Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit 2013 - Call for Participation

Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit 2013

Call for Participation

Are you a developer of Open Source Hardware? Or are you a social researcher fascinated by this most tangible aspect of free knowledge? Are you an activist or community organizer who wants to facilitate creative developments and future laboratories? Or are you a businessperson that understands the fascinating power of working with communities in bringing about the most thought-through, reliable and maybe also meaningful products?

Then we are inviting you to actively contribute to the LinuxWeeks special "Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit" in May 2nd-4th 2013!

LinuxWeeks is increasingly giving space to all those developments that might have started from Free Software or are influenced by it, but have transcended the borders of software.

The Open Source methods of collaboratively developing innovative products and procedures have begun to conquer not only science, education and art, but they are beginning to change the world of material production which is, as some say, the basic structure of society. It started in electronics with products like Arduino, it continued in computer driven tools like RepRap, but now you can already see the first cars and tractors based on Open Source design. And whilst the whole world seems to be chasing for patents, a silent revolution of sharing and cooperation is beginning. We see it everywhere!

And even where there was always a certain degree of collaboration, like in food production, agriculture and crafts, we see now a global explosion of this collaboration, resulting in shared sophistication. It seems that there is a new spirit of entrepreneurship that intentionally maintains rather than destroys social cohesion, localisation, decentralisation. Maybe these new methods are a new source of power for the endangered middle class, the rural area, the village, the less developed world?

We want to examine and support this complex change, understand the direction it is taking and help networking those who have solutions for the still manifold challenges.

We are not seeking to be an academic meeting. We want to be a place for developens and users to meet. Be with us and see how you and your peers and partners can contribute to answering the following questions:

  • How can we make Open Hardware and at the same time make a living?
  • How do we turn our enthusiasm, our creativity and our joy of creation into a business model that can withstand and thrive within tough market forces?
  • What are the standards, procedures and methods to declare a certain area of production, an invention, a product of Open Hardware?
  • How do we ensure collaboration and participation?
  • How do we balance between community interests and commercial interests?
  • How "open" is Open Hardware after all in a world still largely dominated by aggressive proprietarisation which is even supported instead of limited by publicly funded institutions?
  • What is the "state of the battle" in diverse areas of human endeavour between proprietary and open?
  • How is your product changing the picture?
  • If we do Open Hardware, are we also changing the methods and procedures of design?
  • Are we learning from Free Software also in being more agile, modular, pattern-oriented?
  • How does this compare to the usual ways of design?
  • How can we improve by cascading and stacking Open Source technologies like in the software world where operating system, server, applications and databases are reliably based on each other?
  • What does that mean for hardware? Whats the role of design software?
  • What is the role of platform technologies, product chains, and product cycles?
  • What does that mean for energy, mobility, regional production?


So, if you feel you can contribute, do not hesitate to inform us how - and send us a paper! Please keep in mind access to this conference is free of charge, so we cannot pay you a honorarium, but with the brilliancy of your ideas we can approach sponsors to help out a bit with travel and accomodation costs for those in need. Please do act fast, the time is short - for the power of community to create a fruitful and exciting event.

Timeline

2013-03-31: deadline (to be confirmed)
2013-04-10: review
2013-04-11: notification

Contact

Please register here: https://cfp.linuxwochen.at/en/lww2013/cfp/session/new

and submit your proposed speech or event!

If anything goes wrong with your submission or if you have any question, please do not hesitate to contact us at MAIL programm2013 (AT) linuxwochen.at

Event

  • 2013-05-02 Thu Day 1 of 3 Linuxwochen Wien "Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit"
  • 2013-05-03 Fri   Day 2 of 3 Linuxwochen Wien "Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit"
  • 2013-05-04 Sat  Day3 of 3 Linuxwochen Wien "Vienna Open Source Hardware Summit"

Venue


FH Technikum Wien
Hoechstaedtplatz 5, 1200 Wien
OpenStreetMap
http://wien.linuxwochen.at