When: the 4th of Decembre 2009
Where: at NESTA in London
What: Open Hardware Conference hosted by the 40fires foundation

Open Hardware Conference#

The 40fires foundation has hosted a conference on Open Hardware. It was a real success with international speakers and around 100 attendees. The link to the event website is here

Open Hardware Conference

Open Hardware Conference

The main questions addressed at the event were:
- what are successful strategies to form communities of engineers and tinkerers to collaboratively develop and design hardware
- how can we foster the creation of an Open Source like ecology where altruistic, pragmatic and economic incentives coalesce in the production of complex physical objects
- in Open Source the GPL (General Pubic License) has played a key role in binding communities together through ensuring that enhancements are kept 'open'. How can a GPL equivalent work for hardware and what are the right legal strategies to ensure sustainability of collaboration

Speakers at the event were:#

- Daniel Soltis from Tinker.it
- Francesco D'Orazio of face
- Hugo Spowers from Riversimple
- Patrick Andrews from Riversimple/40fires
- Jacco Lammers from C,MM,N
- Andrew Katz from Moorcroft

Summary#

After a warm welcome from Christian Ahlert, the first presentation session started with Daniel Soltis from Tinker.it a company that sells Arduino chips, a very successful Open Source microcontroller. He gave an interesting overview of what is Arduino, where and how it started and how it has developed into one of the most successful Open Hardware projects to date.
The second presentation, from Francesco d'Orazio, was about open collaboration models. His company face works with traditionally "closed" organisations on how to open discussions for innovation and marketing, using crowd-sourcing and other strategies.
A very interesting discussion session followed

After a lively coffee break (good occasion for further discussions and networking), the second presentation session started with Hugo Spowers and patrick Andrews about the Riversimple/40fires project, followed by Jacco Lammers on C,MM,N
The two presentations were introducing each project, their history, current state and goals. You can find all the information on the slides (see below) and on the Riversimple and C,MM,N websites.

After lunch, discussions about the many challenges of Open Source Hardware were held in groups.
The final presentation session saw Patrick Andrews and Andrew Katz discuss the necessary framework for open licensing of hardware.

Get the presentation slides#

Francesco D'orazio on Open Innovation. Slides
Daniel Soltis on The Case of Ardunio. Slides.
Patrick Andrews and Hugo Spowers on Open Source Cars. Slides
Patrick Andrews and Andrew Katz on Open Hardware licensing. Slides

Articles about the conference #

O'Reilly GMT report
Wired
Glyn Moody attended our conference last Friday and had this to say.