Lower Barriers to Collaboration

The core of our strategy is to distribute collaboration on open hardware development as widely as possible. The key to this to use ubiquitously-available, non-specialized tools in this process. We are exploring Flash Mobs and Book Sprints, which rely on a team of subject matter expert volunteers - and these are to be guided towards productive work by our Community Manager. Development areas include collaborative design, CAD, and manuals publishing.

The simple development systems in use or in planning are:

1. Wiki - core of our technical development platform
2. Github - core documentation repository
3. Google Docs, Spreadsheed, Calendar, etc.
4. Flashy XM as integration of above
5. Booktype for physical publishing, see XM Semantic Publishing
6. Sketchup for CAD
7. Gimp, Inkscape, Dia, Open Office, etc.
8. Blender for modeling (complex tool, many users)

Also, we are developing the Fabrication Diagram method of rapid prototyping.