Draft:Lonny Grafman

Lonny Grafman is an Instructor of Engineering and Appropriate Technology at Cal Poly Humboldt. He is best known for being the Founder and first President of the Appropedia Foundation, which publishes Appropedia, the largest wiki website dedicated to sharing knowledge to build rich, sustainable lives (e.g., to make open source medical tech available for all).

Service Learning Pioneer
Lonny's work on Appropedia has become a large outlet for service learning. For example, he is the founder of Practivistas, which is a full immersion, study abroad, resilient community technology program. He has been a leader of these types of service learning projects all over the world including in his home state of California. His academic work  centers on these types of service learning projects. Lonny has taught university courses and workshops in dozens of countries. He has worked, and led teams, on hundreds of domestic and international projects across a broad spectrum of sustainability - from solar power to improved solar cook stoves, from micro-hydro power to rainwater catchment, from earthen construction to plastic bottle schoolrooms.

Advising Outside of Academia
He is a director of the Northern California Hub of BlueTechValley, supporting energy saving entrepreneurs. He is also the Advisor and Project Manager for the epi-apocalyptic city art projects Waterpod, Flock House , WetLand, and Swale. Lonny is also a director of the AWEsome Business Competition for groups working on Agriculture, Water and Energy in Northern California.

Biography
His first books, To Catch the Rain and Atrapando la lluvia, cover inspiring stories of communities coming together to catch their own rainwater. His newest book, co-authored with Dr. Joshua Pearce, is To Catch the Sun covering inspiring stories of communities harvesting their own solar power and how you can do it too. Forbes reported this book cuts solar costs in half with a DIY methodology.