs SolSolutions, focused on personal empowerment and education around solar, energy use, and efficient designs in homes, farms and communities. He has been involved in community building, environmental and social activism, and the transition movement for quite awhile as a call to passion, and also loves to keep gardening and getting his hands in the earth.”

Closed Loop Designs with Green & Solar Tech for Greenhouses:



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Decolonizing Our Resiliency Movements

This relates to the reparations article in Yes Magazine

"The effects of settler colonialism on these lands (Turtle Island) have created the dominant systems that now threaten our very survival, and have conditioned us to sever our ties to Mother Nature and to each other.  We will look at colonial systems of oppression, and then talk about how these show up in movements working towards climate & ecological resiliency such as Transition, Permaculture and Re-Skilling.  We will touch upon the unconscious cultural appropriation that sometimes happens in these fields.  We will also learn/share ways to be more just and inclusive in our resiliency work.  This is a continuation of a similar talk from last year’s convergence."

SusanJuniperPark

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Susan Juniper Park is an activist working at the cross-section of ecological, economic and social justice. She is also involved in urban farming, healing work, education and permaculture. She was a co-founding member of the Economic Development Without Displacement Coalition (Oakland-based anti-gentrification project), ran a food justice economic project at Phat Beets Produce (Oakland-based grassroots food justice organization), worked as a fundraiser for the Ruckus Society (a direct action training organization empowering frontline communities), and was an organizer with Occupy the Farm (Bay Area based land defense effort). These days you can find her subsitute teaching in Oakland K-12 schools, doing gardening gigs, and cultivating a healing justice practice. She is grateful and humbled to be an immigrant and permanent guest living on Ohlone territory.

Decolonizing Our Resiliency Movements:
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Sharing Cities | The MIT Press

Is there a relation to convergence topic?

     How cities can build on the "sharing economy" and smart technology to deliver a "sharing paradigm" that supports justice, solidarity, and sustainability.
     The future of humanity is urban, and the nature of urban space enables, and necessitates, sharing -- of resources, goods and services, experiences. Yet traditional forms of sharing have been undermined in modern cities by social fragmentation and commercialization of the public realm. In Sharing Cities, Duncan McLaren and Julian Agyeman argue that the intersection of cities' highly networked physical space with new digital technologies and new mediated forms of sharing offers cities the opportunity to connect smart technology to justice, solidarity, and sustainability. McLaren and Agyeman explore the opportunities and risks for sustainability, solidarity, and justice in the changing nature of sharing.
     McLaren and Agyeman propose a new "sharing paradigm," which goes beyond the faddish "sharing economy" -- seen in such ventures as Uber and TaskRabbit -- to envision models of sharing that are not always commercial but also communal, encouraging trust and collaboration. Detailed case studies of San Francisco, Seoul, Copenhagen, Medellín, Amsterdam, and Bengaluru (formerly Bangalore) contextualize the authors' discussions of collaborative consumption and production; the shared public realm, both physical and virtual; the design of sharing to enhance equity and justice; and the prospects for scaling up the sharing paradigm though city governance. They show how sharing could shift values and norms, enable civic engagement and political activism, and rebuild a shared urban commons. Their case for sharing and solidarity offers a powerful alternative for urban futures to conventional "race-to-the-bottom" narratives of competition, enclosure, and division.

About the Authors

Duncan McLaren, former Chief Executive of Friends of the Earth Scotland, is Director of McLaren Environmental Research and Consultancy.

Julian Agyeman is Professor of Urban and Environmental Policy and Planning at Tufts University. He is the coeditor of Just Sustainabilities: Development in an Unequal World (MIT Press) and other books.

Sharing Cities | The MIT Press: "Sharing Cities
A Case for Truly Smart and Sustainable Cities"



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