FABxLive

From Open Source Ecology
Jump to navigation Jump to search

https://fabxlive.fabevent.org/

Marcin's application for a talk:

We know that open source hardware is challenging to develop - and starting an enterprise an open source hardware product is even harder. It takes not only tremendous effort - but also innovative business models. We are developing ways to make open source hardware startups easier - by leveraging large-scale, open collaboration. To this end, we will be doing an experiment - by gathering over 1000 carefully pre-selected participants, to develop an open source product - in just one weekend. We call this an Extreme Enterprise event. Wait a minute - is this crazy? How to find, motivate, and coordinate such a large number of people in such a short time? That's exactly what we are figuring out, with an open source, swarm-based, agile, modular process that can get quality results in a short time. We will apply our techniques to design, prototype, and productize a modular, affordable, ecological, 750 square foot house - that can be built by 2 people in one week - for US$50,000. Join this 1 hour presentation to find out more about how we plan to execute this Extreme Enterprise event - to make life easier for millions of people by making affordable ecological housing widely accessible.

Playlist

Discussion Thread and Registration

Marcin's Presentation

edit

Text - sorry, not updated from last presentation

HintLightbulb.png Hint: Please someone provide a transcript

  1. Hi, my name is Marcin - and I am presenting on the latest updates on Open Source Ecology - and our experience with large scale collaboration for developing open source hardware. We design and build open source industrial machines, and publish the plans on the internet for free. For a good 4 minute overview of our work if you are not familiar with the project - please see my 4 minute TED Talk on the Global Village Construction Set. You can also see more information about our workshops at https://www.opensourceecology.org/ We are working on all the critical machines that are used to build infrastructures and produce things, so that a civilization with modern comforts could be built. It is everything from a tractor, to a bread oven, to a circuit maker.
  2. You can see my TED Talk from 2011, just google Global Village Construction Set TED Talk https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/TED_Talk
  3. In particular - I will focus on the last missing frontier of open source hardware - that is the business model for scaling it.
  4. So first some definitions of open hardware - 4 freedoms.
  5. We develop our work according to the 4 freedoms.
  6. We build things, but more importantly, develop collaborative ways of building things.
  7. This means Extreme Builds: swarm-based builds where we can build machines in a single day.
  8. Or houses in 5 days.
  9. Since then, we have completed about ⅓ of the set, with hundreds of prototypes around the world. https://wiki.opensourceecology.org/wiki/GVCS_State_of_Completion
  10. Our main milestones are: 1. replication
  11. 2. Module-based design - reducing prototyping times from weeks to days. Ironworker - from 6 months of a build - to 2 days.
  12. 3. Extreme Manufacturing - swarm builds, like the house.
  13. 4. Realtime Documentation -
  14. 5. So all in all, by using wikis, work logs, FreeCAD, and Google docs - we are able to get hundreds of people to collaborate, asynchronously.
  15. But there are some serious challenges. Over the years, we have explored and studied the limits of open collaboration, so here are some of our conclusions.
  16. The first and obvious is that collaboration doesn't exist. Wait a minute, let me explain. I mean open, interdisciplinary collaboration doesn't exist. People as a practice do not collaborate. Now what do I mean by collaboration? Let's look at some distinctions.
  17. Open collaboration is not the same thing as open source. Open Source Projects rarely collaborate, from my experience. What is open collaboration? Open collaboration in our definition is beyond the OSHWA or DIN-SPEC-3105 definition - which says you must publish your plans when the product is finished. There is only one problem: a product is never finished. A product improves and evolves over a lifecycle, constantly, or it dies. Thus, to say that publishing your results when you are done is limiting. The OSE definition of collaboration inolves publishing in-process, using live documents that change. That means wikis, git protocol, live realtime editable docs such as etherpad or google docs. So for example, yesterday I heard that the open source 100-year lifetime washing machine project from Austria will release plans once they are ready. That does not allow for collaboration.
  18. Back at the PhD when I was in grad school, I was studing physics - and I could not talk about my research openly to other groups. Because we had hot stuff - what a waste, I thought.
  19. That we do not collaborate openly, in general, is summarized by this graph: Linux Adoption, Open Hardware adoption. Nonexistent.
  20. There are other details: how many commercial open source designs are there out there? Apertus, Farmbot, Lulzbot 3D printer, Prusa Printers, OSE D3D Printer, Arduino. Unfortunately we can count them on only a few hands.
  21. Open Source Hardware Trap
  22. That's where we started thinking. Distributive Enterprise! But that's a concept only.
  23. So let's prove it. What does it mean to prove it?
  24. Let's put this into perspective - Gini Coefficients. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gini_coefficient#World_income_Gini_index_since_1800s
  25. How do people not work openly? The obvious part is patents and trade secrets. It is about an awareness.
  26. There is a psychological dimension: self-esteem, vulnerability.
  27. Scarcity mindset - 10k x more energy from the sun.
  28. Putting together lessons from OS and a decade of our results, we come up to: Extreme Enterprise.
  29. Show example of Prusa Printers. Adafruit is $45M. Sparkfun -
  30. Total was $50M in 2011. -[4]