I’m Jacob, and The Moon Mill is a new social enterprise I’m founding with the remit to incubate and develop open-source software, and provide training for this and other open skills, whilst promoting a model of entrepreneurship and occupational self-sufficiency.

To achieve this Moon Mill will establish coworking and cooperative cultural spaces. I’m setting things in motion to test the waters by committing my time (hopefully an ongoing yearly block) and some seed funding. The funding will go towards getting one or two spaces off to a start. Over the winter I’m planning to visit India, Thailand, Kenya, and Ghana (maybe Cameroon too) to evaluate locations to setup (potential schedule on Dopplr).

At each space The Moon Mill will offer (on a limited basis) training, apprenticeships and commercial work, in a collaborative environment from which entrepreneurs and developers could build their own freelance business, and potentially as part of an independent cooperative.

I’m keen to hear from:

• Prospective apprentices keen to break into web development in the locations
• Existing entrepreneurs and web professionals keen to share a coworking space
• Anyone with cultural bent, looking to run and host a space part-time (or more)
• Skilled professionals who’d like to volunteer training at a space or run workshops
• Entities wishing to sponsor a space, or allocate development contracts
• Anyone with suggestions for specific locations where a space would be welcomed
• Contacts in government and educational establishments would also be helpful

As I’ll be the only trainer (and indeed client) to begin with, training and projects will in English (although I can manage some French) and will predominantly be based around internet, web design, development, Lua and Moonstalk (as that’s what I’ve expertise in).  For locations I’m looking at second-tier cities with colleges and universities having computing departments, but I’ll consider the capitals, and possibly other countries too.

I’ve yet to settle the specifics, but spaces will likely offer:

• Affordable coworking open to all entrepreneurs
• Free coworking for trainees, apprentices and cooperative members
• Open training workshops / camps
• Short unpaid trainee placements (a stipend may be offered)
• Paid apprenticeships (after traineeship)
• Freelance assignments on Moon Mill and client projects
• Cultural engagement and cooperative membership

The goal of each space is that it shouldn’t be solely focussed on software and should embrace other disciplines such as the arts as much as possible, it should be self-supporting, and its members should collaboratively work towards building it up as an independent cooperative. Once I’ve finalised formation and such like, I’ll endeavour to make the project’s status and progress as transparent as possible.

I’m really looking forward to getting to work on this project and seeing if it can work out, and would love to hear from anyone who’d like to get involved or can offer input. You can drop a message to launchpad@moonmill.com and do follow @moonmill or myself @jacobjay on Twitter or Facebook for further updates.