Open Hardware Conference

[Stuart Young]

Hi All,

As some of you know, I've been asking people over the last month about whether they're interested in an Open Hardware Conference here in Australia. By Open Hardware I mean any hardware that runs open code (eg: RasPi, Lophilo, Arduino) or has been produced in an open way (eg: TAPR Open Hardware License). Additionally that could include hardware that has been hacked up to run code different to what was originally on it (eg: getting open code running on something that runs closed code, say Linux on XBox, etc), and interfacing closed hardware with open systems using open API's). There's a lot of wiggle room, so I am sure that this will change over time.

The main response I've had has been a fairly emphatic YES, so I'm running with the thing further and going to see if I can get it off the ground. For that, I need the support and ideas of the community.

Main thing that I've gotten out of my conversations with a number of people is that, at least for the first event, timing is everything. If we do it just before (or after) LCA, a lot of people who could not come for a "stand-alone event" (eg: people from overseas) can simply extend their stay around LCA, assuming that we get something sorted before the rego for LCA opens.

While I've got a number of people on-side to help out (such as Jon Oxer and Andy Gelme who have been behind the Arduino miniconf at LCA, plus a number of people from CCHS and a few others), I really need to know from the Aus Hackspace community at large whether they're interested in such a thing. Hence this email.

So, what say you? Do you think we're ready for an Open Hardware Conference? What sort of stuff would you like to see in the way of talks? Some tutorials (and on what)? A free-form hack session with access to tools, parts, etc to make stuff?

Please feel free to ask others if they'd be interested in such an event (eg: members of the hackerspaces), as many of them would of course be just the sort of people we'd be aiming the thing at. ;)

Only thing I've pretty much worked out, is that if we're doing a weekend just before LCA, that we'd start later than your average conf (eg: 10-11am) and finish a little earlier (4-4:30pm), so we don't all burn ourselves out just before an LCA. I'm sure that won't stop people hacking in their rooms till 4am (yes Andyg, I'm looking at YOU), but that'd be their choice.

All ideas and inspiration welcome.

PS: Currently I'm on holiday in Eden in NSW. When I get back to Melb I'd like to get together something and approach LA with the basic possibility of the conference (assuming I get a decent and positive response), and see if they can help out. Ideally if we're going to do this, I feel we should get this off the ground soon, and do it just before LCA in Perth in 2014.

Anyway, have fun!

--
Stuart Young (aka Cefiar)

[Terry Dawson]

Stuart,
I love the idea of an Open Hardware conference, and would be very interested in attending. I am not convinced appending it onto LCA is a good idea though.

LCA already requires a significant investment of time, away from home and work, just over a week by the the time you add travel. Extending that would be difficult for many I expect.

My expectation would be that the majority of OHCON attendees would not currently be attending LCA znd would therefore not be benefitted anyway.

Instead choosing another long weekend throughout the year, perhaps October, might work better. Independent timing and geography will ease conference logistics cobsiderably.

Terry

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[Kean Maizels]

Stuart,

 

Love the proposal, but I’m with Terry on this.  I already don’t make it to LCA because it is too hard to take that much time away from my business.  Extending it out further means I’d likely miss both events.

 

Kean

[Daniel Harmsworth]

There is a significant overlap between people attending LCA and who would attend an Open Hardware Conference, a look at the number of OSHW themed talks cropping up at LCA are a testament to that. LCA has already become the de-facto meetup for OSHW and Hackerspace folks over the past few years anyway.

The proposal wouldnt be to make the OSHW conf *part* of LCA, but rather try and leverage the accommodation & venue as well as giving international participants a chance to attend (as someone who travels to a number of overseas conferences, I can definatively say arriving 2 days earlier is way easier & cheaper than organising a second independent trip). It's a non-exclusive OR relationship, you can attend OSHWconf or LCA or both. Given LCA starts on a Monday the proposal made at MHV was to hold the OSHWconf on the preceding weekend at a far more leisurely pace than your classic LCA style conference.

Daniel Harmsworth
Treasurer, The Perth Artifactory Inc.
http://www.artifactory.org.au

[Terry Dawson]

Daniel,

There are certainly a number of us that would attend both, but at least based on Sydney numbers, the percentage of overlap is small. I'd estimate that less than 10% of the Sydney [Hacker|Maker]space community (past and present) has ever attended an LCA and the number is far smaller the other way. I counted three of us in Canberra last week.

I agree Internationals would potentially be advantaged by having the conference adjacent to LCA, but again, it's only those who happen to overlap. We're surely talking single-digits of people here, right?

I can see the apparent sense of the proposal, but I suspect in practice it will be more difficult than it seems. To leverage from accommodation and venue would mean having to plan and work very closely with the LCA organising team. Indeed it would mean adding new demands on them having to plan with and extend arrangements to cover the extension. From the perspective of the LCA organising team it may be easier to make the OHCON a formal part of LCA and treating it that way, just as the miniConfs currently are treated, delegating on-the-day planning to a sub-committee but folding financials back into the same umbrella. You've then just got the issues associated with people wanting to attend one or the other or both to deal with and how payments are made, registrations etc.

I think in practice it would be much simpler to organise a standalone conference.

Terry

[Daniel Harmsworth]

On 5 February 2013 15:32, Terry Dawson <vk2...@gmail.com> wrote:

Daniel,

There are certainly a number of us that would attend both, but at least based on Sydney numbers, the percentage of overlap is small. I'd estimate that less than 10% of the Sydney [Hacker|Maker]space community (past and present) has ever attended an LCA and the number is far smaller the other way. I counted three of us in Canberra last week.

I have to strongly disagree with this, I would estimate at least 20-30% of the LCA community would have a strong interest in open hardware, additionally, I fail to see the relevance of the argument that people attending the OSHW conf wouldnt neccessarily be interested in LCA, then they simply don't attend LCA, by putting it close to LCA you advantage those who want to attend both with no disadvantage to those who don't.
 

I agree Internationals would potentially be advantaged by having the conference adjacent to LCA, but again, it's only those who happen to overlap. We're surely talking single-digits of people here, right?

Not at all, there were probably at least 30 internationals with a strong interest in OSHW at LCA this year, and it's only been growing.
 

 

I can see the apparent sense of the proposal, but I suspect in practice it will be more difficult than it seems. To leverage from accommodation and venue would mean having to plan and work very closely with the LCA organising team. Indeed it would mean adding new demands on them having to plan with and extend arrangements to cover the extension. From the perspective of the LCA organising team it may be easier to make the OHCON a formal part of LCA and treating it that way, just as the miniConfs currently are treated, delegating on-the-day planning to a sub-committee but folding financials back into the same umbrella. You've then just got the issues associated with people wanting to attend one or the other or both to deal with and how payments are made, registrations etc.

Yes, it would involve working with the LCA team, primarily on accommodation, much less on venue & registration, venue would need to be dealt with directly as requirements for an OSHW conference are going to be significantly different to an LCA and registration would have nothing to do with LCA, you register for OSHW conf on the Saturday and if you're staying for LCA you register for that on their rego day.
 

 

I think in practice it would be much simpler to organise a standalone conference.

Except that you are talking about a standalone 2 day conference to start with, I think many people would struggle to justify the travel for a 2 day event, I know I would.
 

Terry

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[Terry Dawson]

Stuart,

In terms of addressing your other content-related questions, I'd personally be particularly interested in:

Case-studies of:

- hardware adaptation/repurposing

- hobbyist from-scratch design

Some discussion/talks of tools and instruments, with an emphasis on built-it-yourself versions and their limitations.

Displays/Demonstrations of things people have built. That's always fun.

Being able to build something while I'm there is appealing, but could be a bit hit and miss with what that is.

regards

Terry

[David Lyon]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Daniel Harmsworth <danielha...@gmail.com> wrote:

On 5 February 2013 15:32, Terry Dawson <vk2...@gmail.com> wrote:..

...... I counted three of us in Canberra last week.

I have to strongly disagree with this,

I counted three also.

[Tristan Steele]

Hi All,

At the risk of suggesting something crazy, would the Maker Faire meetups be another opportunity? There seems to be about one per year happening in Australia at the moment (well, with n=1 and a bit).  Surely the overlap between Maker Faire & OSHW is also pretty strong.

In my case it would certainly help justify a trip to *insert_destination* if there was more than just a single day Faire.

Just my $0.02,

Tristan

[Terry Dawson]

On Tue, Feb 5, 2013 at 6:48 PM, Daniel Harmsworth <danielha...@gmail.com> wrote:

I have to strongly disagree with this, I would estimate at least 20-30% of the LCA community would have a strong interest in open hardware, additionally, I fail to see the relevance of the argument that people attending the OSHW conf wouldnt neccessarily be interested in LCA, then they simply don't attend LCA, by putting it close to LCA you advantage those who want to attend both with no disadvantage to those who don't. 

I suppose you're right on the potential number of LCA attendees that might attend. The Arduino miniconf has certainly been popular.

I agree Internationals would potentially be advantaged by having the conference adjacent to LCA, but again, it's only those who happen to overlap. We're surely talking single-digits of people here, right?

Not at all, there were probably at least 30 internationals with a strong interest in OSHW at LCA this year, and it's only been growing.

Will a strong interest automatically translate into an extended couple of days? Maybe it will.

Yes, it would involve working with the LCA team, primarily on accommodation, much less on venue & registration, venue would need to be dealt with directly as requirements for an OSHW conference are going to be significantly different to an LCA and registration would have nothing to do with LCA, you register for OSHW conf on the Saturday and if you're staying for LCA you register for that on their rego day.

My feeling is that that will still be problematic to negotiate.

 

 

 

I think in practice it would be much simpler to organise a standalone conference.

Except that you are talking about a standalone 2 day conference to start with, I think many people would struggle to justify the travel for a 2 day event, I know I would.
 

Perhaps I'm not your target audience. Taking a separate weekend would be much simpler for me than trying to extend LCA another weekend. Family complicates things.

Terry

[Terry Dawson]

Another suggestion for content:

Case-studies of Starting a [Hacker|Maker]Space.

[David Lyon]

I like the original idea with Terry's suggested improvements.

That is an Open-Hardware conference, 2-3 days around September-October.

That in itself should still be sufficient to source the appropriate number of
internationals.

[Max Nippard]

I like Tristan's idea of makerfaire rather than LCA. 

I'm one of the Hackerspace but not LCA types mentioned by Terry though. 

[Mitch Davis]

Hello fellow hackers,

I'm happy either way. I would attend either. I can see the pros and
cons of an LCA add-on and a standalone conf.

In particular I'd love to talk about my experiences in China as a
place for making stuff, and I'd like to see and/or give demonstrations
on things such as surface mount soldering, tools for flashing AVRs,
graduating from Arduino's libs to things like mhvlib and avrlibc, and
how to make circuit boards at home. These are all core skills that
belong in every hackerspace and I'm very happy to share.

Mitch.

[David Lyon]

Nice Mitch,

If you are doing those talks at an Australian Hackerspace please post details. I'd certainly try to attend.

On the subject of an Open Hardware Conf it seems that there's an existing google-group from Linux Australia looking into this at:

 - https://groups.google.com/forum/?hl=en-GB&fromgroups=#!forum/foss-hardware-conf-au

[Stuart Young]

Sorry to burst anyones bubble, but my efforts (includes those of Jon Oxer and AndyG) go back to talks at Wellington in 2010 (and lots more since).

PS: That list isn't very old, nor do I believe it was set up by LA, else it would be on the linux.org.au domain. I am pretty sure it was set up by Tim Ansell.

--
Cef

[David Lyon]

Hi Stuart,

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Stuart Young <cef...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry to burst anyones bubble, but my efforts (includes those of Jon Oxer and AndyG) go back to talks at Wellington in 2010 (and lots more since).

Don't hesitate to post any information/thoughts that you have on this topic. If you guys in Melbourne
have been talking about it then think about opening it up to the rest of the country. :-)

PS: That list isn't very old, nor do I believe it was set up by LA, else it would be on the linux.org.au domain. I am pretty sure it was set up by Tim Ansell.

So what do you suggest ?

[Luke Weston]

On Tuesday, 5 February 2013 18:53:22 UTC+11, OzoneJunkie wrote:

Hi All,

At the risk of suggesting something crazy, would the Maker Faire meetups be another opportunity? There seems to be about one per year happening in Australia at the moment (well, with n=1 and a bit).  Surely the overlap between Maker Faire & OSHW is also pretty strong.

Keep in mind that the MakerFaire (TM) brand is an incredibly closed, proprietary thing, and applying for a license to use it is annoying... and what does that name itself really give you in return?

Anyway, excellent discussion Cef. Just starting the discussion is fantastic. Should it be part of LCA or separate from LCA? I don't know, there are pros and cons both ways.
Anyway, I'm short on time right now, but I look forward to continuing this discussion. :)

[David Lyon]

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 1:36 PM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

Keep in mind that the MakerFaire (TM) brand is an incredibly closed, proprietary thing, and applying for a license to use it is annoying... and what does that name itself really give you in return?

I am inclinded to agree. I also think that it might be too early to know what the branding should
actually be.
 

Anyway, excellent discussion Cef. Just starting the discussion is fantastic. Should it be part of LCA or separate from LCA? I don't know, there are pros and cons both ways.

What we have so far is two hackerspaces wanting to draw in crowds.

I personally really enjoyed the MHV meetup - the lightning talks and the barbeque. There
were enough people, enough food and drink, and enough interesting subject matter to make
it viable.

Even if the some of the same people (and new people) could commit to doing a similar thing at
the Gold-Coast and Gippsland, I'm sure it would be beneficial to those venues.

Just summarising, lightning talks on:

 - The MHV Atmega board and MHVLib from Canberra
 - HackCNC from Melbourne
 - Projects from Sydney and Brisbane
 - Jon Oxer from Freetronics
 - other projects and people that arrive on the day

We absolutely have enough interesting subject matter to spread around.

Things like branding can be addressed after that. The important thing seems to
be to lock in the venues and numbers of participants able to attend so that travel
arrangements can be made by people before it becomes too late.

David
 

[David Lyon]

I'm adding to the list:

 - MHV and their fantastic flying machines (forgot what they are called)

 - LittleBird Electronics

 - Ninja Blocks

 - OzBerryPI (Raspberry-Pi in Australia)

When it's all added up, it becomes a somewhat impressive list and I'm sure
that I have missed some projects.

[Stuart Young]

On 6 February 2013 18:21, David Lyon <david.lyon...@gmail.com> wrote:

On Wed, Feb 6, 2013 at 4:23 PM, Stuart Young <cef...@gmail.com> wrote:

Sorry to burst anyones bubble, but my efforts (includes those of Jon Oxer and AndyG) go back to talks at Wellington in 2010 (and lots more since).

Don't hesitate to post any information/thoughts that you have on this topic. If you guys in Melbourne
have been talking about it then think about opening it up to the rest of the country. :-)

We've tried to bootstrap this a few times, but there didn't seem to be much interest. Just before this LCA we got a lot of comments saying "Maybe it's time" so that's why we started the discussion.

 

PS: That list isn't very old, nor do I believe it was set up by LA, else it would be on the linux.org.au domain. I am pretty sure it was set up by Tim Ansell.

So what do you suggest ?

This wasn't meant to be a matter of suggestion. It was merely a statement in response to your mention at the time that the list was a response by "Linux Australia" to investigate the issue.

I'm actually on that list, and I've not seen much traffic on it since I posted a few things stating what I have also posted here. I don't think it's gained many subscribers, and it appears as though there isn't many people on it, (at least those willing to share views on the subject). This is in fact why I posted the original post of this thread here, as I wanted to stimulate discussion, and I was also hoping to get a lot of feedback from the Aus Hacker Space community - which so far there's been a good amount, so thank you all.

FWIW: Nothing is set in stone, but there are of course all sorts of logistical things to think about.

Regarding a date:

As for before LCA, this was what people who attended LCA suggested, but is by no means a given. It was known to be a biased poll (I was asking people at LCA after all) and should be taken as such. I'm currently hacking together some questions for a broader poll to put out to all the hacker spaces and a few other places as well, to get some less biased feedback.

It should also be noted that when I was referring to LCA, as noted by others elsewhere, it would not be a part of LCA, just taking place before (or after) it logistically in time. You wouldn't need to be registered for LCA to attend the OHWC. One simple advantage of running near LCA (or in fact near any other tech conference) is that we hopefully get hold of speakers that are either attending that conference already (as a speaker or a delegate), without having to "foot the bill" ourselves to ship them in (or by sharing the bill). Having been involved in conference setup before (LCA 2008, and helping out in various ways since), getting a good list of speakers, trying to keep them on board, and organising to get them to the conference is one of the larger parts of getting something successful off the ground, and a fair part of the cost of running any actual conference. Any way of reducing that or mitigating it makes it much easier proposition.

If we're to do something in Sept/Oct, does anyone have any specific ideas on an actual date? I ask because after early June, there are absolutely no long weekends that are broadly common across all of Australia, except the Christmas ones. This makes it very hard to make it happen on a "long weekend" in that period.

PS: Sorry for the lack of response, but work, people's projects and personal lives and birthdays love getting in the way of things. ;)

[Luke Weston]

Is it sensible to think of this OHWC as a sort of longer derivative of the LCA Arduino miniconf? Or is that not a valuable way to think about it?

Over the last couple of years the LCA Arduino Miniconfs have taken a distinctly different format to most other LCA miniconfs, with a DIY hardware construction session of a custom hardware kit during the morning and a relatively small number of general Arduino/hardware talks for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Are the LCA attendees happy with this miniconf format, or would they be more interested in seeing a greater portion of the day dedicated to the hardware construction session, or interested in seeing a greater portion of the day dedicated to talks?

With a separate OHWC, though, we have more time dedicated to doing either - or both - based on whatever there's actually community demand for, without diluting the time available for either one or the other.

A couple of the talks at LCA2013 were on topics related to microcontrollers and embedded systems that didn't clearly have anything to do with the Arduino system. However, this wasn't a bad thing. Maybe we would consider changing the name of the Arduino miniconf to the hardware miniconf or the microcontroller miniconf in a more general sense, including but not limited to Arduino - and that, basically, is what the OHWC is all about, I guess.

It's basically all about what the community wants to see and what the community wants to do, I think, through democratic input as well as of course through community-led generation of the content itself.

On Saturday, 9 February 2013 14:20:10 UTC+11, David Lyon wrote:

I'm adding to the list:

 - LittleBird Electronics

 - Ninja Blocks

 
Well, you don't want it to be heavily oriented around essentially free advertising for commercial products/companies, especially not if they were not entirely open hardware in their products. If the companies are generating novel hardware/software and releasing it out to the community as open hardware/software, and giving back to the community in that way, then sure - but the presentation should be more focused on the open technology they've developed and openly released - not just blatant promotion of the company and its commercial products/services.

Regards,
  Luke

[David Lyon]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is it sensible to think of this OHWC as a sort of longer derivative of the LCA Arduino miniconf? Or is that not a valuable way to think about it? .. .. ..

That's a format issue. It looks like you have brought out the important questions and I think those should
be discussed in more detail.

A couple of the talks at LCA2013 were on topics related to microcontrollers and embedded systems that didn't clearly have anything to do with the Arduino system.

Also, the MHV board isn't actually an Arduino. So using the Arduino brand name to have a miniconf with
might be questionable in a Trade Practice sense - at the very least.

 

I'm adding to the list:

 - LittleBird Electronics

 - Ninja Blocks

 
Well, you don't want it to be heavily oriented around essentially free advertising for commercial products/companies, especially not if they were not entirely open hardware in their products.

Well the main reason for including them was actually to add a Sydney component. Don't forget that LittleBird electronics ARE actually our local Arduino reseller. The Ninja Blocks guys do talks at all sorts of events and
nobody seems to mind. If we were to say only Melbourne based companies could participate I wouldn't see
that as being very balanced.
 

but the presentation should be more focused on the open technology they've developed and openly released - not just blatant promotion of the company and its commercial products/services.

There's a proprietory component to all Open-Hardware and I'm not sure where the ideological line needs to be drawn. I'd vote for inclusiveness rather than excluding certain groups because of a form of subjective idealogy (like for instance being located in another Australian city).

David

[Stuart Young]

Hi Luke,

On 10 February 2013 09:15, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

Is it sensible to think of this OHWC as a sort of longer derivative of the LCA Arduino miniconf? Or is that not a valuable way to think about it?

Over the last couple of years the LCA Arduino Miniconfs have taken a distinctly different format to most other LCA miniconfs, with a DIY hardware construction session of a custom hardware kit during the morning and a relatively small number of general Arduino/hardware talks for a couple of hours in the afternoon. Are the LCA attendees happy with this miniconf format, or would they be more interested in seeing a greater portion of the day dedicated to the hardware construction session, or interested in seeing a greater portion of the day dedicated to talks?

With a separate OHWC, though, we have more time dedicated to doing either - or both - based on whatever there's actually community demand for, without diluting the time available for either one or the other.

This is my feeling, and sort of where I've come from I guess. The Arduino Miniconf has run every year since 2010 (so LCA2013 was the 4th miniconf that Jon/Andy have run). At some point, LA may feel that the miniconf needs to spawn off and have their own conference. IMO LA (and each LCA) have been very accommodating with the Arduino miniconf, in regards to getting us space to run it (requirements outside of a normal miniconf), especially when we're only tangentially related to Linux through Open Source.
 

A couple of the talks at LCA2013 were on topics related to microcontrollers and embedded systems that didn't clearly have anything to do with the Arduino system. However, this wasn't a bad thing. Maybe we would consider changing the name of the Arduino miniconf to the hardware miniconf or the microcontroller miniconf in a more general sense, including but not limited to Arduino - and that, basically, is what the OHWC is all about, I guess.

I would personally prefer "Hardware" or "open hardware" miniconf. If it's not "Open" hardware we're talking about/playing with, then really, why even attempt to hold it at an LCA?

 

It's basically all about what the community wants to see and what the community wants to do, I think, through democratic input as well as of course through community-led generation of the content itself.

This is what I'm hoping to do with a poll at some point. Once I've finished working on a few things that currently have personal priority for me, I'll start looking at how I can do this (probably using Google Docs).
 

On Saturday, 9 February 2013 14:20:10 UTC+11, David Lyon wrote:

I'm adding to the list:

 - LittleBird Electronics

 - Ninja Blocks

 
Well, you don't want it to be heavily oriented around essentially free advertising for commercial products/companies, especially not if they were not entirely open hardware in their products. If the companies are generating novel hardware/software and releasing it out to the community as open hardware/software, and giving back to the community in that way, then sure - but the presentation should be more focused on the open technology they've developed and openly released - not just blatant promotion of the company and its commercial products/services.

I've got no problem with the Ninja Blocks guys or LittleBird, but there is one thing here:

This is a conference that I'd like to organise (eg: like OSDC, LCA, PyCon, DrupalCon, etc), not a trade show some talks thrown in (eg: like MakerFaire). Having heard the gory details from Paul Szymkowiak about the organisation of the Melbourne MiniMakerfaire, I definitely don't want to go down that path. Also, sitting at a table explaining what you and/or your piece of kit does to every attendee who passes by your table (especially if you end up stuck at the table all day like I did, with no breaks at all during the day except one brief run to the loo) is not my idea of fun by a long shot, and I wouldn't wish that sort of curse on anyone.

If we're getting someone from LittleBird along, who are willing to share their experiences in dealing with running an organisation that imports and sells open hardware, and how that works, the problems they face, how they handle their own designs, etc, then I'd definitely welcome that as a talk. If all they're going to do is show us a sales presentation on their various products with no learning from it, then no thanks. That goes for anyone, from Freetronics to e14, from LiFX to Mitch's Hackvana, from the Raspberry Pi foundation to RF Design in Qld. In my experience, allowing such stuff leads to madness.

That said, such companies are welcome to help out and gain notoriety at the conf by sponsorship, giveaways, and just generally networking with the delegates.

FWIW: I don't want this to just be all talks, as one of the things that always comes out of the LCA Arduino miniconf seems to be a bunch of hardware hackers sitting down and cobbling something together out of whatever they have to hand or can get hold of on short notice. Sometimes it's based on the hardware project that was constructed, sometimes it's something else. Unfortunately this can sometimes lead to people missing out on parts of the main conf, or in many cases missing out on sleep (not all of us can sustain themselves on only 3 hrs a night anymore). IMO having some allocated time for this will help a lot.

 

[Terry Dawson]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 9:15 AM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

A couple of the talks at LCA2013 were on topics related to microcontrollers and embedded systems that didn't clearly have anything to do with the Arduino system. However, this wasn't a bad thing. Maybe we would consider changing the name of the Arduino miniconf to the hardware miniconf or the microcontroller miniconf in a more general sense, including but not limited to Arduino - and that, basically, is what the OHWC is all about, I guess.

Any move to broaden any of these activities beyond Arduino has my support. Arduino is something I have no interest in.

Terry

 

[Terry Dawson]

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 11:47 PM, Stuart Young <cef...@gmail.com> wrote:

If we're to do something in Sept/Oct, does anyone have any specific ideas on an actual date? I ask because after early June, there are absolutely no long weekends that are broadly common across all of Australia, except the Christmas ones. This makes it very hard to make it happen on a "long weekend" in that period.

Personally I'd avoid any public holiday long weekends. Everything is more expensive and people tend to already have things planned.

A couple of weeks either side of a public holiday might not be bad. Organise a full weekend of activity, starting on Saturday morning and closing at perhaps 4 p.m. on the Sunday to allow people to fly/drive home on Sunday night.

People can take the Friday off to travel. Perhaps have a social meet'n'greet/registration on Friday night. Travellers will need somewhere to park and to safely dump their luggage. They'll also want to be assured of accommodation on the Friday night when they arrive, not necessarily have to take possession of it until later.

I recommend giving some though to who your target audience is, and pitch the conference organisation at them. I think it would be a mistake to try to address the whole Open Hardware scene, it's too broad.

Terry

[Andy Gelme]

hi All,

On 2013-02-10 12:17 , Stuart Young wrote:
> This is my feeling, and sort of where I've come from I guess. The
> Arduino Miniconf has run every year since 2010 (so LCA2013 was the 4th
> miniconf that Jon/Andy have run). At some point, LA may feel that the
> miniconf needs to spawn off and have their own conference

Hopefully, the Arduino Mini-Conference will be welcome to stay as part
of LCA ... as long as it continues to offer a relevant and quality
experience to the LCA attendees.

There hasn't been any discussion or indication that the AMC should be
it's own conference or find somewhere else.

The constraints in terms of available time (most of one day) and space
(one room ... and this year a bonus lecture theater) have provided
useful limits on the size of the AMC, e.g approximately 30 attendees in
the morning and approximately 50+ attendees for the presentations. This
seems to be a natural limit for the AMC in its current form ... and
rather than going larger, there is a preference for improving quality
and diversity of projects (mechanical build this year) in on-going AMC
efforts.

It is likely that there will be an AMC proposed for LCA2014.

For several years now, LCA and AMC have been a convenient annual
gathering for Australians (and international visitors) interested in
open-source hardware. Typically, there has been some (informal) overlap
with HackerSpaces as well. If nothing else, this has been a litmus test
for gauging interest in a stand-alone open-hardware conference.

> IMO LA (and each LCA) have been very accommodating with the Arduino
> miniconf, in regards to getting us space to run it (requirements
> outside of a normal miniconf)

Yes, absolutely.

> especially when we're only tangentially related to Linux through Open
> Source.

A significant number of presentations and activities at LCA are not
directly about the Linux kernel and are really more about the broad
open-source software (and now hardware) community. This diversity
really sums up what LCA is about for many people. There is a
significant amount of cultural overlap in all LCA activities, including
the AMC.

A lot of LCA talks over the last few years have been about open hardware
... and the Arduino Mini-Conference is a practical hands-on instance of
that general LCA vibe.

The Arduino Mini-Conference is different, in terms of format, from the
other mini-conferences ... but, I don't think we are outsiders or
"tangentially related". One of the other mini-conferences this year had
their attendees making guitars :)

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[Stuart Young]

On 10 February 2013 13:02, Andy Gelme <an...@geekscape.org> wrote:

On 2013-02-10 12:17 , Stuart Young wrote:

> This is my feeling, and sort of where I've come from I guess. The
> Arduino Miniconf has run every year since 2010 (so LCA2013 was the 4th
> miniconf that Jon/Andy have run). At some point, LA may feel that the
> miniconf needs to spawn off and have their own conference

Hopefully, the Arduino Mini-Conference will be welcome to stay as part
of LCA ... as long as it continues to offer a relevant and quality
experience to the LCA attendees.

There hasn't been any discussion or indication that the AMC should be
it's own conference or find somewhere else.

I have heard informal "muttering" that some of the miniconfs should grow up and get their own conferences. I didn't hear the Arduino miniconf referred to at all, but there is a point where we may have to consider it. As always, it's best to have some jump on the gun, should this ever occur. A proper open hardware conference is the perfect place to start, and possibly extend from should it be necessary.

 

The constraints in terms of available time (most of one day) and space
(one room ... and this year a bonus lecture theater) have provided
useful limits on the size of the AMC, e.g approximately 30 attendees in
the morning and approximately 50+ attendees for the presentations.  This
seems to be a natural limit for the AMC in its current form ... and
rather than going larger, there is a preference for improving quality
and diversity of projects (mechanical build this year) in on-going AMC
efforts.

It is likely that there will be an AMC proposed for LCA2014.

I certainly hope so. ;)

[Luke Weston]

If we're getting someone from LittleBird along, who are willing to share their experiences in dealing with running an organisation that imports and sells open hardware, and how that works, the problems they face, how they handle their own designs, etc, then I'd definitely welcome that as a talk. If all they're going to do is show us a sales presentation on their various products with no learning from it, then no thanks. That goes for anyone, from Freetronics to e14, from LiFX to Mitch's Hackvana, from the Raspberry Pi foundation to RF Design in Qld. In my experience, allowing such stuff leads to madness.

Yeah, absolutely, I agree.

You come to the conference to show off and talk about and share your experiences developing and using cool open source hardware (and/or software) technology that you're developing and/or using. If you're developing and/or using or hacking cool open source hardware and you come to the conference for that reason, we absolutely won't discriminate against you just because you also happen to run a professional technology business/company. That's just silly.

In fact, if your company does develop/create/sell/use open source hardware/software as a significant part of the business activity, then great! Show the disbelievers that you can actually run a viable technology company and make a bit of money whilst keeping all that technology open source. The fact that this can happen and is happening is a great thing to expose people to.

However, it's not a trade show. You're not there to blatantly promote your business and/or sell stuff. You're there to talk about your experiences developing/using/hacking/exploring open source hardware - and also, for those people where it's relevant, turning open source hardware into a successful commercial enterprise.

[David Lyon]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Luke Weston wrote:

If we're getting someone from LittleBird along, who are willing to share their experiences in dealing with running an organisation that imports and sells open hardware, and how that works, the problems they face, how they handle their own designs, etc, then I'd definitely welcome that as a talk. If all they're going to do is show us a sales presentation on their various products with no learning from it, then no thanks. That goes for anyone, from Freetronics to e14, from LiFX to Mitch's Hackvana, from the Raspberry Pi foundation to RF Design in Qld. In my experience, allowing such stuff leads to madness.

A far more rational approach is to allow for sponsorships/advertising. Nobody minds banners. People might
even be able to entertain manned booths. Things like that can generate revenue.
 

However, it's not a trade show. You're not there to blatantly promote your business and/or sell stuff. You're there to talk about your experiences developing/using/hacking/exploring open source hardware.

That's driving a very strong anti-commercial line. One key point here is that unlike free software (download
vim+gcc and start having fun), doing hardware hacking without any representation of new products just
becomes nothing more than processing council cleanup material (known as hacking electronic landfill).

Personally I get a lot of electronics from roadside, but I know it's not the kind of thing to be running
a conference about. Even most hackerspaces pretty much say 'no' to doing that and rightly so.

Most of the hardware we use has Brand Labels. "Arm", "Atmel", PIC, Raspberry-Pi, "PSoc". Ignoring or trying
to remove the commerciality of those products seems totally unproductive.

It's even wasting peoples time to not allow them to find out where to purchase a product from.

Especially if you want to be able to cover selections of groups of products from the spectrum of products
that actually exist in the marketplace in Open Hardware.

I can break up the spectrum with some groupings:

 - Processor Boards (Arm, Atmel, Psoc, PIC, Embed, Ti(MSP430), STM32) .. others..
 - RF. Transmitting data with RF
 - Networking/Data hacks
 - Fabbing (3D Printers, CNC)
 - Circuit Boards
 - Electronic (related) Components (interesting stuff to use on projects)
 - Flying (Quadcopters, UAV's, Ardupilot, Drones, etc)

If I've missed some, notify the list of omissions. I'm suggesting 2 or 3 days max
for the conference length.

 

[Mitch Davis]

On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 10:17 PM, David Lyon
<david.lyon...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Sun, Feb 10, 2013 at 7:01 PM, Luke Weston wrote:
>>
>> However, it's not a trade show. You're not there to blatantly promote your
>> business and/or sell stuff. You're there to talk about your experiences
>> developing/using/hacking/exploring open source hardware.

Amen.

I go to several trade shows a year. The focus seems to be on
attendees buying things, which doesn't do it for me at all. I'd
rather go to a place which was about making things, getting inspired,
getting organised, and sharing our knowledge.

The notion that we can make money and provide for our families from
open source software is now so well established that it goes without
saying. We haven't yet reached that maturity with open source
hardware. How folks can make a living from OSHW is something I'm
really interested in, and something we talk a lot about about in the
#hackvana IRC channel. And it's something I'd like to talk about at a
con.

> - Processor Boards (Arm, Atmel, Psoc, PIC, Embed, Ti(MSP430), STM32) ..

> - RF. Transmitting data with RF
> - Networking/Data hacks
> - Fabbing (3D Printers, CNC)
> - Circuit Boards
> - Electronic (related) Components (interesting stuff to use on projects)
> - Flying (Quadcopters, UAV's, Ardupilot, Drones, etc)

What a cool list! I think it's a really good set of stuff I'd love to
see at a con. The important thing is people making things and being
passionate about it!

> If I've missed some, notify the list of omissions.

I think Arduino should be on the list. It's such an important gateway
step for makers. I'd also like to see more about the organisational
side of making, such as how to promote hackerspaces. We should be
sharing this stuff.

> I'm suggesting 2 or 3 days max for the conference length.

I agree. One day is too short (I can't justify going to the Open
Hardware Summit, because it's just one day), but a week is too long.
I think we'd have no trouble finding high-quality stuff for 2-3 days
of con.

Mitch.

[Mitch Davis]

On Mon, Feb 4, 2013 at 11:00 PM, Stuart Young <cef...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi All,
>
> As some of you know, I've been asking people over the last month about
> whether they're interested in an Open Hardware Conference here in Australia.

Curious:

http://www.meetup.com/gctechspace/events/103911052/

Mitch.

[Steve Dalton]

That's me. We've run a lot of Barcamps up here (more recently most have took place at the hackerspace) and I'm just thinking cloning the idea for makers might work. Will feedback to the group how it goes. 

Allistair at MHV was quite keen for people to copy the MakerCamp that was done at the end of LCA - so that's what prompted me to organise this and would encourage others to also have a go.

Don't confuse this with a conference though - it's an un-conference along the lines of the Bofs that you see at LCA. I also think it's less structured than Maker-Faire, our idea is to make these things ridiculously easy to run so that they will actually happen and happen OFTEN. This has been the trick with the Barcamps for us - I think we've done about 16 camps over the last few years - there's a lot of activity on the day, but in general they are pretty easy to setup and not a massive ordeal for the organisers.

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[Terry Dawson]

Steve,

I had an enlightening discussion on the bus back from Mt Stromlo with a couple of attendees who had participated in similar events in Europe. Theirs sound fabulously successful and run consecutively in different parts of Europe in a self-organised round-robin fashion. I was enthused but wasn't sure how we'd make it work here given our population sparsity and the distances involved. Never-the-less I'm keen to find out. I may find myself heading your way if the timing works for me.

regards

Terry

[David Lyon]

On Tue, Feb 12, 2013 at 2:02 PM, Terry Dawson wrote:

Steve,

I had an enlightening discussion on the bus back from Mt Stromlo with a couple of attendees who had participated in similar events in Europe. Theirs sound fabulously successful and run consecutively in different parts of Europe in a self-organised round-robin fashion. I was enthused but wasn't sure how we'd make it work here given our population sparsity and the distances involved. Never-the-less I'm keen to find out. I may find myself heading your way if the timing works for me.

+1 on that.

btw, I just checked flights from Sydney on www.jetstar.com and they seem pretty reasonable at the moment.

[David Tangye]

On Sat, Feb 9, 2013 at 12:36 PM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, 5 February 2013 18:53:22 UTC+11, OzoneJunkie wrote:
>>
>> Keep in mind that the MakerFaire (TM) brand is an incredibly closed, proprietary thing, and applying for a license to use it is annoying... and what does that name itself really give you in return?

Which is why we are running a "MakerCamp" ; just announced on Meetup.

[Luke Weston]

I certainly don't think anybody is suggesting that it's just exclusively going to be about Arduino. But at the same time any open-hardware thing like this is almost certainly going to have some sort of mention of something to do with Arduino somewhere.

[David Lyon]

On Wed, Feb 13, 2013 at 6:38 PM, Luke Weston <reindeer...@gmail.com> wrote:

I certainly don't think anybody is suggesting that it's just exclusively going to be about Arduino. But at the same time any open-hardware thing like this is almost certainly going to have some sort of mention of something to do with Arduino somewhere.

Agreed.

One of the best talks I've so far seen from http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/mp4 is:

 - http://mirror.linux.org.au/linux.conf.au/2013/mp4/After_Arduino.mp4

If you don't want to watch it, basically it's a video that really should be called 'Before_Arduino'
in that it shows a lot of complexity on the Atmega328 that Arduino actually removed from the
embedded world. Point is it's a great talk and no doubt there are some others equally as good
that I haven't discovered yet.

The upside of using Arduino in the mix is that it's a crowd puller. So is Raspberry-Pi which is
even getting radio-advertising in Sydney by element14.

So the mix should somewhat be denoted by popularity. It should read more like this then:

 - Arduino and other AVR systems
 - Raspberry-Pi
 - PIC
 - other ARM processor boards, STM32 etc
 - FPGA & CPLD
 - MSP430
 - others Soc, 8051 etc

It would only be a loose grouping to enable call-for-papers and a sort of a guide to keep
the content balance level with usage with most of the content sitting at entries at the
top of the list.

[David Lyon]

The next issue, if there was going to be such a conference, what would be
a good location ? and if that's not known, what would be a good way about
determining a location?

One consideration related to that is how many people would be expected
to attend.

[Mitch Davis]

I think there's a set of people who would attend wherever it was, and
a set of people who would only attend if happens to be in their home
town. We see this with LCA.

Are there any times or places we should rule out for some reason?

Mitch.

[David Lyon]

On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 11:23 PM, Mitch Davis <m...@afork.com> wrote:

Are there any times or places we should rule out for some reason?

Barcelona.

It's too far away, and there's already one happening there:

 - http://www.ohbcn.org/