How Project Kamp is building a sustainable future in front of millions of people
👋 Hey, it’s Jaime. Welcome to my weekly newsletter where I share how thriving open source projects grow their communities.
Subscribe to get access to these and all future posts.
In this week’s newsletter, I’ll show you how Dave Hakkens built several open movements to advance a regenerative vision for the tech and design world.
What I find fascinating from him is that his initial projects were mainly theoretical visions that have been able to inspire real-world change through companies and movements that followed his proposals and invitations to research.
We’ll cover:
How to create a demo of a desirable future
The importance of building a platform early on
How to invert your chase for funding and resources and let contributions find you instead
TL;DR
Read time: 10-ish minutes
You might have already heard about Dave Hakkens and the One Army project, but if you haven’t…
In 2012, Dave Hakkens started working on Precious Plastics, an open source recycling machine to empower anyone to start recycling plastic locally, as part of his studies at the Design Academy in Eindhoven.
Precious Plastics would become a community spread over 500+ recycling workspaces, which would recycle 1.400 tonnes of plastic.
In 2013, he launched Phonebloks, the first campaign to develop modular phones to slow e-waste. It got 45 million views on Youtube and reached 381 million people on social media.
In 2015, he would start Story Hopper, a Youtube project with 1 million views to educate people about global problems, trying to make complex topics more digestible and understandable.
And in 2018 he, along with other Precious Plastics’ folks, would start their latest project: Project Kamp, a research project to buy some land in Portugal and prototype a new way of living on planet Earth, working on regenerative land management, sustainable building, permaculture, water retention systems, renewable energy, living peacefully together, and more.
In 2020, he gave up his personal brand to recognise the community’s work as a whole, and turned the Dave Hakkens studio into the One Army movement
Project Kamp had no videos from 2018 to 2021, but from 2021 to October 2024, the project has created 132 videos and reached some impressive numbers:
Over 53 million views
716K subscribers on Youtube
1,550 paying members on Patron
35 contributors on site (out of 380 applicants) in 2024
11 hectares of land
How did Dave Hakkens and the One Army do it? Here are a few patterns I’ve found in One Army’s success.
Let’s dive in:
Create a demo of a desirable future
In the maker and environmental movements, many of us are very technical and tend to share stats and facts. But as you have probably figured out, this rarely works to get people hooked on your message… because it’s boring.
What’s fascinating about Dave Hakkens is that he uses his designer background to turn what he believes is possible into interesting stories through lively demos.
From what I’ve seen, as a designer, Dave Hakkens has always researched problems in depth and then comes up with potential solutions. But instead of building the solution himself, he takes massive problems and paves the way through storytelling and visuals to inspire people to contribute.
For example, for the Phonebloks, he presented the electronic waste problem clearly: we throw away millions of electronic devices because of single components that could be fixed if they were made repairable. This design problem makes electronics one of the fastest growing waste streams in the world.
And then he went on to share his vision of what could be possible if we solved that single problem through a visual demo of how it would work and how things fit together: Making a modular phone with easy-to-replace and customise parts.
Older people can buy bigger speakers, photographers could invest in better camera, and folks worried about battery life could buy bigger batteries.
He then shares what would be needed to set up this vision, who would need to be involved and a plan of how it could work: Phonebloks needed to get CEOs, developers, entrepreneurs, designers, investors and researchers to develop this technology and ecosystem of parts.
And to make it happen at the time, he used Thunderclap to invite people to donate a coordinated social media post. This problems resonated with many people’s frustrations. That’s why it went viral, with almost a million people participating. That’s how the project reached over 380 million people on social media, showing that there was a lot of interest and support in this idea.
These demos of a compelling future are an amazing alternative to just sharing high level information because they are easy to understand, they create a positive feedback loop by rewarding creators with attention, feedback and connections, and they show that someone is serious about an interest.
A visual demo reveals knowledge hidden at a theoretical level. And instead of protesting about the system, it’s a way to articulate an alternative.
This Phonebloks campaign inspired Google to start project Ara and dozens of other research projects. Later, Fairphone would create the first modular phone on the market, and Framework would create the first modular laptop.
And he did the same with Story Hopper, a channel where he would document in public his theories and research in hopes more people would be inspired to explore the same problems and contribute their own stories.
This Story Hopper stage helped Dave Hakkens experiment with multiple storytelling formats, which would later help with documenting in an engaging way his later projects. But more on that in the next section.
He would launch Project Kamp in 2018 as a way to prototype a way to live sustainably without the huge footprint that comes with living in a developed system. And you guessed it, he started the problem with a video demo:
Three years later, the Project Kamp team would eventually find and buy a piece of land in Portugal, and start documenting their progress weekly through a Youtube channel and their website, which would encourage more people to join in building the positive future they desire.
Takeaways
What better future do you see is possible?
What’s the problem with the current situation?
What’s a possible solution?
What would the future look like if we adopted this solution, and what would become possible instead?
Make a demo to share with others who would like to see or build it.
Build a distribution platform early on
Many of us wait to be ready to release something in fear that we won’t look professional enough or that others might steal our ideas.
But as I argued in a previous article, there is the alternative of building in public to get early feedback and get people interested.
Before, we used to be able to join a forum or use blogs, but as audiences have gathered around big social platforms, open source creators are also becoming Youtubers or writers on Twitter or other blogging platforms.
Dave Hakkens has been pretty fluent in video-making since his students days, so he has used Youtube to share his work and, little by little, professionalised his approach.
When he launched Project Kamp, it was mainly updates from him and some friends setting up the Kamp. But it was enough to get people to start subscribing and spreading the word.
It all started very progressively, but it gradually gained speed, and today the project has over 700k subscribers, and each video is viewed on average 400k times.
So it’s crucial to think about what your distribution channels are and how you can build a path for people to go from discovering your project to contributing to it.
The first step for Project Kamp is getting discovered on Youtube by building the project in public. Then the content revolves around sharing their research’s progress and the challenges they face.
Those who are curious enough can go to Project Kamp’s website, where they can see the project’s progress and research documentation.
And for those who believe in the project and would like to contribute, they have a support page where One Army has made the inventory of what they need to develop the project.
Takeaways
What initiatives can you put in place for people to discover your work? (e.g., Build in Public on social media, whether its video, writing, audio, drawing, presenting at conferences or just sending a pdf to 10 people by email.)
Where can your audience learn more about your work if they are interested?
How can they support you and contribute? Consider making a contribution guide for your work so people know what they can contribute and how. More on this below.
How to invert your chase for funding and resources and let contributions find you instead
It’s often hard for an open source project to get funding from private or public investors.
First, because it’s hard to identify and get an appointment with a relevant funder.
Second, because it’s hard to find funding tools adapted to open projects.
And third, because it takes a tonne of time and expertise to look for that funding and to convince investors your project is worth investing in.
But it’s also hard to get contributions from the community, because even if your audience is interested, most projects don’t know how to invite people to collaborate.
And Project Kamp has found an elegant way to tackle both the funding and contribution problems. Instead of going after people one by one, they have created a support page where the project lists all of their needs and gives an easy way for people to help the project.
To build trust in their audience, they share transparently and regularly updates on their progress, their revenues and their costs.
For example, in a video update, they shared the revenues they make on Youtube:
And at the end of every season, they also share on their website the breakdown of their costs and what they did with all of that money.
From that baseline of transparency, they then list how the community can help.
Their first need is funding. So besides the money they get through Youtube ads, they invite people to donate directly through their page or Patreon.
And occasionally they organise crowdfunding campaigns to fund pieces of equipment. In their video updates, they shared how they had been scammed when purchasing a digger.
So they invited their audience to help catch the scammer, but also support them with a donation to buy a new digger, and got 26,000€ in return.
But money is not all.
There is a load of work to do to regenerate their piece of land and lots of things to build and prepare.
So they have prepared a section where they list the specific skills they’re looking for and how to apply to contribute through a simple form.
As a side note, I find it very smart how they strike through a contribution to show when a contribution is fulfilled to add urgency and show other people are already contributing.
And to take this approach a step further, they invite people to fund pieces of the project to document and deal with their landscaping work or residential needs in exchange for symbolic or specific rewards for their support, like getting a space with their name on it or staying in their guest house.
So instead of trying to get a single investor to cover everything, this is a simpler way for people to identify what expenses they can cover that speak to them or how they can contribute with the skills they have to a project that excites them.
Takeaway
To build trust and goodwill towards your project, share as transparently as possible your costs, your revenues and the progress you’ve made through your investments.
Make the inventory of your challenges and needs, and publicly share it in a Support or Contribute space, whether it’s a web page or a public billboard.
List what’s the benefit for people for contributing.
List the requirements the contribution needs to fulfil to be accepted.
And give a simple way for people to submit their contribution, whether it’s a Paypal button, an email or a form.
How can you replicate some of Project Kamp’s successes?
Project Kamp’s approach has helped Dave Hakkens and the One Army team reach an audience of over 700k people and develop their research project with hundreds of volunteers, despite sharing their knowledge in open source and even encouraging others to replicate their initiative.
Here are the key takeaways you can borrow, modify and adapt for your organisation based on Project Kamps’s real life strategy and tactics:
Share a compelling demo of the future.
If you have a vision for a better future, understand how others see the problem to make sure you’re not alone, and then make a solid demo of how it would work. Use your research to show the main and most alarming facts about the problems, share your solution of what a more desirable future could be, and show how it could work, what needs to be done, and how people can participate to turn this from an idea into reality.Build a distribution channel as soon as you can.
Create a space from which people can follow your work, whether it’s video, writing, drawing or anything else. This will be able to provide you with feedback, funding and community contributions to keep developing your project.
More about how to build your distribution channels by building in public here.Make an inventory of what you have achieved, and another inventory about what you need, and share them openly with a clear way for people to contribute.
Explain the progress you’ve already made to reassure your community and whether you need funding, certain skills or resources. By explaining the purpose they will serve and what people can get out of their contribution, you are more likely to get people to contribute, share tools they’re willing to give, or sponsor your project.