So I have this silly idea/longterm project of wanting to run a server on renewables on my farm. And I would like to reuse the heat generated by the server, for example to heat a grow room, or simply my house. How much heat does a server produce, and where would you consider it best applied? Has anyone built such a thing?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/15662912

https://fosstodon.org/@bert_hubert/112444298499426055

A day of plenty, and more to come

We even got a few hours of sleep before, and then the first half of the actual market day was us running to set up. I must have walked several kilometers and answered more incoming phone calls than I had time to get nervous about before noon. Just as we had hoped, there were enough people to give us a hand, plus we had hired a few young friends to help out and man our badly thrown together food stand (it didn't burn down at least, we learned how to do it next time).

The second half of the market we had some time to see the miracle unfold. Square full of colorful stands, plenty of smiles, so many happy people. People thanked us for the good organization (?). We weren't well organized and forgot so much stuff, we were making everything up as we went. It just happened that our supporters were incredibly good at finding out where they were most useful, and all stallholders patient and friendly, and everyone contributed to the magic.

We even created a questionnaire to find out what to improve next time and got useful feedback.

The result is, people want to do it again, they really loved it, with only few things to improve. And so we are, for now, accidental market organizers.

Now we have this incredible buzz and enthusiasm we can build on. Registrations for the next edition arrived the evening after the market. We didn't rest the day after, as we had hoped, but made sure to collect everyone's feedback and thank everyone involved and start planning improvements.

And the cooperative? And what about subverting people?

I spent the last night before the market printing out a presentation I had written and designed, with as little text and lots of images, to try and get make people consider their work situation, and how they would like to improve it. I don't think anybody saw it. I had a nice idea about how to present this in a sort of interactive labyrinth with a haunted house style but no time to set it up properly, so there it was, forgotten in an unvisited corner of the market. Communication and creative challenges ahead, and I'm curious how to take them on. Probably the right people will appear to help make this real.

The cultural exchange did happen, and needs time to deepen. Because of the language and culture difference locals and new inhabitants often don't interact much and some people can be very shy around each other. We managed to have a lot of locals with stands and as visitors, mixed in with the foreign crowd, and mixed visitors thanks to our careful promotion in both communities. I consider this point a very effective and very important step towards living together in peace and getting along between the different communities around here. I feel that the people in the local town hall are with us in this, and I'm glad it's that way. A whole lot of town hall folk appeared to have a look and buy trinkets. As for police, I didn't even notice them, but people reported they appeared once in the beginning, once at the end, stayed in the background and far out of the way, and left without bothering anyone during or after, as far as I'm aware.

So no concrete steps taken towards a cooperative as I have envisioned it, although we now consider forming one as a small family team for event organization, seems we've discovered a hidden talent. At same time the market as the most simple and unregulated of economical exchanges is clearly the way to go for now, without need to (immediately or ever) grow it into a factory sized project or a legal entity. I know myself to be a person to get hung up on formats, channels, ways of delivery, while missing the already there and the obvious. It must be an autism thing.

The immediate

So far it has been a great experience. It is funny how the initial project changed shape as needed. The market is hopefully to continue to happen every month, and other projects and ideas start growing out of this event as well. So picking a realistic scale can happen during the process, if you permit the process to remain flexible. In the moment the local community doesn't need or want a community center, but a spot to meet once a month to exchange news and goods in a relaxed festive atmosphere with good food and drink, and that's also the perfect place to mix and mingle among cultures and talk to and learn from each other. Seeds for further cooperation in the future are being planted like this in a fairly easy way.

Just a few days left before market

Another nailbiting weekend. We could do without these, but they remind us to return to the basics: garden, animals, each other, and not worry about too much.

The generator rental has clearly taken their business practices out of a bad dating manual: 'Don't make yourself too available. Keep things a little mysterious.' Friday they were suddenly not sure they could arrange the distribution board for our generator. (After at first claiming they didn't even have any distribution boards for rent, and then yes they did after all ... ) Monday we drove back to the generator rental, find another solution (several small generators?). To be told: 'after all, distribution board will arrive with generator on Friday'. Thanks, generator rental?

Which lead to practical problem 2: what do with generator after market? Not great to be out on the street, and worse, will be blocking the space of the usual bi-weekly farmer's market. Also, had to negotiate about some more infrastructure to use there. We met with more town hall people (this town is so small that everything is relatively uncomplicated and informal). One technical guy (of those who do actual work) quickly solved all our problems to our utmost satisfaction.

Throughout the organization I've lost most of my usual shyness. Just phone calls are still a bit of a struggle. I do answer most of them but still avoid making them and forget to note down people's names every time.

Few days missing, I've been out distributing flyers and posters. Should have printed more. We are counting with 40-50 stands, hope we fit everybody in, and sort out the last bits before market day.

Cooperative? Spent a lot of time talking with a small group of people wanting to create one, and also spoke to other community members to find out what are their needs, spent time trying to understand what is the difference between a cooperative and an association, and what would fit people's needs better, and found that by this slow way of inquiring informally I am getting a good picture. I feel that building a larger cooperative active in different sectors that could be truly democratic and benefit the larger community would take interested people quite a while to create. All would have to study how it functions, build a way of self-organizing, create a business plan together, define membership options based on that ...

For many people a coop is 'something like tool share, food and skill exchange and doing stuff together'. For what I see, creating a coop (a legal entity created for business activities) with this approach risks both self-exploitation ('we can totally run this coop shop based on voluntary work') and being accused of lack of transparency because the core group hasn't defined their setup well enough to communicate it well to others. For what I see if people want to create a legal entity for 'doing stuff together' an association might be the better option. Of course, I might be totally wrong.

I am back to considering a digital solution first because that will actually be a solution for many people - a database with frontend where people can connect and post their skills, stuff to give away, events .... but I will keep inquiring and talking about the coop. For example, I have not much from actual members of coops yet. At least one will be at the market and I'm excited to speak to them!

Happy with all the progress made so far and curious where my meanderings around people lead me next.

they raise you somewhere
between quiet complacency
and revolutionary rage
and hope you choose wisely one day

these shoes are very big
they might be clown shoes
my mouth sewn shut
between quiet rage and no agency

then disapprove of you
and your quiet despair
but you had everything
i had more than i could stomach

when you meet them again
even smaller than last time
their childish tearful eyes
asking you are we free yet?

A good overview and link collection around small scale hydro power technologies

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

Small reminders for stupidly big cars

Notes from the marketground

Just 12 days before the market event we find ourselves in funny mood between feeling quite simply exhausted, being a little stressed out because there's still so much to wrap up, and also satisfied because there's so much already in place.

Two weeks and two days before the event we went to rent cables because we were informed that the generator we rented does not come with any distribution, after fruitlessly negotiating for power at the new market location with the town. We followed some recommendation into a very difficult to find tiny hidden shop where three helpful guys (electric wizards?) spent an hour drawing diagrams and explaining us how our rented generator will burn if not connected to a proper distribution board (very expensive!) and how the whole thing will surely ruin us. They called quite a few people with different generators, mobile stages, ??? to try and help us out, but to no avail. We then spent a weekend biting nails and asking around for other solutions - as we have to notify the generator people two weeks in advance. Then found out Monday that generator after all can be rented with distribution board and cables, for a reasonable fee. Phew.

We went to create an non-profit association, in the hope of having an official and hopefully cheaper and easier way to deal with purchases, donations and other financial stuff for future market organization, but also to have a sort of playground to experiment with acting as a public organization and find out about the pros and cons. However, bureaucracy won't have us! Behold four different attempts:

1. walk into a registry office, be told creation of association has to be scheduled (Service is called sth like 'Association straight away')
2. email to different registry for scheduling. Be told they don't offer the service (their website says they do)
3. try to phone third registry. Nobody answers the phone
4. email them. They don't offer the service (their website says they do)

I've sent some form to the central office of registries where you can complain about stuff (my council is not in the drop-down list when I'm asked to identify myself !?) I don't think it will do any good anyways. I will try to calm down my murderous heart and try in a different registry per phone and email (will be a 80km roundtrip). It is not easy to organize as a group of citizens, and I was so frustrated about this and the chewing-gum like email exchange asking stuff from town (with really no information given as to how they will actually follow through with the stuff they conceded, further nailbiting).

Other kafkaesk emails were exchanged with the copyright authority for a music license and elaborating further on it would be bad for my health at this point.

In resume, every interaction with the famous 'system' in its manifold manifestations makes me want to scream or punch someone or burn something down, even though I'm by nature the mildest, lamest and laziest granny bog creature you will find on this server. Instead both me and bf were throwing up all weekend forcing us into a well-needed rest and re-consideration as to whether this official kind of organizing is even worth it. (Not the event and community organizing, but the closeness to government/authorities/asking permission etc. vs hiding in the bushes and connecting informally.)

For sorting my own thoughts and to create a sort of presentation/survey for local online groups and market visitors and participants, I have started writing down a few considerations and thoughts about forming a cooperative vs association vs no organization at all. Hope to get a better overview about people's needs and ideas and resume it into something actionable towards the beginning of summer in the latest (leave some days per month for throwing up?). Note to self: my notes are taking overhand, what do?)

To not finish this somewhat tattered report with vomit and worries, here's a wholesome bit: I scored a few hours of babysitting last week! Interacting with a little one resets heart and mind towards the important things, to remember who we are doing this for.

Mess up and mix up in market limbo

On Monday, instead of getting the last bits of gear for the event organized, we suddenly found out we are in major trouble with the site owner. Early on, after he already had agreed verbally to our event, I had sent him a text message to inform him of the support of the council and our event date. He (as I found out now) didn't like the way I did this and decided to simply not respond, but I booked it under 'Didn't say no, will follow up later..' and forgot about it all while we were getting busy with other details.

I got yelled at on the phone about not having his final authorization, which is not a nice experience for someone who is already really phone-phobic on the best of days. I believe I could make out 'we still would like to help' and 'agreement still on' between 'THIS IS NOT DONE LIKE THIS' and 'AN EXTREMELY UNPROFESSIONAL WAY OF HANDLING THINGS' and a lot I couldn't really understand. It reminds me that this project is to build a future where you don't have to beg to people who have more properties than they can care for. But as things are, I had to admit I should have followed up with him, had to write a very polite email describing our event and project in detail.

At the same time me and bf had to agree we don't really like the idea of having to make the site safe. It's a bit of a nightmare in more spots than we had initially realized. Also, the lack of tree shade and natural surroundings seems too off-putting for quite a few of the market people, and we also have had feedback that people would like to have regular markets.

So we've decided to take the market serious as its own thing. I composed another email to the council asking for a better spot (the prime recreational spot in the area). Said we would like to talk about regular markets, and could have an association in place tomorrow to more easily formalize any support from them. We've also, just for ourselves, lined up a few other alternative sites. Something will turn up. We had a talk about the anxiety that comes with all this, and concluded we still lighthearted enough about the whole thing, and will just stubbornly continue to organize, apart from Monday when my period doomsday coincided with the sudden site trouble and I spent the day crying about a range of different matters, as expected.

After a few anxiety-filled days with a market floating in empty space (while still receiving registrations for stands), we got answers from both the original site owner and the council. Council wants to meet us again and make us a proposal. Get the wedding party started. They did not tell us what the proposal is, so now we enjoy a few forced days off, slightly nervous, but we welcome the opportunity to imagine in more detail what we want to dream up here - markets, coop, a permanent space for both projects ... after talking to so many different people out there we now know more about what would be interesting and helpful for people, and what we would personally like to be involved in.

We went to a meeting of another group wanting to set up a cooperative. The question keeps floating in the room: start with one larger cooperative or several small ones? Knowing that it is difficult for most people to work together even in small groups (I explain it with the fact that we all are re-learning how to work self-organized in community) I tend to favour starting with smaller groups. For now, we all seem to be studying, learning and stretching out feelers in different directions to find out what each person wants from a coop, which doesn't always coincide. It's good to find this out before sitting in an already existing coop together, so I tend to prefer wanting to meet more people and different combinations of smaller groups during the next few months, to find out who vibes together, which isn't always obvious. Taking it slow but steady in this phase, learning together but not stubbornly insisting in walking towards one or many coops right now, we might end up with a reasonable number of stable coops with the right people working together. Imagine the positive boost for a region where more and more people work together democratically and self-organize.

Highs and hangovers of event organizing

The surprising success so far (nobody has stopped us, we did not get arrested yet, event keeps collecting registrations) and the sudden shift in our lives from hermits to socialites is taking its toll. And that is something I was less prepared for: when your plan is working and that you are creating something you are now co-responsible for this something. Before, while you are just spinning something out of nothing you do not carry the weight of the already existing.

As a person with a cycle I will have at least one PMS day of doom per moon. As my little monthly doomsday approaches, it leads to the above philosophizing, some agonizing and to me writing poems, and I start realizing how it starts to be more difficult to keep track of all the stuff I'm doing and that I urgently need a day off. Luckily a friend has invited to some adventure that involves walking lots of kilometers, so off I go for a half a day, which is usually a good recipe to get my feet back on the ground.

Next week will see us busy renting a generator, meet people about music, transport, other support, hopefully get stuff delivered to pre-assemble our compost toilets, keep collecting registrations and start cleaning the place - we don't really trust the council to do this well or in time so we decided to be prepared and pro-active. I'm trying to get the school involved, maybe have some art done by the kids during the market and bring more people in, and it looks like someone has arranged a meeting with the director next week. Back to school, ugh, but I'll happily make that sacrifice if we can fill the heads of kids with silly ideas.

Now with the market growing I start having ideas of exposing my shabby little machinery collection - the ram pumps, a solar oven, which adds another two days of work to the preparations. Probably won't have time for all that.

More people are coming out of the woodwork about creating cooperatives, which is excellent, and also leads to more, sometimes difficult to organize, meetings.