The Completion of Phase One.

well here we are & another 2.5 months have passed since the last blog entry; not exactly the up-to-the minute web 2.0 platform I'm aiming for....:-)

The stark reality of it all is that this has been the hardest endeavor I've ever undertaken and I know I speak for my partners Steve & Bryan as well. Nobody is complaining because with great effort / risk comes great reward. That being said, as much as we all preach the importance of a strong, positive mindset eventually we all have our moments. This last month was particularly hard for me. When in the midst of a struggle you sometimes tend to forget how far you've come. Everybody at some point looks at the glass as half empty. It's almost like the immediate situation kind of closes in on you and you become accustomed to thinking on this smaller level.

The flipside of that is that with a strong team of like minded people you support each other and push through that. The great blessing of this process is that you form bonds that are unbreakable under these circumstances. One of the absolute best books out there on the new business paradigm we are embarking upon here is "the Culting of Brands" by Doug Atkin. The book describes traits shared by companies that develop a fanatical "cult-like" following. "Cult-like" can be defined as customers preaching the brand gospel to others without getting compensated for it. Apple computers is a real good example.

The culting of Brands in 2.5 minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oeIdZZtZkcA

One of the backbones of companies such as these is "a story of almost mythical proportions". As much of a struggle as this has been, the filming of everything from the beginning pretty much is that. In one short (or long - depending what day it is:-)) year we have gone from 3 guys with an idea to having a prime commercial space finally about to open with no rent, a ground breaking precedent in the Florida construction code to allow alternative engineering, an interdisciplinary team of 50+ people ranging from startups to multinationals & a 50/50 joint venture with one of the most influential & wealthy people in the state about to introduce a new real estate development concept with truly global potential.

The Project 3.0 show is finally in production and will be released within the next 7-10 days. Several syndication agreements are in the serious discussion stages. The Roosevelt has secured everything we need to officially open up & this monthlong event is being planned as we speak. The earthship will be dried in in another 30 days & a major event is being planned for that as well. All three of our projects will be interlinked through this official unveiling of the completion of phase one of the campus TV journey.

and a major announcement with the shipping container housing concept will be the crowning touch to all of the above.

We are in the process of shifting gears in a major way and are officially about to come out to the world with everything.

Finish line in sight

I feel like a slacker somewhat with these sporadic updates on the blog; I know successful blogs are supposed to get updated daily... Truth is maintaining all the social media aspects of this venture - even at this early stage - is like another full time job. As everyone knows; this entire effort is being put together without any financial backing. In every aspect this is really a blessing. If you're launching a concept that says (a) you can do anything & (b) the conventional way of doing things is so broken that a complete overhaul is necessary, then this is perfect. We're launching several real estate development projects in a time that most people will concede is the worst in 100 years for the real estate industry.

perfect.

The Roosevelt has been transformed with the application of the waterbased stain; it is starting to look like a real venue now.

We also secured two more sponsors for the next phase of the Roosevelt buildout - the construction of the green roof:

www.cpifoam.com

www.wdgsilicones.com

We did meet with Mr. Vengroff (see previous blog) at the earthship site and it was certainly an intersting & productive meeting. Suffice it to say we are doing due diligence on a project right now - details to be released in the near future. Affordable shipping container residential & commercial construction.

Bryan also just received a call from Michael Reynolds - the original earthship builder - about building a second one in Florida. That means we are dealing with the two pioneers on the ground up construction methods we are working on - Mr. Reynolds on earthships & David Cross on shipping container construction. The business models of all our efforts are unfolding.

Oh yeah - and the Campus TV destination site template is finished. I'm writing the copy for it now. Sunday I'll be spending all day looking at video footage from the past 5 months with the video editor to put together the first 5 episodes. The idea is to have the first 5 episodes summarize everything that has taken place so far & by the 6th one the show will continue in real time.

The Campus TV is finally about to launch.

Transformation coming up!

We spend Sunday prepping the concrete floor getting it ready for the stain to be applied Wednesday. This will transform the place for a construction zone to kick ass venue space. Got some very cool impromptu artistry on tape that will make for a great commercial down the road. Pix of that to be posted in the next 24.

Just secured another sponsor this morning as well : One Call Construction. They will be helping us with anything electrical on the project and first off provide all required paperwork to TECO for our account to be opened up - another milestone forward. The owners of this company also have a registred non profit Hurricane Boxing.

The synergy here is already obvious - we will host a fundraiser for the boxing gym; a wonderful facility which the Velez family funds mostly out of their own pockets. The facility has provided structure to at risk youth in the neighborhood for years. It also fits in perfectly with our Budokan concept : a martial arts school which teaches multiple styles without politics. Kids will be required to do 15-20 hours of supervised community service in exchange for instruction. Business synergy abound here as well; there are already a couple of projects where we may be able to work together with this company. For example we may get an 8,000 concrete sealer job out of this & One Call is very interested in learning how to 'green out' their 5 licensed businesses. Will Velez - the owner - will meet Bryan on Wednesday.

Another interesting development : one of the students on the earthship site led us to this news article : Vengroff article. What we have in common here is the realization that these economic times call for a different way of thinking & doing things. so I contacted Mr. Vengroff & send him our latest marketing package. At the very least we can ensure the operational expenses of the real estate he plans to build are as cost efficient as possible.

Looks like we'll be meeting him on the earthship site next week.

Every step we take

The new concrete stain is getting delivered in the morning. It was going to cost $ 150 to UPS the product from Georgia for Saturday delivery...but a rep from the factory just happens to be driving down to take his kids to Busch Gardens. Stars lining up. Just spoke with this guy on the phone & he's 100% excited. That kind of enthousiasm is very contageous and encouraging.

Already another potential synergy is surfacing - they apparently are also working a stucco finish for metal surfaces. It is currently being tested on...a shipping container! We have been working on several affordable shipping container house designs with several architects in our network. There are also several deals in that line of business under discussion that will be catalyzed by the Roosevelt deal. Shipping container construction we are aiming to begin in the summer.

Shelby McIntyre, the producer of the Redner documentary, has hooked us up with a friend of his that is in the process of downloading all our existing footage (still). Finger Monkey Productions is on board!! It amounts to the equivalent of almost 30 CD's of material. We mapped out a release schedule for the first 5 episodes yesterday. The idea is to release these 5 and have the show pick up in real time by the 6th.

The next level of construction will be focusing on the roof.as we are finalizing everything on the soy based insulation. Looks like the tech specs that Bryan has for the way he wants to install it will work according to the factory guys. It is usually put inside of walls or celings. Bryan wants to put it on top of the roof as a basis for the green roof. This will have to be co-ordinated with a whole host of other activities like getting architectural elevations, structural engineering analysis, cutting skylight openings and renting a crane - just to name a few. This adds a level of complication as all these will have to be sponsored & synchronized accordingly. So far, every contribution has been a "one at a time" type of application.

Those are sponsorships to be persued next week.

Structure

Sorry 'bout the long radio silence; we've been dealing with a range of pressing issues that are immediately in front of us. Bryan & I are doing all the physical work ourselves - which is clearly inefficient. for example; we have over 1,000 volunteers registred for the earthship project. The focus now is shifting towards organization and mobilization of all the assets - like our volunteer base - into a structured whole.

I will be concentrating this upcoming week on structuring that foundation. We have everything covered as far as the phyical real estate development components are concerned. We are dealing with individuals & companies from around the world and have some very interesting stuff lined up for this project; some of it completely experimental. That in itself is a serious task. In addition to that we are filming an ongoing documentary and trying to launch a detination website to carry that content. On top of that we are involved in several other projects that are much larger that are currently in the planning stages - meaning lots of additional work now for income way down the road.

The irony in launching an open source project is that it feels very counter-intuitive to let go. But the reality is that we have to. We simple can't do everything. Bryan needs to focus on communicating with and funneling information from these cutting edge technologies from around the world into this project. I need to focus on structuring the business relationships & promotional aspects around these deals. Everything else we need to pull in participating entities thatr share in the royalties/revenues generated through that partticipation with complete financial transparency. This, after all, is the original concept.

An example of this - approach a university film school depatrtment to assist with the documentary. It certainly is an interesting enough topic for a group of grad students to put on their resume/thesis. a lot of views = sponsorship dollars, which we would share with the participating partner and openly disclose those numbers on our website. The emerging & evolving collaboration is the real story.

We also need to approach the colleges of business, engineering & architecture at USF with similar presentations. Anyone reading this that feels they can contribute or have a suggestion - feel free to jump in.

It's time let go and release it.

A Close One.

We've been doin all our work on the Roosevelt with an early start permit. This basically enables us to start the work as long as we don't cover up anything. For example we can put in our plumbing but we must leave one side of the bathroom wall exposed (without sheetrock). Clearly the first step towards being able to utilize a raw space is to have a functioning male and female bathroom. Power can be provided temporarily by our diesel generator which Bryan converted to run on vegetable oil.

Today was very touch and go as Bryan & I went down to the City of Tampa building department to pick up our final building permit for our first buildout phase. Essentially the building department was telling us that this permit in itself can't really be looked at without taking into account the complete buildout picture. The biggest stumbling block was the fact that we are not hooking up to TECO (Tampa Electric Co) and that this triggers a whole range of issues.

Quite a lot of components that we will be implementing in this project are experimental and therefore they do not fall within a certain "box" the building department can wrap their head around. In addition to that, we can't really submit a final design for the complete development of the project because we simply don't know yet what that will look like. We are quite capable of building out this structure off-grid completely by ourselves but one of the main goals of this project is to attract new / better technologies to be implemented and there's obviously no way to predict what those may be. The world's first Web 2.0 real estate development.

The other part to this is that we are making it a point to go through all the proper channels to accomplish this. The goal is to change the way things are being done and therefore we must be able to get the proper approvals from the government agencies that regulate the very things we are seeking to impact.

Luckily the building officials are on our side. After thinking for about 45 minutes that the entire project would ground to a halt, a creative solution came up. Even though we don't need to hook up to the local grid, doing so will eliminate a whole hosts of problems. In other words we get the power hooked up with TECO even though we won't be using it and that satisfies building code. Then when we build an alternative method of power generation (among other things) we can get this engineering inspected and the goal is to get that adopted into code. The project moves forward without delay.

One more problem with that - TECO want a $ 1,600 deposit. That tells you that the average electric bill for a 5,400 sq.ft building in Tampa is $ 1,600 - and those rates just went up 25% this month. So $ 2,000 a month. To put that in perspective; a $ 2,000 a month payment at 6.5% interest on a 30 year mortgage finances $ 316,421.64. What we will demonstrate is that this expense can be eliminated for far less than that amount and we will package this conversion with turnkey financing. Green this and green that is great but in the end the only way to affect massive change is to make it a financial no brainer.

The one big exception on that deposit requirement is non-profits; they have no deposit requirements. Even though our business is for profit, we also have a significant nonprofit compoonent to our overal business plan & we are connected to several large and small nonprofits so we will be approaching them on getting the account set up. This further solidifies the team & useage of the building.

and onwards we go.

PS: Bryan got his final building permit for the Manatee County Earthship project TODAY. Took 9 months but now the precedent has been set and the State building code has been amended as a direct result of Bryan's efforts and determination. Congrats Bryan; we're proud of you man.

Unstoppable.