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My year spent as a MacroTransient at FoAM is now over. One year of not being a student, not being an employee, not being unemployed. One year with no expectations. One year of incredibly pure freedom of action, movements and thought. One year to re-design a lifestyle, figure out tough life choices, defining a personal and professional identity. One year of careful help from FoAM to try to answer that crazy questions: "What do I want to do with my life ?" | My year spent as a MacroTransient at FoAM is now over. One year of not being a student, not being an employee, not being unemployed. One year with no expectations. One year of incredibly pure freedom of action, movements and thought. One year to re-design a lifestyle, figure out tough life choices, defining a personal and professional identity. One year of careful help from FoAM to try to answer that crazy questions: "What do I want to do with my life ?" | ||
- | Below is an attempt to summarize this crazy year, and maybe give you a hint of how this feels, or even give you the will to go through the same difficult but rewarding process. | + | Below is an attempt to summarize this year, and maybe give you a hint of how this feels, or even give you the will to go through the same intense and rewarding process. |
- | ====Before this year==== | + | ====Initial Conditions==== |
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+ | I had met the FoAM team in 2012, as I was an intern at Greenloop. I was in the last year of my engineering studies, and except writing my thesis, I did not really knew what my future was made of. I was quite disappointed by the world of science and technology I was coming from, and trying to find a way to integrate other dimensions to make (bio)technologies more relevant to society. It was the right moment to enter the temple of Generalism. | ||
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+ | However, I was proposed two nice jobs in Paris. One at Sony Computer Science Laboratory, where I contributed to the development of the P2P Food Lab project, for which we developed a bio-sourced temperature sensor at a biohackerspace called la Paillasse. | ||
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+ | The other job was as a Biomimicry Promoter in a governmental agency fostering innovation, Paris Region Entreprises. I met wonderful entrepreneurs, | ||
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+ | After these two passionating working experiences, | ||
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+ | ===The Self-Sufficiency Hypothesis=== | ||
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+ | During one year working full time in Paris, I observed several phenomenon. | ||
+ | * Even though the work I was involved with was very interesting, | ||
+ | * Living at the core of a 10-million megapole made me even more conscious of the unsustainability of our (urban) lifestyles. At my individual scale, I found quite counter-productive to spend so much time & energy at work, to earn money, to buy stuff I could actually do myself instead of buying it from obscure and maybe unhealthy and socially-descructive industries. | ||
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+ | Based on these observations, | ||
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+ | I entered this Transiency with the idea to implement this hypothesis, or at least test it. It is not exactly what happened. | ||
====Winter - Decelerating==== | ====Winter - Decelerating==== | ||
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When an experiment is performed once, it brings a few insights. But to confirm these insights, replication is needed. | When an experiment is performed once, it brings a few insights. But to confirm these insights, replication is needed. | ||
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+ | I spent most of my autumn expanding the positive experiences I had this year. I went one week in Paris, for a symposium on Biomimicry, and another one on Technique & Degrowth. Then, I brought my microbial fuel cells to Marseille for the Waht the flok ? festival. Guillian Graves and I gave a talk about our Biomimetic Kettle in the European Center of Excellence in Biomimicry (Senlis, France) and in Brest. I went to Lausanne, to discuss a potential inclusion in a start-up, and enjoyed the NipConf. Finally, I brought the microbial fuel cells back to Nantes for a workshop at Plateforme C, Ping's fablab. Besides this, I performed some research on microbial fuel cells here in Brussels. | ||
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+ | All of these experiments were positive, and confirmed that I was heading the right way for my post-Transiency life. | ||
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+ | ===Designing=== | ||
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+ | {{ : | ||
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+ | I was left with the tricky part: designing the lifestyle. Now that I knew most of the components, how could I fit them together in an smooth way ? | ||
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+ | Travelling around to meet people and do stuff with them. Mostly people with low budgets. Keeping a freedom of actions & movement while still earning some money. | ||
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+ | The current hypothesis I will try from January on is the following: | ||
+ | * Most of my income may come from my work at a small start-up, based in Lausanne, and dealing with artificial closed ecosystem. It is going to be a very interesting job, in an entrepreneurial contexte, in which we will develop useful technologies for depollution, | ||
+ | * During these periods, I will partly be traveling around to meet & visit interesting people working in " | ||
+ | * I will also spend some time in Brussels, meeting the local communities here I did not take the time to visit yet, and keeping some days available to start new projects at FoAM. I want also to keep some time to read, and explore Belgium more seriously than I did so far. | ||
+ | * I will keep spending some time with people I like, both in Brussels and elsewhere, and some time wandering around, to let space for things to happen. | ||
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