GOSH! Summit

"GOSH! Summit
Grounding Open Source Hardware

Program dates: July 16, 2009 - July 18, 2009"

Invited Speakers: Erich Berger, Jonah Brucker-Cohen, Alexandre Castonguay, Marie Cieri, David Cuartielles, Gisle Frosyland, Tim Hansen, Darsha Hewitt, Martin Howse, Pamela Jennings, Daniel Joliffe, Jon Kuniholm, Angus Leech, Yael MacGuire, Katherine Moriwaki, Modesta Nyirenda-Zabula, Dr. N. Sai Bhaskar Reddy, Jessica Rylan, Tuomo Tammenpää, James Wallbank, Retro Wettach

The Grounding Open Source Hardware (GOSH!) Summit at The Banff Centre serves to bring together the many and disparate makers, producers, theorizers, and promoters of physical objects that come to life under open and distributed models. This Banff New Media Institute (BNMI) summit will highlight and facilitate the emerging dialogue on both artist-driven and socially conscious open source hardware projects. From prosthetic limbs to electronic hardware, the breadth of open source hardware projects and distributed models of manufacturing suggest that it is time for these disparate manufacturers, designers, artists, and engineers to come together to discuss the common issues of their practices.

While open hardware practices have led to the rapid development of a multitude of varied projects, no central organizing rules or practices exists for open hardware. Open hardware brings excitement, a potential for real social effects, and a lightning-fast collaborative progress to the development of physical objects, but along with these benefits come a host of complicated issues. A central goal of the conference will be to bring to light these issues, in a multidisciplinary context that encourages exchange and collaboration.

The GOSH Summit will immediately follow the GOSH workshop. The workshop brings 15 noted practitioners and developers of open source hardware to Banff to exchange knowledge in a practice based context. Comprising a series of hands-on workshops and informal research presentations, the primary goal of the workshop is to foster connections between individuals and groups who normally work independently within the OSH movement. With so much of OSH development taking place online, the workshop residency is a chance to bring the virtual library of collective knowledge down to earth at one place and time for a sustained period of discussion and collaboration. At the same time, the workshop residency will provide a platform for pre-conference discussions of important questions relevant to the OSH movement. This workshop will run July 11 - 15 and is by invitation only.

GOSH! Summit — Program Information — The Banff Centre