These are the people who introduced themselves in todays ribbon cutting first meeting. In parentheses are extra notes reflecting on these individuals and the value they offer the team.
Elon Musk Xprize Clubhouse Team First Conversation Feb 20th 2021 (Mod Arin Crumley)
Sam Wilson
Mechanical engineer who is interested in climate tech.
He was in the clubhouse room started the day before started by policy makers who were just chatting about their thoughts on a second wave of climate technology investment they've seen brewing triggered by recent events including north American west coast summer forest fires and recent hell freezing over in Texas. Sam had asked the question about what camps of people there are in these climate oriented rooms and I had answered possibly controversially saying there are the people doing something and the people not yet doing something. And those who are already actively running a company started when things were less urgent and a slight climate benefit could have been compelling at the time but now just sounds like green washing in light of the actual challenges we've grown much more aware of. Sam and I both seemed to agree that the people not yet doing anything are in a position to set more aggressive sites that more appropriately match the dire situation we collectively face. Daniel Saatchi
Experience as a Lead designer.
Currently in Korea.
Studied aerospace.
Systems design experience.
Conceptual design to master mind a huge overview of such a project.
!!!! yeah, right off the bat this room is engineer after engineer and Daniel just cracked right into the juicy techy nerd to the bone good stuff. He is going to be a huge asset to this team!!! Vivek Krishnamurthy
Business development role at HP
Involved 3D printing team
Very sustainable powder bed process can potentially shred back down and reprint
Wants to be a connector and bring in great people including Anne who he invites up to stage.
Vivek carries himself extremely well and I'd trust him completely to represent what we are doing the people who most need to hear about it. Just having Vivek mention what we are doing elevates peoples perception of the project. He can moderate, make introductions and continue to provide guidance and connections in the 3D fabrication space.
Anne Pauley
Designer / Hardware developer
Her days are filled with white boards, cad, prototyping, trouble shooting.
Optimize for lowest cost for manufacturing
Helped nasal swab design during covid. She likes to run into burning fires according to Vivek.
(This is an example of the person who does the real work. Very humble. Very capable. She exudes "trust me" vibes effortlessly. If I was told she was going to design the seatbelt system of a car crash I was about to be in then I would intuitively have been fine with that.)
AA.GD. Bagus Mahendra
Undergraduate chemistry student
Has learned about molecular carbon capture ideas
Has been studying theoretical ideas but has no lab access due to covid.
(Applying what he is studying to real world efforts can not only help our team but can help his education. This is a perfect mutually beneficial fit and maybe more people fro his university can be involved. And very importantly he graciously accepted the homework to read this Professor Licht co-authored paper and said he will report back.)
Christian Robinson (Correlator)
Has been researching water from air systems.
VJ experience building in the desert required learning of off grid tech
Wants to close loops. Circular ideas such as waist from one thing feeds another.
Swiss army Knife guy (went to USC and is tapped into a lot of talent there including web designers)
Suggested putting [REC] on the room with a red emoji dot so we can record and post the whole thing.
(This guy is like me, basically for all practical purposes just an artist but who slipped into the bottomless black hole of scientific inquiry asking what humanities fate will be.... realized the prognosis isn't good and has gotten to work applying his background and skills to the new mission at hand.)
Serena Michaels
Has developed methods to pull CO2 out of the air and upgrade to ethanol to make back the cost
Suggested an open source model organizing the group.
Suggest governance structure that mimics open source teams achieving consensus within a core.
Mentioned acidification of water.
CO2 comes bubbling out and maybe you don't need to waste energy pumping bubbles. Cook jet fuel at sea surface!
Has thought about using ocean as initial capture. Electrolicizing. Solar based method to make methanol. Mentioned feed stock chemical.
Proposed Github, Atlasian confluence, slack as tool options to get the team organized.
"Catch and Release of carbon is not going to be our solution." she says.
(What a hero! Serana is amazing. Just a genius chilling on clubhouse who popped into the room. She's actually done the research in this space. My goal is to blow her mind with what we can accomplish as a team as much as she's already blown my mind just in this initial conversation. We are such a lucky team!)
Omer
Biocapture should be considered.
Essentially growing trees.
Bio reactors could be useful too. He has extensive R&D experience in this area.
(Omer met some resistance in the room that was less biologically oriented and a bit more chemical process oriented but 1000 years from now what are the chances that we don't harness DNA engineering to completely master our universe? So Omer will undoubtably win in the end. Biological solutions could also be considered nanobots. At a certain point of progress biology is technology and vice versa. There is a huge category of biotech companies with various ecological goals so he's not wrong that this is a massive trend in this space. We've got to be careful with the seduction these almost magical sounding solutions can promise because the climate is changing fast as carbon levels stack up. It's important we focus on attainable technology within the timeframes we actually have. We know there isn't enough land on earth for trees to remove all the carbon we need removed so... is their enough land on earth for the bioreactors? Maybe a bunch of floating bioreactors? Maybe that has something to do with future earths thermostat. Giant contestant sized interlocking plastic tubs with some kind of AI managed biological process happening at a scale that is actually capable of getting the carbon parts per million back to pre-industrial levels? Maybe. Maybe him and Serena have something and the ocean itself is a part of the answer. It should be explored. Prior to forming this group the Licht method seemed like it was on off the shelf solution that was well documented in the lab and essentially ready to be industrialized. If we have to actually develop and prove a totally hypothetical method then we'll be knee deep in hardcore science and the whole team will be powerless while we wait for that to be proven to see if we have something. This is probably what most teams will do because it sounds like what the challenge is about. Making some brilliant break through. There is less glory in simply employing an existing breakthrough however it's the wise thing to do because the cost of failure is high. Not just our team losing but society failing to step up to this challenge.)
Mike Hass (iHasabla)
Experience in energy and cooling tech
Mentions 100 million US dollar prize won't be enough to get this done.
Made the business case for capturing carbon saying it was a no-brainer. Mentioned many exact numbers not precisely documented in these notes.
(This is a business mind we need on the team. Facts. Figures. F*** yeah. His twitter and medium blog expand on his extensive research and knowledge in this space. His finger is on the pulse of the tax credit situation and I hope in the future he can elaborate on his vision and we can see if crypto tokens can fit into that. This way we have an interoperable world wide system. By tokenizing each ton of carbon removed that can then be later traded. What this could mean is that people buy up 15 dollar carbon removal tokens that are mined by the companies and governments that validate certificates verifying that carbon was really removed. This could motivate the fast scooping up of all low hanging fruit. It could also create the carbon marketplace. Think of the way people buy bitcoin mining gear and just make bitcoin that then has value they can sell to buy more bitcoin mining gear. Now imagine the gear is producing electricity you sell and producing carbon fiber you sell and producing tokens for each ton you remove that you can also sell. This diversified income is what makes the Licht method so appealing. It's got a business model. Licht didn't write anything yet about crypto but if we build out that side of our team with the right developers we can either pull in the ideal token technology or just make our own.)
Naka (Nakashima Akihoko)
He has 3 goals in Japan:
- Reduce bio plastic
- More conscious about food waste.
- Address radioactive contamination
He believes we can bridge gap between abundance and scarcity
Wants to know if soils might play a role in the full solution.
Nuclear has pros and cons but ultimately the long term price of processing waste ads up to not being worth it.
(He said in a very nice way that nuclear is not the answer. I'm surprised by his diplomacy considering the history of events in Japan. Some have said we should wire the nuclear power electrical output to a carbon capture electrical input and call it a day on the climate crisis. But ultimately it appears that is not the cost effective solution. Naka is a great spirit leader for our group. He has an open mind about what solutions are worth our energy and on his bio says he is an "investor x Social Entrepreneur". There is a growing number of profiles on Clubhouse that say something like that and I'll take that to mean he's at least considering the potential of placing capital into our team if we can prove that would make sense. The way it can work is if our team wins then we can pay back all investors plus a return so they are then able to spread that money to other important ideas. With a 20X return that means we could raise as much as 5 million to put towards engineering, prototypes and feasibility studies. This group doesn't exist to win money but to solve this problem and to do that we are gonna need money before the prize is awarded. People like Naka are going to need to see that our team can win and decide it is is worth taking a risk with their real money. So it's a great time to start this relationship and at the very least be forming a good friendship with a really cool and experienced dude.)
Carols Romero da Silva
He had the opportunity to be a fly on the wall for many nuclear plant discussions and reported that the were always talking about being way over budget sometimes north of 30 billion.
Has worked in corporate sales.
(Smart informed guy from Venezuela working in finance software sales. Good to have people in on the team who are simultaneously enthusiastic and relaxed. Too enthusiastic and you start to sound off your rocker and too relaxed and you seem like you're ready to take a nap. His line of work seems to have tempered him in a perfect middle tone. Ideal guy to represent our team to new core talent who need to not be scared by our audacity but also need to believe there is a reasonable path in which all this hard work would prove worth it.)
Tamoor Ali
He chimed in to just say hi and proposed slack as a method to share tasks.
He Proposed we make a website. Also suggested placing capture plants near cities or coal plants to soak up more carbon before it disperses globally.
(This whole thing was his idea. At the end of a conversation a week ago in a "nice people talking late at night" room on clubhouse he said, "so are you gonna do it or what?" The idea for this team and a documentary about it had been tossed around in the room and he wanted to know if it was similar to countless other hypothetical ideas discussed that night or if this one was real. I joked he was making me put a ring on it and dodged any kind of commitment but promised I'd sleep on it. Much much needed sleep. In the morning I started outlining the documentary script still in hypothetical mode. It wasn't until I was in a "climate tech" room and wanted to pitch this team but realized without a meeting date I had nothing to pitch so I just randomly picked a time for 7pm the following day and that pitch is what got us most of the people who joined this room.)
Jessica Thompson
She happens to have done feasibility research and funding research towards climate change large scale mitigation.
She is excited and expects that focus will bring more clarity to the vision.
Mentioned rooms that sometimes get scattered and each topic is unrelated to the next. She mentioned liking we were going to do something but warned it was really going to need to be feasible.
(So a feasibility expert was just strolling along on clubhouse and popped in. Basically the perfect person to be a part of this project. More than an engineering contest this might end up being a feasibility contest. Of course the engineering is essential but if we can't prove within our limited financial means what it would look like to scale everything up then we fail to compel the judges we have solved the climate crisis. We've yet to see the rules that come out in April but it appears we are going to probably have to show how much it will cost to get the carbon levels back down to pre-industrial times and that is a lot of math and extrapolation from very little input data. So our financial model are going to seem flimsy unless we really work some magic. Having this type of talent seems critical to success. Thank you Clubhouse!)
Rob
Talked about the oxygen Levels of water technology he's involved in.
Based in Hong Kong.
(Boots on the ground in Asia is essential to really validate suppliers. To really know the prices we can achieve we have to prove the PV panels we plan to use. The mirrors. The chemical suppliers. The investors. Many components will needed to be sourced. Hong Kong has it's ties to mainland china but is also a good base to forge connections with Vietnam, the rest of south East Asia and even Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia. He's enthusiastic and has me almost sold on his water tech despite having no idea what it actually does. Imagine what he could do talking up our teams effort to a supplier who can then quote us a good price. Super valuable asset to the team.)
Sam De La Paz
Working on hemp production and food solutions. Also pushing for a biologically based solution if at all possible.
(This contingent is important. Sam is an amazing guy I know well from other rooms. We've discussed many topics at length. I think what we'll maybe do is put together the low hanging fruit task force to gather a comprehensive guid to fast tracking all low hanging fruit. Because these people are absolutely right, if we can solve part of the problem through natural means then we should do so immediately and any plan that doesn't include that parallel effort deserves the back lash it will undoubtably get from people who hold this view. It appears this is the majority view point. So even just politically if nothing else we have to address the biological solutions such as hemp, bamboo, biochar, localizing agriculture, stopping deforestation etc... Because all of things will help the climate crisis with some estimates stating it could be as much as 10 percent of the solution. Every molecule counts.)
Thomas Joseph
In Pacific time zone.
"Preservation of the Human Race" clubhouse group moderator
Mentioned that a lot of times they just turn right around and use that captured carbon to suck more oil out of the ground and spoke up for indigenous communities that are displaced but the huge amounts of land needed for many of the carbon plans that have come across his desk.
(Thomas is a critical voice that must be a part of this technology to make sure we are on the right track. I promised him during the call that unless he personally signs off on our grand plan that we won't proceed and will work to fix it until it addresses his initial objections. This is so that we can know that it's not just another way indigenous people will be taken advantage of. And not just speculation. Actual insight from people actively advocating for those communities. Whatever amount of one on one conversations this requires I'll be sure to engage in. And also I told him I want to interview him for the documentary so that it's his perspectives that we are ultimately working so hard to address. Because of there is no social value to this effort that what is the point. The point is to help people. Harming people in the name of not harming people would make no sense.)
Muhammad Bilal
Tech entrepreneur
Currently has an air purrifying iOT startup.
Has also been developing brains for artificial photosynthesis. Releases Oxygen out of it the CO2. Also mentioned the bi-product of ethanol.
(This guy is amazing. If no further team members were to join we already have a solid group with a shot at victory.)
Join us in clubhouse Tuesday at 5:30pm Feb 23rd pacific standard time to hear project updates and have the chance to introduce yourself if you'd like to join the team.
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