Summer of Extreme Design-Build and Startup Camp - How It Works

Summer

1. Main Track and Enterprise Track. There are 2 tracks in the program. In the main track - for students and others who want to learn diverse, practical skills - involves active participation in meaningful design/build work. The schedule is 9-6 PM daily. The end goal is to produce working, economically significant products. This is not art or hobby work - as the real art of what we do is changing peoples' lives in tangible and material ways. THis is about access to technology that makes a difference and a more democratic world. The Enterprise Track is for people who want to start a business based on the Product Releases (see below) for that month, and adds a daily 7-10PM seminar to the schedule.
2. 1-3 Month Program. You can sign up for 1 month, 2 months, or full 3 months.
3. Monthly Focus. Each month has a different focus: 1 is Open Source Microfactory, 2 is Heavy Machines, and 3 is Construction. Each month is self contained - so a full experience can be obtained in one month - but each month builds upon the developments of the former as an integrated and coherent program that moves the technology involved forward.
4. Product Release - every month's focus involves a product release as a proven and working design to be deployed as a basis for a potential enterprise. The status of development of the product release will be somewhere around steps 6-7 of the Phases of Product Release. If you are considering starting a business, consider our Enterpri
5. Rapid Prototyping. A lot of the program involves design and prototyping. Each student builds their own 3D printer to take home with them - which is used extensively throughout the program for rapid, iterative prototyping as part of a rapid development process where we go from ideas to builds on the time scale of hours or even minutes. We will use the 3D printer extensively to prototype working parts as well as scale models that help us understand what we build prior to building the full-size machines.
6. The Enterprise Track is for the extra ambitious person who wants to start a business. It is the 'night school' - 3 extra hours of the rigorous details related to starting and running an open source hardware production business, presented as a nightly, working seminar. See Enterprise Track information below.
7. Boot Camp. Each month starts with a 9 Day Boot Camp similar to the Open Source Microfactory Steam Camp but adapted for the Summer X experience. It's to get everyone on the same page of collaborative literacy.
8. Final Extreme Builds.Each month's program is divided into 3 teams of 12 (assuming full attendance of 36 people), with ongoing design and build work by each team. People are free to participate on a team of their choice. Each team does ongoing prototyping, and 1-2 significant builds. Then at the end of the month - we all swarm on a major, rapid, and fun build project where we do an ambitious build in 3 days - the Extreme Manufacturing final swarm builds.
9. Extreme Build Workshops. Additional people can register each month for the Extreme Manufacturing swarm builds - so these builds are especially crazy and fun and are made available as a 3 day experience to others who are not participating in the full 1 month program. These are a grand finale of all the development work done that month, and we let outside participants who may not otherwise have a month to spend - to benefit from the fruits of our work in a collaborative, immersion learning setting. This is a fun, social, and productive experience - but does not involve learning much of the hands-on design that leads up to the actual swarm builds.
10. Remote Participation - We also offer a Remote Participation option, where participants can listen in on all the classroom and review sessions. The remote option also allows the participant to do the builds involving the OSE Dev Kit (see more info below), but this kit is not included in the remote participation fee and must be purchased separately.

Enterprise Track

The Enerprise Track is for people who want to go the extra mile and start an open hardware-based endterprise. Just as we work on developing a product, we must also work on developing an enterprise if we are interested in a source of livelihood. The Enterprise Track includes working seminars on starting an enterprise.

In this track, we go into the details of running an open hardware business - related specifically to the Product Release for that month. The product release is typically a machine or machine ecosystem. This involves details that may not be as exciting as the Summer X main track - as entrepreneurship is all about discipline. The details that we will cover involve Product Strategy, Bills of Materials, Production Engineering, Quality Control, service manual, support, documentation, continuing product development, sales, marketing - and other details of running a successful enterprise. This is a technical track - recommended only if you are serious about starting a business. The unique value here is that you would not be working alone: we are a fully open, Distributive Enterprise organization, pushing the boundaries of human economic systems to develop a collaborative economy. This means that we share all of our blueprints AND enterprise information openly - to create a network of open, collaborative product design and development - as a seed of the next industrial revolution that is based on internalizing costs that are subsidized in the current economy. You would be joining a group of passionate individuals who are interested in making a better world - using enterprise as a way to create new options of ethical practice for the kind of world we want to live in. If you want to work with us - join us as an entrepreneur - as that is ultimately how we take full responsibility for creating our world and fixing pressing world issues. We focus on collaboration - so if you are sufficiently fearless to collaborate openly- we would love to work with you. The mission of OSE is to create the next economy - of collaborative design for a transparent and inclusive economy of abundance.

In the enterprise track, we work specifically on the Product Release for that month - to cover most of the details of running an enterprise - while . We gather 5 days a week, for 3 hours each night from 7-10 PM, and go through the following topics, as related to the product or machine system which constitutes the Product Release of that month. The working sessions may involve discussion, collaborative creation of documents, or hands-on work with the products involved, and are guided by the top priorities and interests of participants.

1. BOM review - understanding the requirements and specifications of each part in the Bill of Materials
2. Production Engineering - how you actually build the product most effectively
3. Data Collection - measuring product performance and producing quantitative specifications that serve as a basis for understanding a product's true value, and for making the product more robust.
4. Supply Chain Optimization - how we choose between suppliers and in-house production to afford a most easy-to-source and durable supply chain consistent with our goals of lifetime design
5. Quality Control - how do we achieve 2 or 3 sigma uniformity of delivered products, and how do we achieve distributed quality control if we operate as a distributed manufacturing organization?
6. Product Strategy - what are the intricacies of how we define and position our products, and select which sectors, audiences, and features to pursue? This is critical for matching our strengths to the products we offer. How do we leverage our product ecologies in a product strategy? How do we define ourL unique value proposition? What are the values that OSE stands for, and what important societal questions are we asking when we define our products and services?
7. Pricing - How to study industry standards and benchmarks to select an appropriate price for the product and an overall price structure for the product line?
8. Production Optimization - what techniques, jigs, automation, division of labor, tooling, facilities do we use to produce the highest quality products with the least amount of effort?
9. Certification - what are the standards and incentives that we must create to certify collaborative, distributed producers, and how do we implement them to create a community of independent producers or producers that operate under the OSE brand? How do we create standards for products, producers, and production facilities?
10. Business Planning - what does a business plan for the specific enterpise and its variations look like?
11. Setting up Distribution Channels - what are our options and cost/benefit analyses of selling on our own websites, on Amazon, Fulfilled By Amazon, Etsy, or crowdsourcing sites such as Kickstarter or Crowd Supply? What are other distribution channels that we should consider?
12. Incentive Challenges' - How do we leverage incentive challenges for development effort and building of a collaborative community of stakeholders engaged in distributed production as an open source franchise? How do we structure a campaign?
13. Continuing Product Development - How do we leverage design sprints, STEAM Camps, Extreme Builds, Incentive Challenges, and Summer X events, and other mechanisms for continuing development of open source products in a distributed fashion?
14. Framing a Warranty - how do we define a warranty agreement based on our lifetime design principles?
15. Legal - What corporate structure and legal requirements play a part in our operation?
16. Open Source Franchise Agreement - How do we define and co-create a properly-incentivized, working relationship for a collaborative enterprise?
17. Use, Repair, and Troubleshooting Documentation - How do we create and publish good documentation that facilitates effective use and maintenance of our products and reduces our requirements for active customer support?
18. Maintaining Part Libraries - How do we clean up a Part Library for a product so that it can be used most effectively for redesign or modification, as part of the evolution lifecycle of products?