Wow. There isn’t really any way that I can think of to describe the sheer awesomeness of the Open Hardware Summit. If the quantity and excitement-level of my live tweets during the day wasn’t enough to convince you, I had an amazing time – thanks to element14 for sending me.
The event organization was nothing short of amazing. I didn’t attend the first summit last year, but from talking to others who did, I gathered that this year was particularly well coordinated. A special shout-out is in order for Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir, the co-chairs of the event. They ran the summit beautifully.
Before I go on, you should go check out all the photos I took: http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeremyblum/sets/72157627560471141/. Most importantly, note my detailed photo dissection of all the awesome free swag (including an element14 mug) that all attendees received. Free swag is arguably the most important part of any conference.
Back at school, I have a tremendous amount of trouble sitting through lectures that last just 50 minutes. Yet, at the Open Hardware Summit, I sat through hours and hours of amazing talks, all of which managed to keep me glued to my seat. You can check out a list of the speakers here. No doubt, if you’re reading this, you’re probably familiar with many of them.
The day opened with breakfast – I got the opportunity to catch up with several of my co-workers from my summer at Makerbot Industries, and I met several of people whom I had previously only known by their twitter usernames. These conversations continued through the day:
“Hi I’m *some name*”
“Who?”
“You know, *twitter username*”
“Oh, that’s you! How’s it going!?”
The first set of talks concentrated on giving a general picture of the current status of open source hardware. The Arduino team, arguably one of the biggest players in the open source hardware community led off with an interesting history of the Arduino. In particular, I found their business evolution to be pretty unique. They started by simply doing what they felt needed to be done, and realized a few years down the line that this hobby was quickly turning into a business. Their slides illustrate a few great quotes and witticisms that they picked up along the way. Kate Hartman followed with a great talk about “thingness” and teaching open hardware in the university setting. I particularly enjoyed her slide on hugging icebergs. Eric Wilhelm, founder of instructables, then spoke about community building as it relates to gigantic k’nex guns. Seriously. Bunnie finished up the first round with a demo of his new Chumby Device for overlaying web data on an HD video feed. His talk provided some great enthusiasm regarding the continuing potential for open hardware in the future.
Up next was legal issues with respect to open source licenses. This is a topic that I admittedly don’t have much experience with, so it was great to hear some new perspectives. In particular, Myriam Ayass from CERN (the ones who run the world’s largest super collider) presented about the CERN open hardware license, the first legal agreement to be based on the Open Hardware Definition that was defined earlier this year.
Following lunch, social change as it related to open hardware was the topic of discussion. We heard about everything from autonomous sailboats to nuclear reactors to graffiti. The last talk, on using open source hardware to read eye movements of a patient with ALS so they could make art as they once did, was nothing short of inspirational. Check out the video if you want to see just how amazing this technology is: http://vimeo.com/6376466
The next set of talks addressed the open source community. iFixit gave some great insight on the process of forging a community that effectively conveys ideas. Autumn Wiggins, of the Upcycle Exchange, discussed her craft exchange program, and how it has grown from a simple experiment to a complete business that this now being “franchised”. I was particularly excited by this talk because of how well it related to the sustainability work I do at school. Bre Pettis, of Makerbot Industries, declared “Share or Die!” as a call to arms for open sharing of resources and ideas. A quick rundown of derivative designs on thingiverse was a great testament for how well this ideology has worked for 3D printing.
The next range of talks addressed everything from integrated circuit design to open source hardware in space. Mark Norton gave an interesting talk about open source ecology – particularly the development of an open steam engine. I thought this provided an ideal example of open hard that isn’t electronics – something that hadn’t been heavily addressed by other speakers in the conference. Bruce Perens, founder of the Open Source Initiative talked about some of the space work he does, and how open hardware plays an important role.
The last group of speakers discussed the process of getting started in open hardware – a potentially daunting task for many people. Amanda ‘Woz’ Wozniak gave great insight into how important it is to document and open up the entire process, not just the finished project. James Bowman, creator of the Gameduino gave the only talk shown using only open source hardware – He used a gameduino to display his slides! Nathan Seidle, cautioned people about opening everything. “It’s up to you” to choose what you share, and not all things should be shared. Sparkfun, for example, shares its revenue but not its salaries because, Nathan argued, that information is not relevant to the customer getting the full experience out of the product.
The day finished off with breakout sessions and demos. I was only able to attend my breakout session for a few minutes before setting up my demo. For the last two hours of the conference, many attendees displayed their open hardware projects, including me! Those who were not displaying projects got to enjoy drinks and snacks – needless to say, the demo session made me hungry!
Naturally, that’s only a small rundown of all the amazingness that took place the summit. Be sure to check out the recordings for all the nitty gritty details: http://www.ustream.tv/channel/open-hardware-summit-2011. I hope to see you all at the 3rd annual summit next year!
