Re: Camera ready submission 250 words - Abstract reference number P335

[Maria Frangos]

Thanks Ahmed. 

I'm going to add the PV characterization google group here as well so that others can follow along. I also think it's a good idea to send a follow up email this afternoon.

I know it's summer and people have a lot going on but we should aim to have at least 6 or 7 people as part of the discussion. Joshua, do any of those times work for you? Your input is important and you make very valid points. We need to turn this into a learning opportunity and do better next time. 

During the discussion, I'd also like to spend some time talking about the project's social objectives, and whether Joshua and project contributors felt that these were met. I think a balanced approach to what was successful and what needs refinement is a good approach and will make for a fruitful discussion.

Maria

On 15 August 2016 at 04:35, Ahmed AKL <ahmed.pr...@gmail.com> wrote:

ok ... I sent invitations for the rest except Adam as i couldn't find his email

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 10:42 PM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Ahmed!

I think we need to extend the invitations to others who participated in the project. If you scroll down on the PV project page on Sensorica's website, you'll see a chart with names of participants. However, some of them might not be up to date so we will have to inform them. Does anyone else have any other suggestions?

Maria

On 14 August 2016 at 22:32, Ahmed AKL <ahmed.pr...@gmail.com> wrote:

it is doodle.com

I created the poll request and added my available time slots. i sent invitations to all people in this email. 

tell me If i forgot anyone 

On Sun, Aug 14, 2016 at 8:49 PM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

Sorry for the late reply. I had a hard time access the internet while I was camping. I'm back home now and have had a chance to respond to this thread.

The first thing I want to point out is that we cannot radically change the focus of the paper for this specific conference. If you look at the abstract we submitted, the following is what we've committed to presenting (questions are in bold).

"This paper builds on the work of open source scientific hardware and emerging concepts in participatory design (e.g. Björgvinsson, 2014; Marttila et al., 2014; Marttila & Botero, 2013; Seravalli, 2012, 2013) with a focus on commons-based peer production. How do open production environments foster engagement? Can open products be designed, produced and distributed in a sustainable way? How can decentralised modes of production support the design of open source scientific hardware? To answer these questions, the development of a collaboratively designed open source hardware project by Sensorica, an open value network based on principles of commons-based peer production (Bauwens, 2009) and open source design, and an academic laboratory will be presented. The challenges of this approach and lessons learned will also be discussed."

Most conferences and papers focus on the attributes of a particular design approach when in reality, any participatory process (whether peer-to-peer or otherwise) is complex, "messy" and imperfect. I think there is great value in showing how we are reflecting on improving our processes. The fact that we all have different ways of looking at it (documentation for end use; delivery of unfinished product; terminology - "customer" versus "stakeholder"; etc.) is not necessarily a bad thing for the paper. However, I do agree with Abran and Ahmed regarding documentation. At least there should be some way of managing expectations (to borrow a term from classical institutions). Clear, concise, documentation is an important part of what makes something truly open source (and accessible), so that others may replicate it and build on it. 

Finally, I do agree that we cannot compare ourselves to classical institutions. This is why I prefer the word stakeholder to customer. You cannot really have a customer in a participatory context. Especially one where there are social objectives that need to be met. However, I do think the issue of accountability (as expressed in the abstract) is an issue Sensorica (and I'm sure others) have been grappling with. 

I propose that we have a google hangouts this week. The sooner the better. The paper is due September 1st, which is in 16 days. Tibi, you mentioned something about a survey. I'm fine with that but it's summer so I am wondering if enough people will respond. I'm available over the next 2 days to dedicate time to this. Tibi, I also remember that Sensorica uses a tool for determining when the best time to meet is (a meeting time survey or something like that). Could you point me to that so I can send it out?

Maria

On 8 August 2016 at 15:58, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi everyone,

I will read all this tonight. I'm at a state park with no internet access (I had to come into a town today to check my email). I'll be back on Sunday but will respond to this thread tomorrow.

Maria

On 7 August 2016 at 21:56, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi all,

Thank you for all ypur input.
I would also like to hear Jim's feelings and oppinions.

Just to mention again that what we delivered was not a finished device, and this was well understood by everyone. We only completed 3 milestones out of 4. This was to be a first prototype that would be tested and sent back for another round of development.

For capturing feedback we have put in place a Forum and user documents. I have been very insistent in diverting private email communication/requests to these shared and open channels. This topic sends us to those who interact with open networks or communities, their work culture or their skills to use the tools... What I am observing is that we can put in place tool but it doesn't mean that they are going to be used, assuming that we are not treating the relatioship as a classical supplier - client relationship.
If we act as a classical supplier we need to harvest and document, but that is a huge overhead that would increase costs, because we all know very well that people don't like to document, so you need financial incentives.

Another thing I am seeing here is the use of the term ''client''. What do we mean by that? If we are talking about a classical client and a classical client - supplier relationship we cannot talk about the same development costs. The whole point is that by having production and innovation rearranged in an open way we cut costs. But that redefines both roles. If those on the receiving side want the innocavation and the cost cuts, they need to adapt. If they don't want to adapt they still have the choice to go the traditional way, pay the cost, be lockedin by proprietary products and services, get average innovation and discontined servces and artifacts programed for obsolescence.
So what do we meab by 'client''?
How do we characterize the client's role and behavior in this particular case?

On Aug 7, 2016 9:35 PM, "Ahmed AKL" <ahmed.pr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi Abran,

nice to hear from you again :-)

I would like to add one more thing to what you have mentioned. We need to consider testing phases especially before final submission. This is very important to avoid customer's bad experience. 

The testing phase should not only be a final phase, but it must be integrated with all previous phases especially at the end of each milestone. Each test will differ according to the nature of the milestone.

Moreover, we need to document these experiences and to put a formal procedure to follow for future projects. 

On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 8:52 PM, Abran Khalid <abran...@gmail.com> wrote:

Thanks Tibi for including me in this. This is the first time I am finding out the extent of problems Prof. Pearce and his students have had in using the device Sensoricans built. I read through excellent critique in the email thread. Most of the points that I could have contributed have already been voiced by others before. There are a couple of points that I would like to focus on though.

Budgeting for the project constantly crops up in the points raised by Tibi. In a way, cheaper development cost is a double edged sword. OSH is expected to have significantly lower cost than traditional devices that are available. It is a reasonable expectation and the reality is true to this expectation as well. However, OSH is also expected to have great after-sales support. For a large scale project like an Arduino, that is a given.  There is a community around a project that acts like support staff and provides solutions to bugs and issues that are not found in prototyping. For specialty projects, creating an active community would be very hard. Although these can be kickstarted by a lot of outreach, they still grow organically. The challenge for any future development would be to tap in to existing communities and develop a strong core membership around a project.

Another pitfall that I see Sensoricans encountering on a lot of projects is the "finishing" of the project. It is something that I feel a lot of OSH communities would encounter. The technical aspects, including the prototyping will not usually be an issue for most communities. The problems would be in packaging the prototype into an end-product that is ready to used as intended out-of-the-box. Futhermore, there should be more documentation about the user-interface of the device. Using this project as an example, there is meticulous documentation on the whole process of creating the device. The documentation regarding how to use the device is not up to the same standard. This is an issue that will crop up with Sensorica and other OSH communities. The root cause lies in the way technically inclined people think and operate. I am stereotyping here but there is a lot of truth to this generalization. Product packaging and End-user experience need special attention. These should always be included in budgeting, specially when a project is being carried out for a sponsor. We are already learning from our mistakes and incorporating these areas in budgeting for other projects. 

As someone who worked on the project, I am very much looking forward to finding out what is not working on the device it self. The one outstanding benifit of these kinds of projects is the interaction we can have with the end user to learn about their experiences. If a Hangout session is a possibility, I will be a participant for sure. 

As a special note to Prof. Pearce, I would like to thank you for the excellent correspondence in this email thread. There was a lot of interesting insights and the critique is provided in a very objective manner. 

Best, 

Abran 

On Mon, Aug 8, 2016 at 1:43 AM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Maria, I would also design a survey into the development processes that on at Joshua's lab. Perhaps we should have a Hangout with everyone who worked on the project to render that process more transparent. SENSORICA created a huge digital trail of development that can be used for the paper, but we also need to probe the other side. 

What would be interesting for me to know is

• What doesn't work with the PV characterization?
• Why was there a decision to redo the mechanical design? What was the reasoning behind this decision? What are the improvements proposed and how do they relate to the problems they encountered with the device
  
• How deep students went into the documentation produced by sensoricans? I know that there were questions asked by email, but these past interactions left me with the impression that most documents were not read before jumping into the work. I remember sending links to documents in my replies. 

All that feeds back to the design of the OVN / Academia interface, which needs understanding and processes on both sides. 

In this particular case: 

How do students understand the process, the methodology, or do they treat it as their other academic work?

How do students deal with documentation produced by the OVN, can they map it, find it, understand it, edit it, share it?

How can we make better decisions through this interface, by including everyone in the thinking process and the choice process. There is a lot of tacit knowledge that can't be captured by documentation, and past decisions were made for a reason, which might contaminate the future. 

How good are students to navigate en open environment, its documentation, discussion rooms and forums, social media spaces?

How good are they to operate within open environments, to enlist participation, generate interest, socialize their work as an outreach function, share, give attribution and recognition, incentivize, get help, help others, ...

We are not just talking about SENSORICA, this new organization that interacts with Academia that doesn't need to change a bit. There cannot be successful collaboration or a relation of mutual benefits if the two parties don`t adapt to each others. Academia adapted to deal with corporations over the years. Academia needs to adapt to deal with open networks in the future, if it wants to benefit. The Open Science movement is also about creating bridges with networks or open communities, not just about open publication or more collaborative internal processes. So as much as SENSORICA needs to learn how to deal with Academia and with private corporations (which we are actually doing with Robco and eVision), Academia needs to learn how to deal with OVNs. This is not a one sided issue. 

On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 4:14 PM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

still thinking about it  : ) 

The fact of the matter is that SENSORICA produced something in a given time and with a given mount of financial resources. There is a basis there that we also need to estimate and compare it somehow to what would be achievable by other means, like in-house, outsourcing, crowdsourcing.   

One we have an idea, we can discuss what went wrong and what can be improved. 

I also want to expand on the interface between the OVN and the academic lab. This goes into governance and into "project management". Should the academic side be more involved in the process in order to better influence it in the right direction? This is in reaction to Joshua's comment "some value was created but no the value I was looking for". I was under the impression that we advanced in an agile manner, we produced reports after each milestone, which were read and we got the OK to continue, and there was also email communication at important steps. But I can understand that miscommunication can happen. Should distance be decreased in the future by having someone from the academic side actively involved in the project, acting as a bridge, someone that is embedded in both sides? 

On Sun, Aug 7, 2016 at 3:48 PM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Very interesting insights Joshua! No hard feelings. Let's keep it going. This is a process of understanding. Let's suspend ego and tell it as we felt it, in order to get to what it is, objectivity through inter-subjectivity.  

Maria, there will be plenty to harvest for the paper.

Building on Joshua's suggestion, I propose an article of the type ''lessons learned, and how to improve the process of crowdsourcing academic innovation''

 What options are there for academic innovation? 

1. traditional in-house development - students working on something (Joshua needs to estimate costs and time, based on past experiences)
2. open source-inspired in-house development - students working on something, inspired and in contact with open source communities, through forums and other types of interactions (Joshua has experience on this too)
3. traditional outsourcing - give it to a company - (estimate costs and time)
4. crowdsourcing
1. give to an open source community (estimate time, undeterministic, limited control over the process and over the final artifact)
2. interface with an organization like SENSORICA
5. prize-based crowdsourcing - better for large projects, see X-Prize, see NASA (estimate costs and time)

SENSORICA brings something new to this field of possibilities: ability to incentivize the process and therefore to influence it. This is collaborative crowdsourcing, as opposed to prize-based crowdsourcing, which is competitive, with a lot of redundancy and an important externality (generates losers, wastes ideas)

SENSORICA's model is something in between outsourcing (expensive but deterministic) and crowdsourcing as in giving it to an open source community, which can be very low cost, but which is highly undeterministic, i.e. we don't know if they will work on it, when they will finish it or if they are going to build something according to specifications or they will create forks based on their own interests. It is an in-between model, because the process is similar to the open source community one, but since there is a financial incentive you can focus the development and make it more deterministic. 

The big question here is how large the financial incentive should it be in order to reach a satisfactory level of determinism in the process? 

From our experience, we only got 15K to do Design considerations, Design and First Phase of Prototyping. Moreover, there were delay in payments for months, which had an effect of defusing interest. We had to spend more energy to reconstruct the momentum every time there were payment delays. These delays came from the way academia functions, so there is something there to seriously consider, how can Academia become more deterministic in keeping the financial incentives steady, can Academia process payments to open networks, can Academia trust open networks for the work, ...?

When we got into this project we were overoptimistic in thinking that a good outreach campaign, coupled with good orientation and facilitation processes, would enlarge the development basis (bring more talented people around the process). We understood the hard way that outreach, orientation and facilitation are functions that require more time and a higher level of financial incentives. That's a lesson on our part. The project suffered, it continued to run in a small scale regime. Next time we will definitely allocate more $ to these functions, which are seen as HR (human resources functions in a network environment). This will increase the price. We are already reacting to this experience in our new projects. 

I think we also learned in the process that 15K was not sufficient to successfully complete run these 3 phases of development, not counting the payment delays. We underestimated the threshold to get the community going above a critical mass, to insure determinism. At the same time, we were given a maximum budget to do complete the entire device, 20K so we did not have too much room to play... As mentioned before, the cost to put a new electronic product on the market is over 100K. Asking 50K in the future, which is more then double, will definitely generate a very different experience. We need to test that to see how it goes. 

Another thing is how the relation between the lab and the OVN is perceived. If we go with the assumption that the OVN is simply a supplier, we're making a mistake. If the OVN asks the less than a half to complete the project than a classical company in an outsourcing setting, we need to treat the OVN differently and respect its processes. Note that working with students will not be far from this... A graduate student costs around 45K/year. Taking into consideration courses and other academic activities, it is unthinkable, in my opinion, that someone would finish this project in a single year. This is a thesis project, which would take at least 2 years, approaching the same 100K mark and doubling the development time. 

It took us 6 months to deliver the first prototype, counting in there at least 3 months of non-activity due to payment delays and to the fact that the outreach didn't succeed in adding more people to the project. A safe estimate for a project funded 50K would be 4-5 months of development time from beginning to end. 

So, working with an OVN to cut costs and to speed up the process means engaging in the OVN's methodology. There are other reasons for that: build the commons, build community, increase project exposure, ... all that generating secondary beneficial effects, like someone else, or other groups starting to dump resources on the project because they find a use for it, thus speeding development and increasing the remix capacity. In more concrete terms, this means that everything that is done on the project gets documented in the same place. Joshua is speaking about redesigning the 3D models and performing software and hardware tests. These activities were done completely outside of SENSORICA's infrastructure and processes.  Therefore all sensoricans were kept in the dark. Moreover, we thought that nothing much was getting done on Joshua's side, which reduces our excitement or curiosity. Furthermore, outsiders can't see more activity, they can't see more development, nothing goes on social media, so there is no attraction for anyone else to join the project. To all that we should add the fact that the commons was not enhanced by this extra work done in the lab, troubleshooting and redesign, the information is fragmented, which again undermines the development of a community around the project, the serenity of the project.  

The lesson I take from here, is that there need to be an educational program around such projects, and students as well as their profs need to take notice of these processes and their reason of existence, and there needs to be a commitment to adhere to these processes, understanding the benefits they generate for everyone involved. 

I'll let Jim and Abran, who also worked on the project, to log more ideas, feelings, opinions, ... and I will come back to it later. 

We are writing the paper right here Maria  : ) 

On Aug 6, 2016 8:27 AM, "Joshua" <joshua....@gmail.com> wrote:

Please take no offense - none is intended - but below is my view of this project.

Here is the problem -- as an outsider to Sensorica you are not going to find a larger proponent than myself for OSH development - but I would not repeat this experience. Sensorica received huge latitude on the project despite not making the temporal deadline. Research is a race - any time lost makes you less competitive. This is my main argument for 3D printing lab equipment as it should be faster. For this particular project the delay was so great I could not even use the money I had allocated for it - and the student project it was for was done  before we got it working. My opinion is that if Sensorica is going to thrive it in this particular market (e.g. research services for universities) it has to provide more value than us doing it internally. In this particular case, it did not.

I burnt three "volunteer" student semesters trying to get the Sensorica device to work - which Tibi is right - I did assume would work out of the box. It did not and none of the three students were able to make it work with the current documentation and lots of internet/phone help from Sensoricans - in their partial time allocation. These were not my normal group's students- so they were not as experienced or as intellectually strong or able to dive in full time -- but I incorrectly assumed the task was going to be easy (e.g. plug in and follow directions). After the first student could not do it, I had assumed that there was some hardware bug - maybe damage from shipping. The last student changed out every electronic component and tested it and could not resolve the problem. It is software related. I then asked one of my PhD students who is well acquainted with all the technical areas to take a look - after messing with it for several hours and finding bug after bug his conclusion was with the current documentation it was better to start from scratch. In retrospect I should have done that much earlier.

As our group already has experience working with different types of motors, and feedback we chose to go with an alternative design. This meant changing the 3d printed parts - as our group does not use proprietary software we needed to redesign those from scratch as well. Tibi may be correct -- maybe this is just really hard - the only OS version besides the Sensorica version on the Internet is a project that doesn't work. I have put another volunteer student on redesigning the mechanics and software for the rest of the summer -- in a month we will see how well it goes.

This is not to say there was no value created - there was, but it was not the value I was hoping for.

Thus for the paper - and for success later I think the lessons must be stressed - there must be some form of responsibility on individual Sensorica members to ensure that tasks are delivered on time. I realize this will make the calculation more difficult - but something should be done (e.g. for individual Sensoricans - perhaps you lose accumulated $ if you do not complete your task on time).

As the outsider I would recommend never shipping a non-working alpha version to a customer. Second, I would make the lack of support crystal clear to the customer (or build it into the quote). The way scheduled meetings with my female student for support were repeatedly broken after she took off work for a skype session - is simply not acceptable.  I also would recommend not using the details of this as a public example. I really like the idea of Sensorica - but the next time I have such an opportunity I will put the funds towards one of my PhDs and expect a better outcome - as in general they produce more complex devices in less time. I will reconsider after Sensorica has built up more examples of success using other projects.

Obviously I wish along with you this had a better outcome.

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 7:29 AM, Ahmed AKL <ahmed.pr...@gmail.com> wrote:

Tibi, let me congratulate you on this clarification. I think what you mentioned can be added as a separate section in this paper.

for your question: "Can anyone find better?....."

I think creating a dedicated forum for each project (if possible) can provide a partial solution. 

- It will give the users the sense of using an open source product.  

- It will guarantee a continuous development for the product. As i noticed, the students are sending private emails to Sensorica. There questions form a valuable experience that need to be recorded for future users.

At the beginning, I believed that Sensorica will survive in the market, but now I'm sure it will. You don't only think out of the box, you yourself is out of the box :-)))  it may take time of you to prove your concepts, but you will do it sooner or later. The survival mode will not last for ever :-)

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 2:56 AM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Here's anther way to see it... 

$15K amounts to half a year pay for a graduate student. There is no way in the world a graduate student can put this alpha product together in 6 months. In fact, I don't even think a graduate student can put it together like we did in 2 years. This requires electronics, software and mechanical design, including knowledge about 3D printing processes. 

Let's assume that a good student can acquire all these skills and do it in 2 years, suppose as a Master's theses. We're still 4 times cheaper ... 

I think SENSORICA`s out biggest problem at this point is to fully realize the value we can deliver and start charging more, in order to make out system more stable, meaning to retain more talent, to keep individuals for longer, and to more importantly to get out of the survival mode. Unless we are don't have this security we cannot act with confidence. 

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 2:48 AM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Let me add this as a response to Josha's intervention. 

The cost to put a new electronic product on the market, starting from concept, varies drastically. For highly complex products, the total cost to market may be millions of dollars, although most can be done for $100,000-plus. 

We did what we did for 15,000$   : )  

It was a GREAT experience and I do think that SENSORICA created a lot of value, which again, needs to be analyzed properly, for what it is. 

Taking it as if it was a product delivered by a classical company that must be flawless and should come with services completely oversees at least 85,000$ that were not spent by Joshua, which is the difference between the 15K that we received and the minimal 100K cost to put a new product on the market. Moreover, that doesn't even include the fact that sensoricans still feel morally obliged to respond to service requests from students that don't take the right attitude to appreciate the efforts that were delivered to put this thing together. So there is actually a free service delivered after all, in the spirit of collaboration, as long as there is an understanding that this project is an open source one, and that the relationship between SENSORICA and these students is not a commercial one anymore.  

So my questions are: 

• Does SENSORICA really has a problem with this artifact it has delivered at 15K?
  
• Can anyone find better? I.e. can anyone here find an alternative way to deliver what we have delivered at that price and under these conditions of openness?
  
• Can we question the user's world view or perception? Perhaps the user has received more value than he has paid for but doesn't see it yet... ? 

 

On Sat, Aug 6, 2016 at 2:29 AM, Tiberius Brastaviceanu <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

I would drive the discussion to how the new creature functions, and try not to evaluate it using metrics that apply to classical organizations. 

Here's how I see the reality 

Sensoricans made a first prototype of the PV Characterization device. We did not finish our mandate of having a second iteration after the first prototype. So we delivered an alpha version. It is only normal to encounter problems with an alpha version. Nothing new here. 

The second important thing that I have to say about this, is that SENSORICA should not be considered as a classical company that delivers a product and now has to provide support for it, in the classical sense. This is VERY important to understand! My experience with Joshua`s students, is that this is how they treat SENSORICA, as a company that delivered a product that doesn't work. I might be wrong, but I believe that this view is not the proper one to have. 

Instead, Joshua`s students should treat this as an open source artifact. In other words, take it as it is, and try to improve it, while going along with the open source culture, which is to continue to document, to use common spaces and tools for collaboration, like Forums, Docs, Wiki, ... and see further work as a continuation of that development that has already been done, while keeping in mind that they are part of a community, and NOT facing a company. Joshua can testify here that I took a clear stand on this approach and I am trying to educate the students to act in this spirit. 

Having said that, I also think that this is the way that we need to present it in this paper.

Our recent experience with the Sensor Network and the Blockchain access project tells us that SENSORICA can deliver innovation at 1/3 of the price that classical entities, like corporations can deliver. See this short report on the Sensor Network project. That's a HUGE cost cut !!! 

When you totally brake the market with that price you have gained the right to be considered special. In other words, other stakeholders must NOT apply the old standards/metrics to SENSORICA. We are part of a different world... 

And the price doesn't even tell the whole story. As we pump out these projects and build our commons, our remix capacity increases (meaning more possibilities to create new stuff by slightly rearranging the old, thus further cutting costs to innovation). Moreover, the PV characterization prototype is open source, so it can take a life on its own, Joshua's students can do whatever they please with it. There are many other dimensions of value around this device, it is very hard to compare it with a classical product delivered by a classical company.  

Ahmed, I agree that we need to improve SENSORICA. 100% behind that!!! I dedicated my life to the development and the improvement of the OVN model. I don`t see an end in sight where we can say ''we`re done!''. 

But I also want us to realize that we cannot use old standards on ourselves, and once we understand that, we actually understand that we`re actually not that bad. I would build on that positive note, trying to do better. But I find it totally wrong to start from a false comparison between SENSORICA and a classical company with a classical closed product, forgetting all the other dimensions of value that we create around the artifact, to find what`s wrong and what`s good with SENSORICA.  

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 9:14 PM, Ahmed AKL <ahmed.pr...@gmail.com> wrote:

I believe we can do what we planned to do even if there are some challenges or even problems with the device. As in any new product, perfection is impossible (recall Microsoft products especially the windows blue screen :-((  )

We need to focus on 

- how OVN managed to produce a functional product from scratch to meet the requirement

- how the design process went through

One of the challenges that we need to address is the after sale support (of course we didn't sell, but it is the traditional term). We need to introduce the question "to what extent is OVN able to give a real support after submitting the final product?"

We can't claim perfection, but we already did several steps forward. We need to learn from our mistakes to be better in the next time 

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 8:19 PM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think shifting the focus to OVN could work but at this point we can't deviate too from the submitted material. We will need a reference project in when discussing the challenges of OVN. Tibi, Ahmed, what you both think? 

Maria

On 5 August 2016 at 19:35, Joshua <joshua....@gmail.com> wrote:

Given the challenges we are experiencing with the device itself - I think that part should be cut - and spend all of our time discussing challenges and OVN.

On Fri, Aug 5, 2016 at 7:32 PM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

The next step is the paper, which is due September 1st. It's a short paper (3000 words) and the initial abstract is already 1000 words. I would like to schedule a group discussion of the people involved in the project. I am going to draft an email tonight or tomorrow. I am away this week, but I'd like to schedule it for the week of August 8th.

In the meantime, I will revisit our original notes plus the links you sent me and start a new document.

One other thing. If you read the comments from the reviewers, one of them makes a good point about how the we won't be able to cover everything in such a short paper (i.e. the PV project and the challenges, etc. + a full discussion of the design in an open value network - although I think we should talk about this in the discussion). So, I suggest we take whatever we can't fit into this paper, and put it into a 2nd one (there is another conference I'd like to submit to :)

Finally, anyone up for coming to Hong Kong with me at the end of November? :) If not, I'll see about having people join remotely.

Maria 

On 5 Aug 2016 6:13 p.m., "Tiberius Brastaviceanu" <tiberius.brastaviceanu@gmail.com> wrote:

Looks very nice! Thanks Maria.
What's the next step?

On Aug 5, 2016 2:49 PM, "Maria Frangos" <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hello,

Attached is our camera ready abstract in plain text format.

Warm Regards,

Maria Frangos

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

--

Joshua M. Pearce, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology Lab
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University
601 M&M Building
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
906-487-1466

Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

--

Joshua M. Pearce, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
Michigan Tech Open Sustainability Technology Lab
Department of Materials Science & Engineering
Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering
Michigan Technological University
601 M&M Building
1400 Townsend Drive
Houghton, MI 49931-1295
906-487-1466

Open-Source Lab: How to Build Your Own Hardware and Reduce Research Costs

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

--

Language is the amber in which a million subtle and precious thoughts are safely embodied and preserved - a storehouse in which is contained the incarnation of the thoughts and feelings of a nation.

Frederick W.Goudy

[Maria Frangos]

Hi everyone,

Joshua is away until Tuesday next week. Although it's cutting it close, we will have to do a hangouts next week. Ahmed, can we edit the doodle poll?

Maria

[Ahmed AKL]

Sure we can. What are the proposed time slots?

do you want to start the poll from Tuesday next week?

[Maria Frangos]

I think Wednesday would be safer. Joshua returns on the Tuesday. He has limited access to the internet at the moment.

Maria

[Ahmed AKL]

i created another schedule request starting from Wednesday

[Maria Frangos]

Hi everyone,

Ahmed sent out a meeting request but I'd like to expand on / clarify the purpose of the meeting. The meeting is to discuss the PV characterisation project for the purpose of having additional qualitative data *for* the paper. The direction of the paper was decided during the submission and can't be changed too radically. 

If you look back on this thread, Joshua provided some feedback regarding the project. In short, there were some issues with the delivery of the device. Ahmed and Abran mentioned that perhaps we should provide support for future projects or at least be up front with the fact there would be no support for using the product. Tibi mentioned that we cannot measure this project based on standards used in classical institutions. All of these points are great for the discussion. We know what went well (initial explosion of ideas, social aspect of the project) and what we can improve on the next time.

Joshua is coming back on Tuesday so he wasn't available last week. If we can get at least 2-3 people (at minimum) to join in on the discussion from the Sensorica side (in addition to Ahmed, Tibi and I, that would be sufficient.

If you want to have your say in terms of how the project went and contribute to this discussion, it will not only help us right a strong paper but will help us review our processes so that we may apply this learning to the next open science hardware project we deliver.

Thanks in advance,

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

I almost forgot to mention. I will be presenting this paper in Hong Kong in November. I have travel booked. If anyone else wants to join me, let me know.

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

Hi everyone,

If you take a look at the doodle poll, there are a few slots where Joshua has indicated his availability. Since the paper is due no later than September 1st, the sooner we do this the better. There are a couple of slots available for this Friday at 11AM and 12PM. For those who were active in the project (Jim, Tibi, Daniel, Abran, etc.), it would be great if you could participate. We have 3 people so far: Joshua, Ahmed and myself, but we also need people who are not co-authors of the paper. 

I envision the discussion would take an hour - 90 minutes max.

Maria

[Abran Khalid]

Hello Maria, 

Now we are 4 people ! 

Best, 

Abran

[Maria Frangos]

Thank you Abran!

Maria

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

So I will take a look at the Doodle but I cannot commit to it.
I am trying to manage expectations amd to provide a description of my reality.
You can probably catch me on a brake or something... Tomorrow I will spend some time for renovations at the lab. We can perhaps talk there while i am doing some manual work.
I will be more free in October.

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

I just had the time to read this.
Our current reality is this: We had the World Social Forum last week and we are now catching up with the lost time. That is the IoT project that needs to advance and the Blockchain project that needs to be wrapped up.
On September 1st I am leaving for Europe, for the P2PValue and the Deep dive - rethinking value conferences.
Before I leave I jeed to provide a new impetus to the funding initiative for our physical infrastructure and the virtual infrastructure. Stars are alligning for us with support from the Federal Government and from  Bill McCarthy father of the REA ontology behind the NRP-VAS.
The last deadline is the submission of a concept/presentation for a project to implement a network of open spaces in Verdun, financed by David Lametti.

I need to tale care of all that before the 31st...

I really don't know where to find time for more... All these issues I am dealing with are directly connected either with paying the rent now or in the near future.

If you want me to help somewhere else we need to make time. The only way I see that happening is by having more people taking initiative and ownership of processes that are essential to sustain the network.

[Maria Frangos]

I understand Tibi. I think we are going to go ahead with the meeting on Friday and possibly record it if everyone is OK with that. We can follow up over email and we have already had some discussion.

Maria

[Tiberius Brastaviceanu]

Yes, I think there already enough info here to start writing something. The rest can come in the form of precise questions. 

On Wed, Aug 24, 2016 at 11:17 AM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

I understand Tibi. I think we are going to go ahead with the meeting on Friday and possibly record it if everyone is OK with that. We can follow up over email and we have already had some discussion.

Maria

--

Go to SENSORICA's project page
http://www.sensorica.co/home/what-we-do/projects/pv-characterization
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[Maria Frangos]

The results of our poll show that tomorrow (Friday, August 26) at 11AM or 12PM works best for those who have responded. So far Joshua, Abran and I will attend. We'll do a hangout. Ahmed is working and cannot attend but I would like to record it. Joshua, Abran, does 12PM work for you both? Those who have not responded to the poll can also attend, if they are available.

Maria 

To post to this group, send email to pv-characterization-project-for...@googlegroups.com.

Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/pv-characterization-project-forum.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/pv-characterization-project-forum/CAMTgpNN640UzSjQvbgBxX97tRnaZRP%3D7S9Tm1v9GopXgvmmQxQ%40mail.gmail.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--

t!b! 

co-founder of SENSORICA: an open value network

co-founder of CAKE: consulting for the new economy

Part of Blocksense: blockchain and other p2p technologies

founder of Multitude Project: informing the new multitude

Google Profile

Facebook Tiberius Brastaviceanu

Twitter  @TiberiusB

[Abran Khalid]

Maria, 

I will be available and in attendance. Looking forward to it. 

Best, 

Abran

On Fri, Aug 26, 2016 at 5:43 AM, Maria Frangos <mariaf...@gmail.com> wrote:

The results of our poll show that tomorrow (Friday, August 26) at 11AM or 12PM works best for those who have responded. So far Joshua, Abran and I will attend. We'll do a hangout. Ahmed is working and cannot attend but I would like to record it. Joshua, Abran, does 12PM work for you both? Those who have not responded to the poll can also attend, if they are available.

Maria 

[Maria Frangos]

Great! Looking forward to it as well.

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

The meeting is going to start in 20 minutes. I will set up 5 minutes in advance and send a link to everyone here in case others would like to join.

Maria

[Abran Khalid]

Maria, 

I am online. Please send out the link when you are ready for the call. 

Best, 

Abran

[Maria Frangos]

https://hangouts.google.com/call/zakfso62enezvcqkynfvro55mee

[Joshua]

Google is failing us -- please try this https://meet.jit.si/sensorica

[Maria Frangos]

Hi everyone,

Abran, Joshua and I had a really good meeting. I audio-recorded it and will provide a link to the file later today. I will also provide an outline of the main points discussed so we can have a follow up (email) discussion over the next few days.

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

Hi again,

You can download the audio file here. Please keep in mind that we had some technical issues as we couldn't get hangouts to work so the first 10-15 minutes has limited dialogue as we were waiting for everyone to join. I also didn't have a chance to compress and clean up the audio (I used an external, sensitive microphone so there is some noise). The file is quite large and runs about an hour, including the gap at the beginning.

As I mentioned earlier, I will send out an email with the main points covered so we can give others an opportunity to provide their insights.

Thanks again to Joshua and Abran for joining.

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

Hi,

Yesterday I shared the audio file from the discussion Joshua, Abran and I had. Moments ago, I shared a document that highlights the main points of the discussion. It's not a full transcript but it will give you an idea if you don't have the time to listen to the 1 hour discussion. Tomorrow, I will provide a shorter synopsis of the discussion in a new email thread where we can continue talking about it over the next few days. And yes, I realise that everyone is working on an important deadline, I just thought I'd put this out there and keep everyone up to date :)

Maria

[Maria Frangos]

Hi everyone,

Here is a summary of interview and some thoughts. I realise that we will have different opinions on this, which I think is a good thing.

Successes:

The ideation process generated a wealth of ideas that couldn't have been achieved without opening up participation to the degree that we did. The initial ideas were also well documented and provide a good starting point for those wishing to explore these ideas further. This created a tremendous amount of value which could benefit other gimbal systems.

Issues:

There were issues on both sides.

From the Sensorica side, community outreach was an issue as many of the initial participants dropped out after the exciting ideation part had been completed (phase I). Because of this, the device was not delivered on time and it didn't work as Joshua expected it to.

From the academic side, funds were not paid out in a timely fashion. In addition, the late delivery of the device diminished the amount of available funds because of the way in which funding is allocated to research projects (if it isn't completed within a certain amount of time, those funds are lost).

Attempts to fix the device once Joshua had moved to a new university didn't work. Also, since a proprietary CAD tool was used, those designs were then inaccessible for making changes. It should be noted that this decision involved Joshua as he opted for speed. Daniel, who did the CAD, was more familiar with the package that was used than similar open source packages.

Tension:

The project was an OS hardware project but developed within a P2P environment which adds to the complexity of delivering a hardware device with a fixed deadline. How can we embrace long, socialised and open development processes while adhering to a fixed timeline? I thought about this after the meeting and thought about clarifying the distinction between a prototype and a product. Joshua thought we were going to deliver an alpha or a beta. We delivered something that, on the one hand, created a tremendous amount of value through a socialised processs, but on the other hand, failed to meet the expectations.

Some ideas:

During the discussion, we talked about a number of ways we could make changes. However, not all of the them conform to our governance and there are complexities with each one.

• Introduce a project lead ("projet responsible") role and set aside a special budget for that individual
• Develop a reputation system - Joshua suggested that the project lead assign or take away points but there are clearly issues with doing it that way within Sensorica
• Set aside a budget for support
• Make expectations clear - i.e. "what are we delivering and what are the expectations?"
• Create a lean, open and flexible design process with recommendations of open source tools for collaboration

Earlier in this thread, Tibi mentioned that we cannot measure this type of project like we would in a classical institution. Some of these ideas do not fall within a P2P way of working. However, the way I see it, we are not going to come up with any *final* conclusions or recommendations (at least not for this paper) but show that there are tensions between working in P2P framework for projects that have hard deliverables. 

This is such a new way of working that I doubt we can 'standardise' a set of best practices - nor would be want to. When you open things up to the degree Sensorica does, it becomes difficult to create a fail-safe system unless you start to go against some of its principles. The conundrum is interesting and everyone has a different opinion on how to proceed, which is not necessarily a bad thing but will need some kind of resolution if we are to get the kind of funded projects we need.

[Ahmed AKL]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks Maria for the great effort that you did in organizing the meeting and your wonderful summary and comments.

Regarding the "Project Responsible" role, I believe it is important and it already exist in this project; although it was not explicitly mentioned. If we tracked the various communications (i.e. emails, meetings, etc...) we can say that Tibi had this role most of the time and Jim for some time. However, they did it in the P2P style not in the traditional style. 

The P2P style lacks Joshua's suggestion of giving measures for members who don't respect their responsibilities. It is not mandatory to be in the form of removing points (in order not to violate Sensorica's principals); it can be in the form of a negative measure. Let me explain this in more detail:

I believe that member's reputation should have a measurable value. When he do the work as it should be his reputation increases, when he doesn't, his reputation decreases. This is something like the credit history system. The problem here is how to create this metric. I believe it is difficult to build it one shot, it should be through accumulated experience from different projects. 

As a start, we can consider the submission time. For example, each task should have a specific deadline, if the member submitted it on time, he got +1 point, if not he takes -1.  This is just an example that can be extended to grades not only +1 & -1 , also the deadline can be adjusted according to the project responsible decision, as some tasks can take more time than expected. 

An open and flexible design process is very important. What i noticed in this project is that it highly depends on the experience of individuals (especially Tibi and Jim). Imagine if any of them left the project, I'm pretty sure it will collapse. A well known design process that defines how to communicate, how to distribute roles, how to write documentation, etc.... is very important. Exactly as we have governance for Sensoricans, we need a governance for the project's work flow.

The Sensorica style allows us to make the design process flexible to adapt variable nature of our projects, but it is still mandatory to be well defined

[Maria Frangos]

Hi Ahmed,

Thanks for your comments. I think the discussion served two purposes: 1. Qualitative data for the paper (short-term); 2. A starting point for implementing a design process for an open value network (long-term). 

Both the email thread and discussion on Google Hangouts revealed that people held different perspectives on what constitutes 'value'. It also showed that people expected different outcomes (a living, open source artefact vs. an alpha or beta that would work out of the box). The question of "completeness" is also an interesting one when interfacing with an academic institution that relies on grants and milestones with fixed deadlines.

While there is not a hard line between these perspectives, exploring these "tensions" and how to navigate them in the context of an open value network will provide a rich analysis of the project. I look forward to working on more concrete applications of what we've learned as we move forward to define and organise ourselves with more clarity.

By the way, the submission deadline has been extended to September 7th. I will let everyone know once the document is finalised.

Maria