I opened up a new subdomain called design.plumbob.org. It is to help sustain my family while I work on the ideas around the top-level domain; plumbob, which are more systemic in nature.

The plumbob business concept has been puzzling me for some time now. It has been revealing itself as two things; selling design know-how and implementation, and "selling" or marketing the adaptation and alignment of different sectors generally to ecological principles, and open source software.
Selling design know-how is where the design subdomain comes into play. I believe that design in every respect can change and move towards opportunity in the suburban setting. Small suburban design shops could flourish with green architecture design, material re-use craft furniture, electric car retrofit garages, and communications design and moderation studios, just to name a few things. This could be a very important foundation to redefine our crumbling economy with and see to it that we redesign, with ecological principles, everything we do.
Which brings me to my [split] dillema. The intent of my design shop has to be very different than the overall core model that many many people would share in administrating from the vantage of different sectors we have in the operation of today's economy. But the core tools would be the same; open source software on a globally distributed computer cloud. I believe in LAMP stacks, and Drupal. And I believe that the people/community who take care of such a system will soon expand to become the new politicians and administrators of a very different global economy.
Please come help me follow this journey of innovation and add your comments and questions. As you might tell, this is still in the very beginning stages, and it needs a lot of work. However, I now have a lot more time to devote to this project after completing a very fun and rewarding long-term with a 2nd/3rd grade class. But as stimulating as it was, I have been chomping at the bit to be back in my design studio I've built for myself, and get to work on my projects.