Open Source Hardware Summit (Edition 10), call for proposals

The Open Hardware Summit (OHS) invites talk/demo proposals for the tenth annual summit! To be held on Friday, March 13,2020 at the New York University’s Law School (Tishman Auditorium) .

 The Open Hardware Summit is for presenting, discussing, and learning about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware applications, practices, and theory, ranging from environmental sensors to 3D printable medical devices to open hardware processors and beyond. We are interested in open hardware on its own as well as in relation to topics such as software, design, business, law, and education. 

For our tenth edition we are especially looking for speakers who can share historical perspective on the past decade of open hardware movement, alongside speakers who will showcase projects demonstrating current trends, challenges, and future growth opportunities in the open hardware movement.

We invite talk proposals from individuals and groups. Submissions are due by Friday November 15th 2019. Accepted proposals will be notified by Friday, January 17th 2020.

Submission Guidelines

All proposals must be made through the Easychair website. No other submissions will be accepted. All submissions should be anonymized, i.e. not contain any identifying elements such as people’s names or company names. Your submission should contain the following elements:

Title: e.g. “How I learned to stop worrying and love the BOM: Bills of Materials for Open-Source Hardware”. Try to be descriptive!

Abstract: or a short summary of your proposal (max 150 words)

Keywords: 3 identifying terms for your proposal, e.g. “Kitchen Tools”, “3D printing”, and “Chocolate”

 PDF proposal: which includes a header with the type of submission (either Talk or Demo), title, 500 words of description, up to 2 photographs, and optionally a link to a video. The PDF can be a max of 10MB, and the optional linked video should also be anonymized. If you are proposing a demo, please include details if you need something beyond a table and power to show it.

In your proposal, please be clear about what you intend to present and how it is relevant to the open hardware community. Some example types of proposals could be:

• Artifact: A thing we designed! It is different from other things because x ! It’s good for open hardware because y!

• Method: We did something using methodology x! That methodology is good for open hardware because y!

• History: This thing x happened! We documented it/ talked to people who were there/ found other sources about it! It’s a relevant event for open hardware because y!

• Argument: Stuff is like z, but I think it should be like x! That would be better for open hardware because y!

• Theory: e.g. a useful way to think about things like xyz is this framework! It helps generalize all these independent insights from xyz to future projects like pqrs!

• Other stuff!

We are interested in all kinds of submissions, from How-Tos, to historical surveys, to personal stories, to hardware testing results. However, submissions primarily consisting of marketing for a product, non-profit, or company will not be accepted. Submissions that share knowledge and insight derived from work on commercial products or organizations are welcome.

Reviews are double-blind: authors are not identified to reviewers and reviewers are not identified to authors. You’ll enter author information when you submit your proposal in EasyChair, but your name should not appear on the submission itself. Keep in mind that we’ll be deciding what to accept based primarily on the submissions themselves and not external materials. Reviewers WILL NOT visit any website except for your video link. Be sure to give us enough information to make a good decision. Documentation of accepted submissions WILL BE PUBLISHED on the OHS website.

Expected duration for talks is between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the number and quality of submissions

All talks are plenary (i.e. presented to the entire summit audience)

Contact

The Summit, including its chairs and staff, is volunteer-based and OSHWA operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We cannot offer travel assistance or speaker stipends.

For questions, include your OHS20 and your Easychair ID in the subject line of an email to the Review Chair at summit-talks@oshwa.org.