Sensorica was invited to participate in the Gathering of Open Science Hardware (#GOSH2017), which took place between March 22-25th at the Anacleto Angelini Innovation Centre, Pontificia Universidad Católica, in Santiago, Chile. The event was funded by the Sloan Foundation, with funds dispersed through Public Lab. A total of 90 people (representing both individual work and organizations) attended the event from over 30 countries. This year, Maria Frangos represented Sensorica at the event (see Poster). She received air and ground travel funding of up to $900 USD. Maria absorbed the costs of her accommodations ($126 CAD), and some meals and transportation to and from the conference for a total of $200 CAD. Abran offered to pay for the printing costs of the poster, which cost $37 CAD.
Objectives
The goal of GOSH 2017 was to co-create a roadmap for making Open Science Hardware ubiquitous by 2025 by "expanding the reach [...] within academic research, citizen science and education."Another goal of the workshop was to represent a diversity of voices involved in OSH initiatives. Participants from Asia, Africa, South America, Europe and North America attended GOSH 2017, half of whom were women. Achieving gender parity, as well as representing queer and trans voices, were important aspects in ensuring that GOSH 2017 remained open and equitable:
"We strive to make open science hardware open to everybody, regardless of scholarly or professional background, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, ability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, economic background, country of origin or employment, religion, and other differences. Because we come from different backgrounds, it is important to be intentional about providing respectful, equitable spaces — both online and in person — for our community to come together and engage in constructive, respectful discourse. As our manifesto states: GOSH is used for peaceful purposes and causes no harm."
Events
In addition to participating in creating the roadmap, Maria led a design skills sharing session as well as collaborated with other participants in planning the 'unconference' sessions, one of which focused on business models (notes from the session will be available online soon).
Sensorica also participated in a public exhibition on opening day. In addition to creating a poster and flyers highlighting our contribution to Open Science as an OVN, Maria demonstrated the Breathing Games flow meter prototype Povilas, Andre, Fabio and Patrice worked on and displayed a slideshow of other Sensorica open science projects.
Approximately 200 people attended the public exhibition, including a school group, univeristy students, professors and GOSH participants. A steady stream of people came by our table, most of whom were interested in the tangible device on display, the flow meter. A number of people were also interested in the OVN model and asked questions about Sensorica's approach. Several took a flyer.
In terms of individual specialisation, the design skills sharing workshop led by Maria covered the following topics: how designing for connected devices differs from designing for software, creating user stories, designing for empathy, how to create a user flow, and how to create a low-fidelity clickable prototype. More than 10 people attended, none of whom had any design experience. A few were hardware engineers, while others were working in biology, performance art and other disciplines. The feedback Maria received was great and so was what they produced. Workshop participants were able to quickly grasp the design process by applying it to their own ideas, projects and hardware. You can access the design skills presentation here.
Overall, the people at GOSH were happy to meet yet another Sensorica affiliate, having already met Tibi and Bruce online. There were many participants at the conference, which provided an opportunity to meet a number of people and share our projects and ideas. Now that these connections have been made, follow-up and participation in the GOSH forum and site are critical if we hope to build on these.
Outside interest and leads
An engineering professor, Paulina Barria, who I spoke to at the public exhibition was interested in our work. Paulina is part of a a project called bikelite - an IoT bike project with the goal of improving safety for urban cyclists. The project is composed of a free mobile app that indicates the safest city routes, a light guidance device on the handlebar that advises cyclists of road hazards, and LED lights that generate images in the wheels. I contacted her last week via LinkedIn but will follow up again this week. The app is already designed but they need to work on the lighting system. This is a long-term project with many components.
Next steps for OVN at GOSH
There are some unique opportunities for advancing the role of Open Value Networks (OVN) for Open Science Hardware. Firstly, Maria will work with Greg Austic, founder of Photosync, to help structure the documentation on the GOSH website. Part of the site will be a "how to" section, which will help guide those who have decided to embark on an open science hardware through a series of podcasts. At least one of these will focus on the OVN model. Maria will interview people from Sensorica (and other projects) about their experience launching OSH projects using the OVN model.
This could tie in nicely with Abran's idea of presenting "OVN's as a viable means to organizing and delivering community based healthcare initiatives," as well as Breathing Games, an open source science initiative.
Please post comments or questions in this forum. We need to continue this work within our own network, while seeking to bridge connections with other organizations and open source projects.