00061 About iPermie
In permaculture, we don't get what we want, we get what we design. — Unknown
Please do not panic! I know this doesn't look like Angry Birds or World at War: Zombies.
iPermie requires reading. It looks complicated. There are certainly lots of words. More than 383,000! War and Peace has 565,000.
My advice: don’t worry, be happy. You will do fine if you take this one page at a time and don’t get in a hurry.
iPermie is not an academic class where you must make a good grade. It's iPermie! Everyone can have fun while learning to apply permaculture design to their lives. That’s our goal.
Join the conversation.
By purchasing iPermie, you get access to the conversation if you want to sign up for it at talk@ipermie.net. That's the place to ask questions, share experiences, and contribute to the knowledge base. It’s moderated solely to prevent spam.
Get the spreadsheets and other independent documents.
The iPermie spreadsheets are in Open Office Calc (Spreadsheet) format, which you can download for free from www.openoffice.org/ . They will help you organize information, keep track of data, establish your baseline, and understand your progress.
You can download the spreadsheets and special PDFs relating to iPermie! at www.ipermie.net.
The 14 iPermie Sections
- 0 Basics
- 1 Invisible Structures
- 2 Food
- 3 Energy
- 4 Shelter
- 5 Water
- 6 Access, Geography, Transportation
- 7 Community
- 8 Economics
- 9 Resilience
- 10 Health
- 11 Education
- 12 Family
- 13 Putting it all together
These sections do not describe discrete and separate categories, since the functions of these sections overlap and are interdependent and interconnected. We humans can’t resist making lists and establishing categories but we should remember that the list and the category structure is not the reality. It is a description — an interpretation — of reality. In that regard, lists and category structures are like maps.
The iPermie section structure serves the purpose of breaking the large amount of information into manageable chunks so you can learn permaculture design.
Getting Started
- Read the Basics section first.
- Read the Invisible Structures section second.
- If you are in college, read the Education section third.
- Read the final section (13), which ties everything together.
- After that, the sections can be read in any order, although it is best to read the chapters in their numeric order within the section.
Don't forget to get involved with an existing permaculture learning community or start one with your own friends, family, or people you find on Craig's List, Facebook, or wherever you go looking for people for your learning community. In most areas, you will have to start your own learning community.
Don't skip documents with concepts that are hard for you to understand. A better choice is to stick with it until you do understand it. Discuss it with others. Ask questions on line. Do your homework. Keep at it until the information makes sense and then go on to the next concept.
Design Challenges
iPermie has design challenges.
One way to learn design is to actually do design. The purpose of the Design Challenges document in each of the sections is to give you practice doing design. Each challenge document has at least one small project that will help you to develop design skills. None of these design challenges exists in isolation. Each is an aspect of the holistic design for your life that is the iPermie goal!
Your first challenge is to design your personal permaculture learning experience. Your second challenge is to design a permaculture learning community. You can find more information about these challenges in documents 00071 and 00081.