I looked earlier today and I see 25 new subscribers, two of whom have their Ph.D., publications in the field, and both of them have already expressed a desire to help. We're at critical mass here and the next step will be to put some discipline around the art work we've been doing so that it can be replicated elsewhere.

One of the first ways we're going to do this is by producing a short course for those who wish to develop projects similar to the one we're doing. The idea is that there are individuals who have the desire to build something in their location but they lack access to the whole range of disciplines needed to survey the area, conceive a project, and then promote it successfully. We're going to provide a framework so that anyone with a little common sense, a digital camera, and a GPS receiver can gather the information

Below is the initial announcement that went out regarding the pending class/class development work. We'll be moving this forward in the coming weeks and all are invited to participate.

Ladies & Gentlemen,

I'm delighted by the response to the DailyKos diary about creating greencollar jobs, but I'm a little scared, too. The 25 new people who signed up mean we've now got 75 members and coupled with the local interest this project has generated I'm feeling just a little bit overwhelmed.

We're asking the State of Iowa for a grant to produce a training aimed at local activists who want to build their own version of what we're tentatively calling a "Graettinger Pattern Greenhouse". We're going to begin developing that material immediately, we need some guinea pigs for this, and here you guys are :-)

We think the class will cover the following aspects:

Assessment phase:

1. renewable resource assessment
2. power transmission assessment
3. water resource assessment
4. land resource assessment
5. road resource assessment
6. railroad resource assessment
7. labor force assessment

Plant module review:

1. variable electricity source design concerns
2. ammonia production
3. ammonia power generation
4. ammonia transportation
5. greenhouse & aquaculture sizing
6. air separation plant & associated businesses
7, incineration & other combustion related activities
8. ethanol plant integration
9 inputs, outputs, and identifying new modules

Stakeholder identification phase:

1. electricity generation, transmission, and distribution entities
2. water service providers, streams & lakes, and waste water handlers
3. local businesses
4. your economic development group
5. community colleges

Project design phase:

This is harder to bullet point, so we're going to do a review of the process we used here in Graettinger and hope we can abstract from that.

Funding your project:

1. local business support first - sell concept to community leaders
2. finding a grant writer
3. state & federal grants
4. who owns each module?
5. business plan writing

There will obviously be some web resources for this but email is a clumsy method of instructing. We're going to do conference calls, perhaps one hour a week, taking questions via email in advance and publishing them so we have an agenda.

This is probably the only time you'll get an email like this from me - the details of this are going to get fleshed out, anchored on the web site, and then if people want to participate there will be a defined process for them to enter the developer's program. If you have any questions or suggestions on the process please speak up - we're making this up as we go along and fully expect the ranks of contributors to increase pretty rapidly given the amount of attention these efforts are receiving.