Doc Jam Invite to Stakeholders

Open Source Hardware Documentation Jam, New York City, April 26-28

We are contacting you as a strong stakeholder in the open source hardware movement. We (Open Source Ecology, Everywhere Tech, OSHWA) are hosting a collaborative event to arrive at an open source hardware documentation platform. And we’d be thrilled if you joined us - either as a participant, supporter, or organizer.

The power of open source hardware lies in the ability to build upon others’ work and good documentation is the key to making this happen. We believe that open source hardware will become a new economic engine of innovation, efficiency, sustainability and collaboration. As the number of open source hardware projects continues to grow, it’s important to generate clearly-findable, modular, remixable documentation that can not only improve the quality of projects - but also enhance cross-project collaboration. Our goal is to make it easy to contribute to a common pool of hardware knowledge.

This 3 day event is intended to generate motion on the much-discussed ‘Github for Hardware’. We intend to release a minimum viable prototype for immediate beta testing by open hardware projects. The event will be based on a mashup of well-known co-design formats - Design Jams and Hackathons. The goal is to identify problems, propose solutions, and synergize on execution.

Check out the event’s website for more information: http://www.opensourcewarehouse.org/problem-statement/ Some preliminary work on an OSHW Documentation taxonomy: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AkNG-lv1ELQvdHViNEdtVHp4dHRWOU8tcDNSbXROY3c&usp=sharing

What we need from you: Do you want to participate in the Jam and if so in what role? Do you want to help organize? Do you want to run a parallel event in another location? Can you review the materials that we have so far? We have not yet secured a venue. Can you help with a venue, tools, staff, stuff, travel, rewards, and other support? What else? Please respond to Simone, our Facilitator - at simone.cicero@gmail.com

Due to practical matters, the number of participants will be limited, so please let us know by March 18 if you would like to join us. Unfortunately, we currently don’t have funding to support travel costs.

Thanks, Marcin Jakubowski - opensourceecology.org Catarina Mota - everywheretech.org Simone Cicero - meedabyte.com