Our agenda and schedule for the day is now online. Check out our amazing lineup of speakers and panels on the schedule page!
We are really touched by your support of the Open Hardware Summit. We are still accepting sponsorships (see the sponsor page), but in the mean time, we would like to thank our sponsors so far!
Our current, very generous sponsors!
and also
TO SPONSOR: visit the sponsor page
Sponsorship for the Open Hardware Summit is still open! By sponsoring the Open Hardware Summit you’ll be fostering the open source hardware movement. This is the first conference of its kind, where open source hardware producers are coming together to share knowledge about bringing open hardware to market, and solving issues around open design and licensing. Together we will gain momentum as a team, defining a revolution and signing a new definition. Special thanks to our sponsors who have already donated.
Please consider sponsoring this non-profit event. Here’s what you need to know about sponsoring:
• Sponsorship for cash donations are capped at $1000. By keeping the sponsorship playing field open and accessible, it ensures that smaller companies can show their support too. If your company would like to sponsor more than $1000, we welcome in-kind donations such as lunch, name tags, a cocktail hour, etc. Please contact the organizers to discuss your donation.
• Sponsors will be given love – we will thank you individually at the event, on the website, and your logo will appear at the entrance of the event. In addition, you will receive two tickets to attend the event.
• This is a non-profit event. Extra funds from sponsorship will be put toward a scholarship for creating open hardware.
Would you like to Sponsor?
Thanks to Eyebeam Art and Technology center, our non-profit fiscal sponsor for handling the finances.
Hello all.
On behalf of Eyebeam, Creative Commons and littleBits, I am very excited to welcome you to the Open Hardware Summit this year!
I started getting interested in Open Hardware as a vehicle for innovation and social change while a student at the CCG group at the MIT Media Lab, and got fully immersed in it while a senior fellow at Eyebeam Art and Technology Center in New York. Now, I am a (crazy!) strong believer in the power of Open Hardware. When I started littleBits, I jumped into the many challenges of porting the Open Source Software movement to tangible objects.
As I worked closely on legal strategy with incredible advisor, John Wilbanks, VP of Science at Creative Commons (CC), we decided to create a venue for the community to interface with CC, and embark on a mission to help catalyze an Open Hardware license. The workshop, entitled “Opening Hardware: A workshop on Legal tools for open source hardware” took place at Eyebeam on March 17th and featured OH pioneers such as Arduino, Adafruit, Buglabs, MakerBot, Chumby as well as Jonathan Kuniholm (Open Prosthetics), Chris Anderson (Wired), Mako Hill (OLPC, Wikipedia), Becky Stern (Make), Jon Philips (Qi), Shigeru Kobayashi (Gainer), Thinh Nguyen and John Wilbanks (CC) and us (littleBits, Eyebeam). Since then we, and an incredible group of OH stars (Evil Mad Scientist, Parallax, Sparkfun, Lilypad), have started putting together a definition that today, we are very excited to release in version 0.3 for public comment.
Recently, I have been appointed as Creative Commons fellow – a very important step which shows CC’s commitment to our community. And on September 23rd, Alicia Gibb (Buglabs) and myself are chairing the Open Hardware Summit as part of MakerFaire. We will be discussing the OH license, and hope to put version 1.0 out to the world!
Please join us, sponsor us, support us, or just follow us!
You can join the conversation on the forum, and follow the twitter feeds: #openhardware
See you on September 23rd,
ayah bdeir
fellow - Creative Commons
founder - littleBits.cc
senior fellow - Eyebeam
We’ve been planning/scheming (!) for so long now it is great to finally get this post out the door.
This blog is the infoHQ for an open source hardware conference that we, Bug Labs, MakerFaire and littleBits will be hosting in NYC on September 23 called the Open Hardware Summit. We are incredibly excited by the opportunity to make it happen and look forward to telling you all about it.
When I was growing up, Popular Science was my favorite magazine and Heathkits were my favorite toy. Building, modding, breaking, creating things in a haze of solder smoke pretty much defines a good portion of my childhood. In fact, I’m convinced that one of the reasons I got into college is I was able to show off the polyphonic synthesizer I designed and built using scrap parts from the Moog factory down the street. Hardware was fun.
Fast forward to 2010. Hardware is still fun. But it’s gotten much harder. Just like it’s gotten more difficult to tinker with your car, it’s gotten harder to tinker with the gadgets in your life. Steve and Steve built and sold the first Apple computers themselves in a garage and helped start a revolution. Could the same thing happen today? Possibly, but the environment has drastically changed – both economically and technically.
But where is it carved in stone that we must resign ourselves to getting all our electronics from 10-15 giant companies (much like we got our software 30 years ago!)? Nowhere. And like the the open source movement before it, the open source hardware revolution will upend many long held beliefs about hardware devices, how they are designed, built, manufactured and distributed. And that, my friends, is what this conference is all about – gathering in one place all the companies, organizations and individuals who are playing a part in defining, leading and coordinating one of the most important things going on in technology today.
I invite you to stay tuned to this blog for more information about this exciting event. There will be many ways to get involved, participate and help shape the proceedings and I encourage you to jump into the mix! Thanks in advance for any insights, suggestions, critique, feedback etc you can offer. As I said at the beginning, we’re very excited about the possibilities! More soon…
-Peter Semmelhack, Founder and CEO of Bug Labs
