Sensorica at #GOSH2017

Sensorica was invited to participate in the Gathering of Open Science Hardware (#GOSH2017), which took place between March 22-25th 2017 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 organisations) attended the event from over 30 countries. This year, Maria Frangos represented Sensorica at the event.

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. 

Approximately 200 people attended the public exhibition, including a school group, university students, professors and GOSH participants. 

In terms of individual specialization, 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. 

See more on this event HERE. 

Sensorica at Open Design Conference in Hong Kong

 

Maria Frangos M.S. Design and Sensorica affiliate, presented at Open Design of E-very-thing, part of the Cumulus series of design conferences, which was held at the Hong Kong Institute of Design in late November 2016. Our short paper was submitted to the track Open Design for Engagement:

"The novelty, diversity and complexity of current social challenges and the contexts in which they are situated demands similar diversity of interventions to address them. Multiple and diverse proposals are most readily generated via the involvement of many different people, with many different perspectives and resources, contributing to the process of innovation. These are the tenets of “open innovation” – that by “opening up” the innovation process – the process of coming up with, implementing and exploiting new ideas – we can increase the diversity of, and capacity for, innovation within a (eco)system. To “open up” the innovation process to a diversity of actors – to democratise design innovation – a diversity of people must encounter the design process such that they can engage with and contribute to it. This track aims to explore these early stages within the collaborative innovation journey. Enquiring into the strategies that are applied to support the assembly and formation of publics, from which design coalitions may precipitate. We ask “What are the methods, tools and approaches that favour encounter and foster engagement – and ultimately participation - in ‘open’ processes of collaborative enquiry, visioning and production?” From living labs to design performances - we are interested in the platforms and practices that “stage” these encounters and engagements. We also welcome the sharing of examples, as well as reflections and theories as to what works in what contexts - how, why and for whom."

Short report

Paul Bardini, PhD student from Brisbane, Australia also presented work on open source hardware, along with Maria. Aside from them, most attendees were not versed with open source methodologies. The term open or openness was interpreted more as a general approach to inclusion, rather than a methodological approach. The other presenters showed work spanning from fashion design and making to urban typography and heritage, with a unifying focus on engagement.

Our paper will be published this spring, see below. 

Larger context

Sensorica has been prototyping relations with academic labs for the past 6 years. The body of these relations form an interface between the crowd and academia. In our opinion, Open Science is a set of practices that reach beyond institutional borders, hence the need of these interfaces.

The PV characterization project presented at this conference is the most recent iteration of this sort of interface. Past iterations have been built around ENGAGE grants with McGill, Ecole Polytechnique, Montreal Heart Institute.

Sensorica is the only open (innovation) network we know that has gone so far into prototyping interfaces with traditional institutions, academic, private and governmental - see this document for more. This is still a work in progress. At every iteration we have learned something new and adjusted our OVN model. This 6 years long process has provided Sensorica with a valuable insight into the meshing between what we call the new economy and the traditional economy, in a period of transition.

Traditional institutions that are embarking on a path of institutional change need, in our opinion, to start by building bridges with the new type of organizations (connect to the crowd through interfaces like Sensorica), and through these bridges get infused of new structural elements, methodologies, tools, etc. in order to inform and fuel their own transformation. 

 

Published paper

 

 

OuiShare MTL and Sensorica at Ecole du collaboratif - Blockchain technology

Hands on blockchain event, organized by OuiShare Montreal in collaboration with SENSORICA, for the Ecole du collaboratif series of events.

Format:

• Interactive presentation of new possibilities introduced by the blockchain technology
• 3 workshop groups, conceptualize blockchain applications, think about new potential in the context of a possible application.

Pictures from the event

See all pictures. 

Deep Dive Re-Imagining Value gathering

.. there is a ''crisis of value", i.e. that the old value regime does not adequately recognize and reward the new value that is created. Michel Bauwens, Chiang Mai, August 15, 2016

Berlin, September 5th 2016

A gathering of 20 thinkers and doers, from various disciplines (economy, anthropology, philosophy, activists, ...), locked in a small castle 20 minutes south of Berlin, for 3 days, working up to 12 hours a day to flesh out the basis of a new theory of value.

Open Photo Album

The current world is still dominated by two broad lines of thought: capitalism and Marxism. Our economy is organized based on two major and conflicting theories of value: the capitalist value theory (the value of a commodity is its price, set through market dynamics) and Marx' labor theory of value (the value of things stems from the labor required to create them). New economic practices cannot be understood within these two theoretical frameworks. We need a new theory of value. Tiberius Brastaviceanu was invited to share the Sensorica experience. Here's the report of this gathering.

Open Tibi's own notes

Open folder for more info

P2PValue Conference

 Amsterdam, September 1st to September 3rd, 2016

Tiberius Brastaviceanu was invited to present Sensorica, part of the Design Global, Manufacture Local session.

The “design global, manufacture local” (DGML) model builds on the conjunction of the digital commons (e.g. open knowledge and design) with desktop manufacturing and automation technologies (e.g. 3D printing and CNC machines). It describes the processes where design is developed, shared and improved as a global digital commons, whereas the actual customized manufacturing takes place locally. DGML could be a model of sustainable development which recognizes the limits and scarcities posed by finite resources and effectively organizes material activities accordingly.

Moderator: Michiel Schwarz. Speakers: Vasilis Niaros, Tiberius Brastaviceanu, Lisha Sterling.

 

 

Open  presentation

Ethereum IoT Hackathon

Pictures

open folder in new window

SENSORICA's IoT + blockchain project

IoT + Blockchain used to incentivize the application of precision agriculture to control natural resources by tokenization of data collection and disintermediation of analysis to futures markets, food producers, and governmental institutions.