Announcements

Welcome to the following 2018-2020 board members! Thank you to all OSHWA members who voted, your vote is important – we had quorum! Here are the results:

Drew Fustini

Drew has a passion for collaborating on Open Source Hardware and Free Software projects.  He is an Open Source Hardware designer and firmware developer at OSH Park.  Drew is also a board member of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and maintains the BeagleBone Python library for Adafruit.

Michael Weinberg

Michael Weinberg is the Executive Director of the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law and Policy at the NYU School of Law. Before joining the Center he served as General Counsel at Shapeways, a 3D printing marketplace and service company, where he also oversaw strategic partnerships and developed new business initiatives. Prior to Shapeways Michael held a number of roles at Public Knowledge, a nonprofit public
interest advocacy organization dedicated to representing consumers and the public interest in technology policy debates in Washington, DC.

Jason Kridner

Jason Kridner is a Founder of the BeagleBoard.org Foundation and a 25 year veteran of Texas Instruments working in embedded systems. The BeagleBoard.org^® Foundation is a US-based 501c3 non-profit existing to provide education in and collaboration around the design and use of open-source software and hardware in embedded computing. Jason leads the development of and maintains open-source development tools such as BeagleBoard^®, -xM, -X15, BeagleBone^®, Black, Blue and the new PocketBeagle^®, a Linux-based open-source USB-key-fob computer. Kridner has been a featured keynote speaker and instructor at many industry and educational events including Maker Faires, American Society of Engineering Education Conference, ELC, Collaboration Summit, Android Builders, OSCON, CES and others.

Shah Selbe

Eric Pan

Jeffrey Warren

The creator of GrassrootsMapping.org and co-founder and Research Director for Public Lab, Jeffrey Warren designs mapping and community science tools and professionally flies balloons and kites. Notable software he has created include the vector-mapping framework Cartagen and orthorectification tool MapKnitter, as well as open spectral database and toolkit Spectral Workbench.

He is on the board (since 2014) of alternative education program Parts and Crafts in Somerville MA, and an advocate of open source software, hardware, and data. He co-founded Vestal Design, a graphic/interaction design firm in 2004, and directed the Cut&Paste Labs project, a year-long series of workshops on open source tools and web design in 2006-7 with Lima designer Diego Rotalde.

Jeff holds an MS from MIT and a BA in Architecture from Yale University, and spent much of that time working with artist/technologist Natalie Jeremijenko, building robotic dogs and stuff. To find out more, visit Unterbahn.com

Photo by ChristopherVillafuerte.com CC BY-NC-SA 4.0

Become an OSHWA member today to vote on nominees!

This year, we have 6 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5-10 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Nov. 8th-12th. Members will be emailed a link to vote.

Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:

Tom Callaway

Why do you want to be on the board?
To continue to support the open source hardware community, and to bring my expertise in open source community management to the OSH community.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I have been at Red Hat since 2001, and was responsible for Red Hat’s adoption of open source hardware in its 3d printing labs. I feel that the experiences that I have had working with the Open Source software community over the last 15 years will transfer well to the challenges faced by the Open Source Hardware Community. I’ve worked to ensure that Red Hat remains a visible contributor to the Open Source Hardware community (despite producing no hardware of its own), as well as incorporating Open Source Hardware opportunities in my education outreach efforts (e.g. funding work with CU Boulder’s BTU lab)

Drew Fustini

Why do you want to be on the board?
I want to help grow the Open Source Hardware movement through outreach and advocacy to communities that are as familiar with the open source hardware philosophy and the potential benefits.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
The OSHW philosophy and community is very important and special to me.
I am a founding member of OSHWA and have attended the Open Hardware Summit since the first year. I want to take a more active role and help grow this community and increase it’s usefulness.

Harris Kenny

Why do you want to be on the board?
I have had the privilege of being on the OSHWA Board for a single two-year term. During this time, I served as Treasurer for two years and contributed to or advised the certification of 26 projects (most recently, a desktop computer line and associated IO boards.) I’ve also helped with OH Summit. If re-elected for a second term, my goal would be to build on this work.

I want to hand off my knowledge of being treasurer to a new successor and improve how we grow OSHWA financially. I also want to identify ways to improve the certification process and documentation to support new categories of products and projects becoming open source hardware. I see certification as instrumental to growing the social and technical impact of open source hardware in art, research, education, and industry.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I have served on the OSHWA Board for the last two years as Treasurer and spoke at OH Summit 2016 in Portland. During the day, I am the Director of Business Development for System76, maker of Linux laptops, desktops, and servers. I coordinated the certification of the company’s new flagship desktop: Thelio. I previously served as President of Aleph Objects (maker of LulzBot 3D printers) and worked there for five years. I also earned an MBA from the University of Denver.

I believe deeply in the importance of freely licensing art and technology and ensuring that doing so is sustainable for creators. In my personal time, I contribute to public data projects like Wikipedia and Open Street Map and run Linux at home. Overall, I bring my business background to OSHWA along with with my passion for the values of the free software and open source hardware communities.

Jason Kridner

Why do you want to be on the board?
Open hardware matters as a means to improve technology accessibility, aide education, and foster general freedoms, including the right-to-repair and the right-to-know. OSHWA has assembled an amazing community and I feel obligated to help achieve our common goals, especially the one saying we desire to “Educate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.” Who doesn’t want to make the world a better place? This is an area where I feel I can help.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
My focus has been on open hardware since 2008 and I’ve built a successful open hardware brand in BeagleBoard.org, which continues to grow in terms of volume and participation. I’m acquainted with the leaders in the community having begun my foray into open hardware in 2008 and having been a speaker at several of the previous Open Hardware Summit events. I’ve demonstrated to leaders in the open hardware movement that my intentions go beyond any one sub-community to the goals of the community at large. My skills in interacting with these other leaders, gathering output from volunteers and driving consensus in diverse settings should be valuable to the board, organization and community.

Akshai M

Why do you want to be on the board?
I shall convince the team to promote Freedom in Open Source Hardware Projects. We need the concept of freedom embedded into the very fabric of Open Source Hardware. I will work with the team to bring a long term ( 3 Year) roadmap to promote Open Source Hardware and its adoption in devoloping nations and shall strive to align my goals with UN Sustainable Development Goals for the greater benefit of the world.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
Currently working with the Government of Kerala, India, to enable Open Source Hardware Manufacturing in the state and bring about an ecosystem for the development of Open Source Projects on LoRaWAN based IoT Projects. Worked extensively on ExpEYES project and MicroHOPE project. Worked with the Kerala State Government to bring 22 Open Source IoT Labs in the state.

Eric Pan

Why do you want to be on the board?
Help expand the influence of OSHWA to more industries and regions.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
As founder of Seeed Studio, working on open hardware since 2008, participated since the first OHS, well experienced most pains and gains of open hardware. Have solid faith over open hardware and proactively exploring possibilities to support it to the next level.

Rolly Seth

Why do you want to be on the board?
I owe most of the credit of what I have learned in life and where I am today to the open web of knowledge and maker community supporters. I feel it is time for me to share my learnings and give back. As a board member, along with contributing to the OSHW (Open Source Hardware) certification and summit, I would like to promote OSHWA’s mission especially in Pacific Northwest region and explore how global organizations, such as Microsoft can contribute and support. Coming from a technology industry where with each passing day, AI (artificial intelligence) and IoT (Internet of Things) seem to play a more important role to impact society, consumers and communities are looking for more creative hardware solutions, which are easy to connect and secured. As a maker/hardware enthusiast myself, I believe the community will play a critical role in achieving the target of 20+ billion connected devices by 2020 and OSHWA can provide a great platform to activate and engage that community.
Hardware and Software must go hand in hand to develop next generation of devices and services. An active discussion and engagement with community can help understand consumer needs, set the right interoperable, secured standards and frameworks; and support the next wave of DIY manufacturing and personal fabrication.
OSHWA has come a long way since its inception in 2012. Several people across the world now understand and appreciates the value of producing open source hardware (OSH) and know the steps to produce OSH with recent OSH 2.0 certification guidelines. With DIY manufacturing becoming more within reach and edge computing becoming the need of the hour, OSHWA can play a critical role in driving the required next level change.
I believe in the vision and values of Open Source Hardware and want to play an active role in contributing to the next generation of hardware revolution.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I believe my background, my passion and future pursuits qualify me to be a board member of OSHWA.
a). Background-
An electronics and communication engineer by background coupled with a liberal arts fellowship, I have been fascinated with exploring how technology can be integrated with multi-disciplinary fields to create more seamless and unique experiences.
My team has won several local and international accolades for some of the hardware projects we worked on in the past decade such as viSparsh, a haptic belt for visually impaired -http://visparsh.blogspot.com/ , which was accredited among top 12 Asian Innovation of 2012 by The Wall Street Journal. Other past awards, including Accenture Innovation Jockeys and Singularity University’s Global Impact Competition can be found here- http://rollyseth.com/awards
Inspired by Maker Movement, my friend and I activated the maker community at Microsoft India and opened Microsoft India’s first makerspace in 2015. I contributed to several creative hardware prototypes from humanoid to cloud connected t-shirt to an open source hardware and software solution such as https://github.com/Microsoft/kinect-ripple (Dual projection interactive framework).
I started my career as a Scientist Fellow in Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India and have worked in the government, research and non-profit sectors. My background gives me an understanding and needs of various sectors and have a strong connection with hardware, making and DIY.

b). Current & Future –
I currently lead the Microsoft Garage space, programming and communities in Microsoft HQ – Redmond. Microsoft Garage is Microsoft’s experimentation outlet for employees where we have thousands of makers in the Redmond campus and at major development centers worldwide. My role here involves staying updated with the recent technology and multi-disciplinary trends and explore how we can enable Microsoft makers and hackers to learn by doing and contribute in those areas.
Personally, I am about to finish ‘52 weekends of Making’ challenge https://www.youtube.com/c/RollySeth , which I undertook to expand my thinking of how traditional creative making mediums can integrate with emerging technologies to create more ambient scenarios of the future.
I believe in the power of the collective and my industry & personal experiences provide me with a unique space to contribute to the Open Source Hardware & DIY manufacturing culture.
I look forward to exploring how I can bring my diverse skills to the table as part of OSHWA.

Shah Selbe

Why do you want to be on the board?
I had such a great experience with the people that I met at the Open Hardware Summit and it made me want to be part of the community. I’d like to contribute to bring open hardware into areas that it hasn’t been used before and give back.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve been a leader in many professional organizations in the past (Engineers Without Borders, Systems Engineering Professional Society, National Geographic Explorers, etc) that I could help with many different tasks. I would love to help fulfill the vision of open hardware and bring the organization to the next level.

Jeffrey Yoo Warren

Why do you want to be on the board?
I’ve involved in many discussions at OSHWA about the open hardware community and open hardware intellectual property and legal matters — most recently in the discussions around an Open Hardware Certification model. I feel that my perspective on open source hardware strikes a balance between the functional argument that open hardware is a better way to create hardware, and the ethical position that we should have the right to examine/copy/modify/distribute designs — that open collaboration is a better model for our society. I believe deeply in community-driven processes, while also believing that for-profit organizations can — and stand to benefit greatly from — being “good open hardware citizens.”

I really believe that if an individual or organization thinks of open sourcing their work as a kind of charity, as opposed to as a way to improve it through rigorous community testing and input, they are missing the point. Working in an open source model is an acknowledgment that we don’t have all the answers, and that, whether we just ‘put it out there’ for people to build on, or actively seek input and collaboration from a broader and more diverse public, we are seeking to incorporate new and better ideas into the work, and are aware of our own limitations as engineers, designers, technologists, and more.

Most of all, I believe strongly that the key to a healthy open source hardware movement is culture. We must continue and improve upon our open, discursive approach to open hardware, and to build strong norms to guide our work, so that we can continue to invent, collaborate, and benefit from one anothers’ work. This spans from good documentation to standards of design file publication, to refining the pace and practices of the actual collaboration in online forums, publication platforms, and even in-person meetings.

Finally, I believe in the power of the perspectives, ideas, and active participation of people who have been excluded (structurally or otherwise) from the growing open hardware community, and feel that we have a responsibility to work towards a more equitable and inclusive community.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve served on the OSHWA board for 2 years, and have been deeply interested in open hardware both through my work at Public Lab, and as part of the broader free/libre/open source movement. Public Lab, a community of thousands of people engaged in collaboratively developing affordable and accessible environmental testing techniques and equipment, has been using the CERN Open Hardware License for several years, and I participated in the discussions and comment period which led to version 1.2 of that license. I am a producer and consumer of open source hardware and free/libre/open source software, notably as a lead developer of Public Lab’s DIY Spectrometer and associated SpectralWorkbench.org software suite (http://publiclab.org/lego), as well as the Infragram multispectral camera (http://publiclab.org/infragram) and associated Infragram.org image compositing system. Since 2011, using our published designs and kits, over six thousand people have constructed their own spectrometers, and many have contributed back their refinements and additions. The size and scope of this project gives me key insight into how a diverse community of contributors can collaboratively tackle complex hardware design, and into the challenges of scaling such a model.

I’ve also served as the secretary of OSHWA, taking minutes on board meetings, and have missed almost none of the meetings over the years I served — an attendance record I’m proud of. I would be excited to once again represent the interests of community-based open hardware contributors everywhere during an additional two years of service.

Michael Weinberg

Why do you want to be on the board?
While not as important as actual design and creation of OSHW, legal and licensing issues have the potential to have a huge impact on its development and growth. OSS serves as a guide, but not a perfect analogy, for hardware. I want to be on the board of OSHWA to try and help make sure that legal and policy structures are in place to foster OSHW. I also want to make sure that the OSHWA does everything it can to encourage the development of easy to understand best practices that allow non-lawyers to easily navigate some of these thorny issues.

What qualifies you to be a board member?
I’ve been the point person for the OSHWA certification process since 2015 and would like to continue doing so.

OSHWA is looking for 6 new faces to join the board of directors for the Open Source Hardware Association. The nominee form is for self-nominations only. Please fill out the nominee form (deactivated Nov. 4th) to become a nominee or forward the link to someone you want to nominate. Do not fill out the form for someone else. The purpose of this form is to tell voting members why you want to serve on the OSHWA board. We will be publish the nominees and their answers on Nov. 5th. Board members hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carry out compliance with the organizations purposes and bylaws. See the board member agreement to get a sense of the responsibilities. Board members are expected to adhere to the board attendance policy and come prepared having read the board packet. Board members are expected to spend 5-10 hours of time per month on OSHWA. Nominees can submit questions to info@oshwa.org. Nominations will be open until Nov. 4th.

Member voting will take place Nov. 8-12. Want to vote in the election? Become a member! Please note that only individuals can vote, corporate members cannot.

Today, for the first time in the history in the Open Source Hardware Certification Program, OSHWA is revoking the certification for hardware.  OSHWA is revoking the certification for the MOTEDIS XYZ 3D printer, with the UID ES000001, because the documentation is no longer publicly available.  We have attempted to contact Motedis with a request to re-post the documentation but they have not been responsive.

Since this is the first time OSHWA has revoked a certification, we want to explain what happened, as well as what we will do in order to help prevent this type of situation in the future.

What happened

A few weeks ago, a community member wrote in and noted that the documentation link for the XYZ was no longer live.  After reaching out to the contact person listed in the certification application, we have been unable to obtain a copy of the documentation to post publicly.   Without the documentation, the XYZ is no longer in compliance with the program. Therefore OSWHA revoked the certification.

What it means

Revoking the certification means that going forward the XYZ can no longer be advertised as being certified open source hardware.  It does not mean that Motedis’ failure to provide documentation today makes them retroactively in violation of the certification rules.  The certification requires that the documentation be available at the time of certification. It does not require the certifying party to commit to making a copy of that documentation available in perpetuity.  This is a burden that is unreasonable to expect of a party applying for certification.

What now

When the Certification program was being developed, there was a debate over whether or not OSHWA should try and host a repository of all of the certified hardware.  One advantage of such a centralized repository would have been to allow OSHWA itself to maintain archive copies of documentation.

However, that approach also comes with costs.  Developing and maintaining a feature-complete documentation hosting solution is beyond OSHWA’s core competency.  Many good solutions for developing and maintaining software and documentation already exist online. Requiring certifiers to update and maintain yet another repository of documentation in order to certify was determined to be unnecessarily burdensome.  Instead, the certification directory supports links which point to the place where the developers already host and maintain their documentation.

OSHWA continues to believe that this decentralized approach is correct.  Nonetheless, the first revocation of certification provides us with an opportunity to consider improvements.  OSHWA has started to investigate a process that would allow us to archive a version of all documentation. This archive would not be used at the primary documentation storage location.  Instead, it would only be used in the event that the original documentation was no longer available. That would allow users of hardware to access documentation even after the responsible party stops supporting it as open.

If you have thoughts about this, please let us know in the forums.

We at OSHWA are excited to announce that the OSHWA Certification process has an officially registered trademark. This registration will make it easier for OSHWA to prevent people from using the OSHWA Open Source Hardware Certification logo if they have not actually gone through the certification process. We hope this will give the community more confidence when they see the OSHWA certification logo on hardware out in the world.

While there are many good faith ways to describe something as “open source hardware,” OSHWA considers certified projects to have met the gold standard of open source hardware by formally committing to comply with all of the elements of the community definition.

Are Trademarks Compatible with Open Source Hardware?

Trademarks are not in conflict with open source hardware. Trademarks are designed to indicate the origins of goods, not to control their reproduction. Knowing who produced something is especially important with hardware, because who actually manufactured hardware can be just as important to its reliability as who designed it.

Trademarks also do not prevent someone else from building on or using hardware that is protected by the mark. Companies like Lulzbot, Evil Mad Scientist, Adafruit, and Sparkfun all make open source hardware that anyone can copy, improve, or build upon. What people cannot do is pretend that their version of the hardware came from one of those companies by selling their version under the brand name of the original creator. That makes sense, because the original creator is no longer responsible for the new versions.

When creators have invited the world to make use of their open hardware, trademarks are how we know which pieces of hardware still come from the original designer. OSHWA believe that strong brand identities are compatible with a vibrant open source hardware ecosystem.

What OSHWA’s Trademark Means

The OSHWA Open Source Hardware Certification process is designed to make it easy for end users to quickly tell if their hardware meets the community definition of Open Source Hardware.  When you see the OSHWA certification logo, you know what “open source hardware” really means.

The trademark will allow us to control how people use the certification logo out in the world. In concrete terms, it means that someone who fraudulently uses the OSHWA certification logo on hardware that does not meet the community definition is infringing on the OSHWA trademark.  That means that OSHWA could bring a trademark infringement action against that person. This will allow OSHWA to protect the integrity of the certification mark.

What  OSHWA’s Trademark Doesn’t Mean

As we noted in a post at the outset of the certification development process, OSHWA has no interest in controlling, nor ability to control, who gets to use the term “open source hardware.”  Similarly, OSHWA does not have, nor desire, any control over who gets to use the Gear Logo and when they get to use it. Open Source Hardware is a concept that was developed by the community and continues to evolve as the community evolves.

Instead, OSHWA’s trademark will allow OSHWA to control the OSHWA-specific certification process.  If the community definition of open source hardware is important to you, the OSHWA certification logo will be an easy way to know that the hardware you are holding matches that definition.

What is Next?

We are getting excited to launch version 2.0 of the certification process at the Summit this September.  One of the big goals of 2.0 is to make it even easier to understand how licensing works with open source hardware, and make it easy to explore hardware that has already been certified.  If you are at the Summit you will be able to see that launch in person. If you can’t make it, keep an eye on this space for updates.

Also, a huge thank you to the students of the Juelsgaard Intellectual Property and Innovation Clinic at Stanford University Law School for guiding OSHWA through the registration process.

Thoughts?  Questions? You can always find OSHWA on Twitter, Facebook, and in the forums.

After almost a year and a half of community discussion, OSHWA unveiled the Open Source Hardware Certification Program at the 2016 Open Hardware Summit.  Today, with the help of a major grant from the Sloan Foundation, we are excited to announce that we are taking major steps towards Certification 2.0.

The original certification program has some fairly straightforward goals.  It is designed to make it easy for creators to identify their hardware as compliant with the community definition of open source hardware, as well as make it easy for users to know that hardware that is advertised as “open source” meets  their expectations.  The certification process gives a creator confidence that they have done everything required to call their hardware open source.  The certification logo gives users confidence that they will be able to access, build upon, and hack any hardware that they receive.

We didn’t know what to expect when we launched the certification program and have been blown away by the results.  There are currently 170 certified hardware projects from 18 countries on 5 continents participating in the program.

While we are excited about the certification program, shortly after it launched we started thinking of ways to improve it.  The current interface built on a combination of google forms and wordpress is functional, but not necessarily elegant.  Once the process was live, we also started getting feedback from users on ways to make it better.  One major concern was that the registration process exists in a bit of a vacuum.  It asks the creator to verify that she has complied with all of the requirements but does not provide very much guidance on the best ways to comply or the various choices that can be made and still comply.

For the past year we have been working with the Technology Law and Policy Clinic at the New York University School of Law to create more robust guidance to help creators navigate the licensing, documentation, and other decisions that creators must make when they are working towards certification.  We have also been working with the team at Objectively to turn that guidance into an interactive process that draws on examples from the community.

The grant from the Sloan Foundation allows us to take that work and turn the certification into a much more robust and useful resource.  We are hoping to have the new site ready to launch by the 2018 Summit.  Until then, please let us know if you have thoughts, ideas, or concerns.  We are very excited about the next chapter of the Certification Program and hope you will be too.

Hello to the new board members, Akiba, Arielle, and David, joining the OSHWA team!

Each board member will be helping the organization continue to grow through contributions drawn from an amazing array of backgrounds and experiences in hackerspaces, makerspaces, academics, OSHW businesses, government relations, and much more!

We also thank the board members stepping down, Jeff, Joel, and Katherine, for contributing their time and experience to steer the organization and influence the open source hardware community as a whole. We appreciate the efforts everyone has put and will put into The Open Source Hardware Association!

Akiba

Akiba has been designing open source hardware for the past ten years and has run an open source hardware company for the same amount of time. I’ve put together or have been involved putting together four hackerspaces (Tokyo Hackerspace, Mothership Hackermoms, Knowledge Garden Dharamsala, and HackerFarm) and understand the importance of building, maintaining, and growing community.

Arielle Hein

Arielle is a graduate studies alumni of ITP NYU and has worked extensively with Open Source Hardware consistently since then. In her current role as an Instructor at the University of Colorado, she teaches interaction design and physical computing courses that rely heavily on open source tools. She also offers extensive community organizing experience through ongoing work as the Coordinator of ITP Camp.

David Li

David has been an open source and free software contributor since 1990 on various of projects. Ardublock, developed in 2012, is one of the most popular graphical development environments for Arduino. His experiences include research in the area of open hardware ecosystem in China since 2011, director of the ObjectWeb (a European based open source software consortium) in 2003-2006, and has contributed to the joint effort between ObjectWeb and major Chinese open source software projects.

Become an OSHWA member today to vote on nominees!

This year, we have 3 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Oct. 14th through Oct 21st. Members will be emailed a link to vote. Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:

Akiba

Why do you want to be on the board?

I’ve been involved and worked with many nonprofits and NGOs doing projects like monitoring illegal waste dumping, monitoring water quality in the Himalayas, radiation monitoring in Japan, etc. All of those projects have used open source hardware in some form because the designs could be rapidly put together, deployed, and assessed. Crises are becoming the norm and I believe open source hardware will play a crucial role to prevent, mitigate, or assist aid workers and victims during those times. I’d like to give back to the open source hardware community for all the benefits I’ve received as well as help guide OSHW and OSHWA towards more cooperation with nonprofit humanitarian and aid agencies.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’ve been designing open source hardware for the past ten years and have run an open source hardware company for the same amount of time. I think it’s important for OSHWA board members to understand the value of OSHW and how that translates into commercial value for their companies. I’ve put together or have been involved putting together four hackerspaces (Tokyo Hackerspace, Mothership Hackermoms, Knowledge Garden Dharamsala, and HackerFarm) and understand the importance of building, maintaining, and growing community. I’ve also worked with, consulted, and put together open hardware projects for groups like UNESCO, World Bank, and IAEA and believe that it’s important to reach out and educate NGOs doing important work to the benefits of open source hardware.

Will Caruana

Why do you want to be on the board?

I want to be part of something bigger then my self. I feel that I will add an outside perspective. I don’t work in any industry that produces goods but I live in that maker space of the communitte.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I served as president of a non profit for 5 years it’s the Friends of Wilbraham Public Access. I was the chairmen if the Board Band Committee which was able to set up a municipal corporation that sell fiber optic services to ISP’s. I also love make things currently I like making high voltage projects like my demo fusion reactor which currently produces a ball of plasma in a vacuum. I am also running the fun with high voltage workshop at the Hackaday Superconference because I like helping people learn and work with high voltage.

Arielle Hein

Why do you want to be on the board?

I work and engage with a vastly diverse range of different communities, but one of the primary overlaps between these groups is that they all rely heavily on open source tools, hardware in particular. I am extremely passionate about building bridges between the arts and engineering, and making this cross-disciplinary work more accessible to a broad range of makers – to artists and women especially. I love to create, hack, and teach all things open source – but as much as I’m excited about exploring emerging technologies, the thing that drives me most is the way that sharing knowledge is an opportunity to build connections between people. I am excited about the prospect of more direct engagement within the Open Source Hardware community, and eager to assist in continuing to extend the mission of this organization.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

Since my time as a graduate student at ITP NYU, I have worked extensively with Open Source Hardware and have engaged with the community consistently since then. In my current role as an Instructor at the University of Colorado, I teach interaction design and physical computing courses that rely heavily on open source tools. Beyond skill acquisition, my philosophy as an educator focuses on the importance of knowledge sharing, documentation, and collaboration – notions that I will bring to my contributions on the board of OSHWA. I also have extensive community organizing experience through my ongoing work as the Coordinator of ITP Camp. I am a strong communicator (and listener!) and very organized and responsive in all correspondence. I am extremely excited about the opportunity to serve not he OSHWA board and am hopeful to deepen my contributions within this community. I am glad to answer any questions via email from anyone in the community regarding my qualifications or interest in this role!

David Li

Why do you want to be on the board?

I am currently the executive director of Shenzhen Open Innovation Lab which is a government supported platform to promote and facilitate the collaboration between the Shenzhen open hardware ecosystem and the global makers and open source hardware groups. Prior to SZOIL, I also started the research hub Hacked Matter with two collaborators to study global maker movement and open hardware ecosystem in Shenzhen and publish our findings. Shenzhen open hardware ecosystem is currently a 100 billion industry and the insight into how this ecosystem was developed and structured could contribute the future growth of the global open source hardware development.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I have been an open source and free software contributor since 1990 on various of projects. Ardublock I developed in 2012 is one of the most popular graphical development environments for Arduino. I have been doing research in the area of open hardware ecosystem in China since 2011. In my previous role as the director of ObjectWeb an European based open source software consortium in 2003-2006, I contributed to the joint effort between ObjectWeb and major Chinese open source software projects. I can bring new insights to the board and help bridge the global open hardware and the open ecosystem in China.

Narcisse Mbunzama

Why do you want to be on the board?

I want to bring my experience and knowledge on open hardware and related issues with a special view on technical and organizations development. As a citizen of the democratic republic of Congo, I wish to represent the global south in the board, to bring valuable contribution and inputs finally to help achieve the open hardware association mission.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I hold a master degree in computer science and technology innovation and I am a fellow of the international telecommunication union and member of several technology innovation organizations around the world. I’m a serial award winning tech innovator and I conduct researches on standards for open hardware, design of system and related issues. With my background and experience, I personally believe that I am a qualified candidate to join the board and i will bring valuable inputs and contribution in the board.

Joel Murphy

Chris Osterwood

Why do you want to be on the board?

I am a longtime user of Open Source Hardware and have benefited from it greatly. I want to return that favor and help others benefit from OSHW. I’m a mechanical engineer by training and I chose that educational path because I was fascinated and captivated by the mechanical world. I gained tremendous design insight and experience by taking apart my toys as a child — in fact my favorite store sold broken junk by the pound. Being able to see how my toys worked gave me interest in designing new products. Since college, I’ve learned electrical design through study of open source hardware schematics, bills of materials, and design journals. I now see that I’m repeating my childhood but in digital circuit design — learning new skills and design strategies by interrogating what others have made. And without OSHW, without published schematics, this kind of interrogation and subsequent learning is much more difficult. What I’ve learned has allowed me to start my own company, Capable Robot Components, which will be releasing a line of OSHW products aimed at changing the make vs buy decisions that makers of unmanned ground robots currently face. I want to be on the OSHWA board to further its mission and to help others benefit from OSHW as I have.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’m not sure quite how to answer this question. But, I understand and am interested in organization building — for example I’m on the steering committee of the Pittsburgh Robotics Network, which is becoming a 501c6 organization. I am embracing OSHW with the products I’m designing at my company. I have functional knowledge in hardware design, embedded software, web software, marketing, and law. I enjoy teaching and speaking — I’ve given talks on law & robots (Practicing Law Institute) and how we tested 3D sensors at my previous company (Embedded Vision Summit and ROSCON). I listen. I try to make well reasoned decisions.

Jeff Paranich

Why do you want to be on the board?

My low-level coding interests for the past 20 years have led me to hardware design, and the colossal reward of holding a tangible, physical item, in your hands that can be shared with others to extend upon and use in their designs. While programming low-level in itself is still fulfilling, the thought that everyday consumers can build their own commercial grade products with all the distributor resources available today is truly phenomenal. Curiously, the knowledge that such a movement exist is not known by the general population. One simply envisions big factories, assembly lines, and blue-chip organizations being the sole innovator and originator; when in reality there are compelling and pioneering designs being done by small organizations and private individuals in their own homes. I believe this is a tragic mindset; the homebrew and maker community was strong in the eighties, there was a general knowledge it existed by all and anticipation of an upcoming wave to pave the future to new technology. I can attest that today open hardware has, and will continue to gain, a lot of momentum – and is strongest it has been in two decades – but may continue to be eclipsed by large organizations that keep much of their business proprietary. Canada, my home country, has a very strong post-secondary system; world-class Computer Science and Engineering schools, however outside of BioWare and BlackBerry there has not been much traction in STEM corporations, small business’, nor makers in the nation, I believe due in part to organizations such as OSHWA not having a strong enough presence to inform and encourage innovation and open source/hardware from early on and to general masses. Thus, I desire to be on the board to expand awareness of the Open Source Hardware Association and inform and educate those who are not aware of what it represents. I pledge to attend fairs or events, fundraise well beyond the expected $300 as it is not enough, and provide meaningful input on the Board of Director meetings. I also believe the best protection for OSHWA’s future is committing resources to youth at early ages, expanding their mind into hardware before they move onto post-secondary or private studies – even presenting hardware as a valid field of self-study that can merit much personal success with all the open source resources available today. OSHWA is the strongest association and best bet right now to incite change, grow the movement further, and ensure the hardware community story remains a rich and colorful one. It would be an absolute honor to be part of the team and ensure its continued success.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I hold dual degrees from the University of Alberta- Bachelor of Science in Computer Science & Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Mathematics, with a minor in Business. I have been a projects controls manager for over two billion dollars in heavy oil projects; managing revenue, cost, margins, scheduling and progress completion. When I am not managing projects, I am designing hardware in my workshop. My most common projects typically involve power supplies, FPGA boards, video processing ADC/DAC boards, and audio amplifiers. Furthermore, I have coded a multitude of company software programs – software as simple as employee in/out of office interfaces, to estimating software for piping fabrication, to invoicing software which neared that of a full ERP system. I have a thorough knowledge of C++, C and the Unix tool set (Awk, Sed, etc), and believe in the Unix philosophy of building simple, short, clear, modular, and extensible code that can be easily maintained and repurposed by developer’s other than its creators. I can operate under tight deadlines and sometimes unrealistic deliverables, accepting the challenge and looking forward to the feeling of reward once finished. Lastly, I am co-founder of a successful videography company in Alberta (J&C Media Corporation), managing employees and finances and scheduling – also doing occasional filming myself in the field for corporate and private events. All said my past is very multi-faceted, I have a multitude of exposure to many elements at various business levels and have been successful to date with a clear, structured framework to how I approach things and would apply all my techniques to ensure the continued success of the Open Source Hardware Association.

Nick Poole

Why do you want to be on the board?

I’ve always been a proponent of OSHW and other Free and Open initiatives and I believe I finally have the free time and bandwidth to get involved with steering the ship. I’m also interested in talking to other board members and learning from their perspectives.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’ve worked for SparkFun Electronics for almost 7 years where I’ve had the opportunity to see open hardware from a number of perspectives: as a marketing professional, a community discussion leader, and a designer and maintainer of open hardware projects. I believe that my work experience combined with my unique personal perspective and affinity for facilitating and mediating discussions could make me a valuable member of the board.