Goals and the Big Picture

Goals are like road maps.

If you reach for a goal and get side tracked, it is no more serious than driving for a destination and missing a turn. On the other hand, very few people ever get anywhere by wandering aimlessly.

It is not terribly important that we always reach our goals, nor is it necessarily important that we always maintain the same goals. In fact, a healthy individual changes goals from time to time. We sometimes realize after pursuing a goal that it is not as worthy of our time as we once determined.

Not only are goals road maps, they help us track where we have been. They are like a measurement of what we would like to see happen.

In 1999 we had hopes of training a thousand builders. We now have more than 2200 who have been through our Workshop and of 450 have built domes. We expect this number to increase vastly over the next 14 years.

Working and learning

We are learning a lot as we go down this trail together. We have learned not only to build water tanks, but oil tanks, 3/4 spheres as storages. We have learned of the needs across the world for a million new buildings.

We have learned how to speed up the process of building our Ecoshells.

We have also learned about basalt as a reinforcing material. This is extremely important as the basalt does not rust.

Our goals

The Monolithic Dome building business is no different than any other business. We need goals. Obviously, one of our goals is building domes. Here are a few, less obvious reasons why the Monolithic Dome Institute dedicates so much time and energy to dome building:

Teach, train, expound, push, proselyte, promote and further advance the use of the Monolithic Dome for the benefit of people everywhere. We honestly know and believe that no other structure can be as cost-effective or beneficial as a Monolithic Dome for most installations.

Train at least 1000 active Monolithic Dome builders. The idea is to create a critical mass. We will reach our critical mass when every state and every part of the world has several dome builders, so clients can have a variety of options in their goals. We continue holding our Workshops, here at our headquarters in Italy, Texas, as a way of attaining that goal. We believe that as more people realize the benefits of the Monolithic Domes, demand will increase, eventually outstripping the dome builders’ ability to meet that demand.

Continue research and development. Over the years, we built small domes, big domes, low domes, high domes. We built domes for churches, schools, homes, offices, storages and more. As we continue our research and development, we find more uses for the Monolithic Dome.

Build affordable senior citizen housing units. We know many people are working on this same goal, but it continues eluding our construction industry. Senior living units must not only be affordable, but safe and secure, with social benefits for the residents.

Have we arrived?

Definitely not. Many things need to be improved. Many people need to be trained. We need this 21st Century to be our best century ever. We need all of you to help us with it. Help us with your willingness to look at new ideas and foster new technology that is developed.

Shared goals

Many people can have the same goal – travel the same road. We are delighted to share our goals with any who are traveling our way. We need more builders. We need more research. I often make this analogy: It’s like we are all writing a book, but we here at MDI are just a few pages ahead of others. Nevertheless, we need others to help us write and read this book.

We are and will be forever grateful for those who help pioneer this industry.

^{Updated: May 2013}