Apply here for GOSH's 2022 Regional Events Funding! (Round 1)

Opportunities
1

Applications are submitted by responding to this thread (see instructions below).

If you have a question about this funding or a related discussion, please post in the other thread!

This application is for groups that want to host an event, workshop, conference, or get-together aimed at supporting open science hardware. The main eligibility criteria is that the event must be aligned with the GOSH Manifesto to make open source hardware ubiquitous and with the GOSH’s ethos of inclusiveness.

Applications Open: 15 December 2021
First Round Applications Close: 15 January 2022
Applicants Notified: 1 February 2022
Subsequent funding rounds begin: 1 March 2022

Additional funding rounds will be opened with funding remaining from the first round.

Funds

The total funding for this Regional Events funding scheme is $99,100 USD.

The original source of these funds is a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, currently held by GOSH Inc., a non-profit organization in the United States. However, we - the wider GOSH community - gets to decide how to use these funds.

This money will be awarded to groups applying here to hosting Regional Events, and a small amount is reserved to fund a final meta-event for reviewing how this process went.

Funding rounds

The first round of funding (this round) will be targetted towards getting large regional events their money as soon as possible. See “Budget” section below for funding levels. Thus applications will only be open for the $9910 level initially. After the first round of applications and funding, applicants will be avaialble to apply for any of the 3 levels of funding and available funds after round 1 will be posted. The second funding round is expected to be announced on 1 March 2022.

If your application is not selected in the first round, it will automatically re-entered into subsequent funding rounds without you having to re-apply! Please tell us if you do not want your application to automatically re-entered.

Eligibility criteria

All organizations are eligible to apply as long as their proposed events are aligned with the GOSH code of conduct and ethos. You do not need a previous relationship/involvement with GOSH. Grants can only be given to a legal organization and not to individuals.

To be clear, physical hardware or hardware design do not have to be the primary output of the event. If hardware is produced, it must be published in a way that meets the OSHWA Open Source Hardware Definition.

Proposals for virtual, in-person, or hybrid events are welcome.

Sadly, because the funds are held by GOSH Inc. (a United States-based non-profit), the funding cannot legally go to organizations based in a place subject to United States trade embargoes (full list here).

To recap eligibility criteria:

  • Organization (not individual)
  • Event is aligned with GOSH Manifesto
  • Event aligns with GOSH code of conduct and ethos
  • Not based in a place the USA has a trade embargo

Review Process

Reviewers

Proposals will be reviewed by the Regional Gathering Funding Distribution Working Group formed under an open call published on the GOSH forum and open to anyone to apply. Once this group of 3 to 7 people (which will include at least one Community Council member) is set by the Community Council, they will select projects based on the eligibility criteria.

If a member of this review panel has a conflict of interest with an application, they will recuse themselves from reviewing said application.

Selection Process

Only projects that meet the aforementioned eligibility requirements will be granted full evaluation.

Applications will be evaluated on three key aspects.

  1. The first is how the event will advance the GOSH Manifesto at the local level. In short, the GOSH Manifesto contains 10 key principles
    • GOSH is accessible
    • GOSH makes science better
    • GOSH is ethical
    • GOSH changes the culture of science
    • GOSH democratizes science
    • GOSH has no high priests
    • GOSH empowers people
    • GOSH has no black boxes
    • GOSH is impactful tools
    • GOSH allows multiple futures for science

Since this is funding for a GOSH regional event (and not just funding for a specific project), several of these principles should be targetted, but not necessarily all of them must be directly targetted for this single event. Your proposal should note which principles of the GOSH manifesto you hope to target in your event.

  1. Applications will be reviewed on the broader impacts of this event for the global community concerning the GOSH manifesto. What happens after this event? What documentation, takeaways, lessons, publications, deliverables, or other outputs will come from this event having occurred? How will the persons involved in this regional event continue the ideas or projects encountered at the event?
  2. Finally, the feasibility of the project is taken under consideration. For instance have the organizers demonstrated experience in planning and leading events such as these? Does the budget seem reasonable for what their planned actions are? Does the event seem doable considering their declared goals and timeline?

The reviewers will give a numerical rating (1-3, with 3 being best) to each of the review criteria along with a written justification. The reviewers will then meet amongst themselves to evaluate the applications, deliberate, and create a final list of recommendations for funding.

The rubric for evaluating the applications is listed below. These review criteria maybe be subject to further refinement, but we shall note any changes once this is posted.

Criterion 3 2 1 Comments
Eligibility Proposal meets all eligibility criteria Some criteria need clarification not eligible
Local development of GOSH mission The event will have a dramatic impact the specific community and spread the GOSH ethos in ways that would not be possible without this grant. Several of the targets of the GOSH manifesto are met. The event will impact the specific community in some ways. A few targets of the GOSH manifesto are met The event will have minimal impact on the specific local community, or the impact garnered could have been made manifest through other means
Broader Impacts The proposal has clearly defined ideas for the results and documentation of the event. The resulting outputs will impact those involved and spread to other people and realms as part of an ongoing practice promoting the ideas of open science hardware. The proposal describes some of the ways in which this event will have an impact after the event has ended No plans or proposed ideas for post-event impact are described.
Feasibility The proposal definitley seems accomplishable given the described timeline, goals, and budget. Budget seems reasonable and includes estimated costs, requested costs, and costs covered by other sources. All expenses are justified. Some aspects of the event are unclear about their feasibility The proposal overall does not seem possible to pull off given the timeline, goals, and budget

Final recommendations for funding will be approved by the the Reviewers interally as a group and then sent to the GOSH community council. The Community Council will only intervene if it considers that there are exceptional circumstances.

Next the Reviewers will notify the recomended awardees of their selection, but the final official approval will only come after the grant awarding body (GOSH Inc.) finishes a final due diligence legal review of the awardees.

Budget

Based on their needs, applicants can choose to apply for one of these funding options (in United States Dollars (USD)):

  • $3000 for smaller regional events (Only available for applications after Round 1)
  • $6000 for medium regional events requiring more support (Only available for applications after Round 1)
  • $9910 for larger proposals involving more people, some travel and accommodation costs and local infrastructure needs

The first round of funding (this round) will be targetted towards getting large regional events their money as soon as possible. Thus applications will only be open for the $9910 level initially. After the first round of applications and funding, applicants will be avaialble to apply for any of the 3 levels of funding and available funds after round 1 will be posted.

If your application is not selected in the first round, it will automatically re-entered into subsequent funding rounds without you having to re-apply! Please tell us if you do not want your application to automatically re-entered.

Documentation Bonus

In addition, there will be an $800 bonus awarded once the applicant has submitted their post-event documentation output (see responsibilities below).

Event Cancelation / Virtualization

In case an event needs to be cancelled (for instance due to COVID-19 restrictions), we can still supply 10% of the awarded money to help with forms of “virtualizing the event” (if the event was not originally planned as virtual). For instance, a large event that was awarded $9,910 but had to cancel the event can still ask for $991 for help with any alternatives. The remaining money from cancelled events will be put back into the funding pool and made available in additional funding rounds.

Responsibilities

Responsibilities of selected event proposals:

  • Attend scheduled check-ins with the Regional Funding Working group and/or GOSH community Council
  • Make a post on the GOSH forum about their event at the conception of the grant
  • Post at least one pre-event update on this forum
  • Post at least one post-event update on this forum
  • Publish at least one mature documentation output that will tangibly benefit the open source community
    • This is broadly defined so be creative. The output can be hardware designs but doesn’t have to be!
    • At least this output (but preferably all outputs) from the event should be shared under an appropriate open source license (i.e. OSHWA-compatible licenses for hardware, free software licenses for software, and CC BY 4.0 or CC BY-SA 4.0 for others)

How to apply

Timeline for applicants for first round:

  • 15 December 2021 to 15 January 2021 - Submit your application
  • 1 February 2022 - Successful applications announced (pending official confirmation from the GOSH non-profit, which currently holds the funds)
  • 28 February to 5 November 2022 - Run your event!
  • By 5 November 2022 - Submit your primary documentation output to receive the USD $800 bonus.
  • (Subsequent funding rounds begin: 1 March 2022)

Please fully answer each of the ten questions below and post your completed application before the deadline as a response to this thread!

  1. Name of organization
  2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)
  3. Tell us about your organization
  4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?
  5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
  6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)
  7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.
  8. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)
  9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
  10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

After you submit your application here, the working group will use your answer to question 2 to acknowledge that your application has been completed and will be considered for review. This is also how we will contact you to communicate any final decisions.

Applications are submitted by responding to this thread. If you have a question about this funding or a related discussion, please post in the other thread!

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"BIODIVERSI-TECH"

Application to GOSH’s 2022 Regional Events Funding by Taxon Foundation (the Netherlands)

  1. Name of organization: Taxon Foundation (www.taxonfoundation.com)

  2. Email address: info@taxonfoundation.com

  3. Our organization: Taxon Foundation was set up in 2020 with the mission to involve the general public more in ecological and taxonomic research and thus create a better basis for nature education, conservation, and awareness of the biodiversity crisis. The foundation does this by helping laypeople, amateurs and school children carry out high-quality biodiversity research guided by international experts. In our projects, we maintain close collaboration with scientists, academia, ngo’s, companies, charities, and managers of protected areas. Taxon Foundation aims to inform society about biodiversity, ecology, and taxonomy by organising excursions, workshops, and expeditions, doing community science projects into biodiversity, and publicizing the results via traditional and novel media.

  4. Representation for a marginalized demographic: Taxon Foundation does not function as an organisation with a fixed membership. Rather, it gathers a different group of participants for each project. Mostly, these are grassroots projects, meaning that we respond to requests from neighborhoods to help with nature and science-oriented goals. This usually means that the group of participants is pre-formed, and therefore may or may not include minorities. However, whenever we initiate a project ourselves, we do attempt to obtain an inclusive group of participants. For our project Expeditie Achtertuin (‘Expedition Backyard’), for example, we specifically targeted neighborhoods with lower than average income and a high proportion of migrants. For another project, ‘Resampling Lichtenbeek’, we work with teens from a local secondary school.

  5. What is the event about, and what do we want to achieve with it: In urbanised parts of northwestern Europe, the membership of traditional clubs and associations for nature study is rapidly becoming dominated by pensioners, and youth nature study groups are seeing decreasing numbers of members. These tendencies are of concern in a time when knowledge of biodiversity is essential for the future of a healthy natural environment. By offering young adults a stimulating environment in which they can design, build, and work with novel, low-cost, and accessible technologies, we hope to get larger and more diverse group of young people interested in the study of nature. We will achieve this by organizing a 20-person international camp in ‘Youth Land’ on the edge of an urban greenspace (Flevopark) in Amsterdam, focused on participation by participants from the Netherlands, Belgium, western Germany, and Northern France. Participants will be young adults with an interest in both technology and nature (selected mostly by their STEM teachers) and representing communities that are traditionally poorly represented in nature study. The core of the camp’s activities will be workshops where experienced trainers guide the participants to explore various types of of tech-assisted nature study, for example: (i) AI and image recognition for gamified species identification; (ii) portable DNA labs for species identification; (iii) smartphone-based microscopy for visualising small organisms and their details.

  6. Levels of funding we would you like to apply for: USD $9910

  7. Brief budget:
    1 week accommodation and food at 200 euros per person: USD $4000
    travel grants for participants: USD $1000
    rent of tents and spaces at Youth Land: USD $2000
    tech and biodiversity materials and consumables: USD $2910

  8. Documentation that will benefit the community as a whole: Each participant will prepare a 3-minute pitch in which they outline how they will use self-built technology to kindle an interest in nature study and biodiversity science in their own local peer group. Videos of these presentations will be permanently available on the Taxon Foundation website for other schools to adopt. After six months, we will organise an online event where all the participants will share their experiences and exchange successes and lessons learned. Also, Taxon Foundation will write a report that will be distributed among our network in the international community biodiversity science world.

  9. Addressing GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion: Even though an interest in nature study in young adults in northwestern Europe is declining, those that do take up nature study usually come from a background of white, highly-educated, high-income families and demographics. Groups with a migration background and lower socioeconomic status are usually poorly represented. We will invite participants that specifically represent these communities to gain access to these groups and, via technology, get them interested in biodiversity science.

  10. Conflicts of interest: None.

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*. 1.Name of organization

Circle of Research and Action for Sustainable Development (CRADD)

Registration number: 2009/0725/DEP-ATL-LITT/SG/SAG-ASSOC of December 07, 2009

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

craddongcontact@gmail.com

3. Tell us about your organization

The Circle of Research and Action for Sustainable Development (CRADD) is a Non-Governmental Organization founded in 2008 and bringing together young Beninese professionals from various fields (agronomists, geographers, environmentalists, sociologists, economists, lawyers, digital …) around the issue of sustainable development. It aims globally to support and improve the living conditions of the populations in a perspective of Sustainable Development and self-sustained by approaches based on participation. For this purpose, it is involved in various fields, including agriculture and agro-pastoralism - environment and land management - education and literacy - tourism and culture - health and nutrition.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Our organization fights for the empowerment of young researchers and innovators in Benin. A category of people suffering from cognitive injustices caused by the difficulties of access to low cost internet but also from bad pedagogical practices. We want to change this situation by developing through our circle a network of young researchers and innovators that we mentor, with the aim of emerging champions of research and innovation aware of their ability to act for sustainable development.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Transforming agriculture remains one of Africa’s most urgent priorities, but it is a difficult task. With a growing and mostly young population, the continent needs to boost its agriculture. A transformation that doubles or triples agricultural production is essential in the fight against hunger. Agriculture in Africa, apart from its inability to meet the needs of the continent’s children, must face the effects of climate change. It is therefore essential to think of much more precise strategies that will reduce the unpredictable effect of the practice of agriculture in Africa. To achieve this, there is only the use of technology and more specifically digital technology that presents itself as an alternative. In agriculture, digitalization could be a game-changer by boosting productivity, profitability, and resilience to climate change(Michael Hailu, 2019). According to the CTA director, digitization of agriculture is struggling to reach smallholder farmers to whom Africa is dependent for 80% of its crop production. Many programs are working towards the digitization of agriculture and several African governments are beginning to talk about smart agriculture. Smart agriculture uses digital data collection, processing, and dissemination in the form of useful information for decision-making in the production and marketing of agricultural products.

The adoption of precision agriculture is facing a lack of data. Data can be collected through innovations in hardware adoption in agriculture. It can help enhance productivity and improve yields.

The development of agricultural technologies requires the stimulation of initiatives to encourage youth innovation. Innovation in an African context where talented young university students in the technological field lack the material and motivation to develop and express ideas into material for the benefit of the people requires a framework based on a philosophy of sharing and collective problem solving of open science.

It is therefore in response to this cognitive injustice that we want to organize the Open innovation for agriculture hardware in Africa.

A 4-day event during which we will bring together teams of young designers and digital fabrication enthusiasts to design prototype technology solutions for agricultural production improvement in Benin.

Once exposed to the difficulties encountered by farmers, the inventors have 72 hours to work on proposing solutions. In the end, the solutions will be submitted to deliberation by the public and by a jury in order to classify them by degree of innovation according to three main characteristics: novelty, usefulness, and feasibility of scaling up for use by farmers in Africa.

All the proposed solutions will be documented and published on a website to be designed for the occasion and each team will be accompanied in a process of development through the creation of start-ups based on prototype technologies, as well as the results of the study to identify the difficulties of farmers that will be done before the 4 days of open innovation.

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

Round 1

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

Unit Quantity Unit price $ Total Amount $
Design of visual identity for the event (logo, PPT mock-up, letterhead, email template, badge design for participants) Corporate Identity 1 259.2912705 259.2912705
Digital communication (community management, digital advertising, blog posts) Months 6 172.860847 1037.165082
Publication on local online media publication 3 17.2860847 51.85825411
Package for the design and printing of communication materials (flyers, posters, leaflets, tarpaulins) Package of services 1 432.1521175 432.1521175
Realization of Roll’up 1 129.6456353 129.6456353
Video production and editing Video 2 129.6456353 259.2912705
4-day photography 1 photographer 1 363.0077787 363.0077787
Meeting room rental for the open innovation Day 4 691.4433881 2765.773552
Accommodation for 50 participants over 4 days overnights 100 13.82886776 1382.886776
Catering for participants 50 participants over 4 days 3 meals/days 200 6.914433881 1382.886776
Purchase of material necessary for the prototyping of hardwares Arduino card 12 43.21521175 518.5825411
Transportation for the organization Transportation fees 1 86.43042351 86.43042351
Design of the showcase site and the opensource web application for collective deliberation for open innovation UI/UX design 1 311.1495246 311.1495246
Front developer for 2 months Developper 1 311.1495246 311.1495246
Backend developer for 2 months Developper 1 311.1495246 311.1495246
Data collection for the study on the identification of difficulties encountered by farmers that can be solved through technologies Research assistant 2 172.860847 345.721694
Total 9948.141746

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

  • The website with the photo, video, and presentation of the event
  • A full documentation of innovative hardware designs out of the event
  • The code source of the open innovation web app like this
  • The scientific article about the identification of the hardware innovation need in Africa
  • White Paper on Open Innovation in Open Source Hardware for Agriculture in Africa

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

We want to make the event in a small town (Parakou) of Benin where the digital actors do not benefit from great support in spite of the innovations in progress and which unfortunately are carried by young students who have little means.

The rental of local infrastructure from local small businesses and the involvement of more women in the field of technology will make the event inclusive. Over the days of our event, we will demonstrate the ability of a group of people to innovate through their talents without any distinction of race, origin, religion, or any other discriminating character.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

No absolutely not!

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  1. Name of organization

UMaT Business Incubation Hub

  1. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

sasare@umat.edu.gh

  1. Tell us about your organization

University of Mines and Technology (UMaT) is the only mining university in West Africa, whose vision is to be a Centre of Excellence in Ghana and Africa for producing world-class professionals in the fields of mining, petroleum, technology and related disciplines.

Since 2015 the university has been hosting an annual program dubbed Innovation and Career Fair, which gives the platform for students and staff to come up with innovative solutions to societal and global issues. However, after receiving awards most of the innovations were discontinued or abandoned. The university upon reviewing this assessment setup the Business Incubation Hub to support in further development of innovations and also commercialize innovations and research work.

Since inception the Hub trained and supported over 2000 innovators and entrepreneurs to build prototypes, register for intellectual property, access to market and finance and other business advisory services. The Hub is currently an implementing partner for the implementation of the GrEEn Incubation Program in the Western Region of Ghana, which is being sponsored by the European Union through (SNV) a Netherland Organization. Through this program the Hub has supported 9 entrepreneurs who have received an average total funding of GH¢200,000.00 and are now creating over 200 direct and indirect employment opportunities for the youth within the region.

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

UMaT Business Incubation under the governing policies of the university runs gender mainstreaming activities with a focus on increasing number of females in engineering, also there are other policies that grants special privileges for people from less endowed communities (rural areas) to get access to quality engineering education. The Hub as a unit within the university work with all these diverse groups.

We recently signed an MOU with Inclusive Tech Group (an organization, dedicated to building assistive tools for physically challenged or persons with disability) this is as a result of the increasing number of physically challenged person we have been supporting.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

#WestSide Innovation Carnival, seeks to plug into the Ghana Digitization Agenda being spearheaded by the office of the Vice President of the Republic to bring innovators across the country especially within the region to exhibit various innovations that have the capacity to improve living standards and business operations within the region having the potential to scale across other mining communities across Africa and the globe.

Western Region of Ghana is basically the heart of the extractive industry in Ghana, and like all other extractive communities in Ghana and other African countries, it is highly under developed. Despite all the Gold, Crude Oil, Bauxite, Manganese etc. Our roads are bad, our source of drinking water is nothing to write home about due to illegal alluvial mining activities, they have all been polluted. The Region has one of the highest unemployed youths across the country.

West-Side Innovation Carnival is a three-day event that will bring the major stakeholders within the region together with innovators from our second cycle and tertiary institutions for a tech exhibition and a two-day hackathon. Participants will get the opportunities to visit various industries and some selected communities to gather data and identify areas where digitization can be used as a tool to transform lives and businesses. After the tour they will be exposed to design thinking methodologies and allowed to form teams to build solutions to the identified challenges.

The goal is to introduce digitization and digital innovative solutions as a sustainable alternative pathway to reviving the economy and living standard within the region. The future of Ghana and Africa no longer lies in the wealth of its natural resources but rather the growing youth population, hence the project seeks to train and inspire these youth refocus their potential to adopting and leveraging on technology to make life better for us all.

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

$9910

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

||Media & Publicity (Advertisement and Branding)=1,200
||Feeding of participants: 50 persons @ $20 x 3=3,000
||Venue rent|=$200
||Transportation (Fuel for Vehicle) Communities Tour=$450
||Travel Grant. 20 participants @20 x $100=$2,000
||COVID Protocol Logistics/Items|=$150
||Accommodation for 20 participants @$100=$2,000
||Awards (3 Outstanding Teams @$200)=$600
||Awards (3 Judges @ $100)=$300
||Total|||=$9,900|

  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

The innovation carnival will be live streamed, project report, designs and solution presentations will be shared with the community and hosted on the Universities website.

The project will leverage on members of Africa Open Science and Hardware Community members and the Ghana Hubs network and AfriLabs to further develop proposed solutions prototypes and also create market linkages to establish a stable market and scale project outcomes.

The carnival will present a rare opportunity to interact and interview stakeholders from different extractive communities, to provide relevant topics and insights for further investigations and publications.

Hence a white paper on digital innovative solutions for extractive communities and industry in Ghana will be published in the Ghana Mining Journal.

  1. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

It will be mandatory for each team to have at least one female member and also two individuals from different tertiary institution.

The sites visits will target rural communities which are more vulnerable to effects illegal mining operations and also have very low digital penetration. Building solutions with them in mind will enable them to tap into new markets and plug into the global village which the world has become.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None

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Green Rural STEM Lab

Application to GOSH’s 2022 Regional Events Funding by Greenlab Social Foundation (Nigeria)

  1. Name of organization

Greenlab Social Foundation (GSF) Registration Number 161646 (https://www.greenlab-microfactory.org)

  1. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

info@greenlab-microfactory.org

  1. Tell us about your organization

Longing for an egalitarian environment where everyone, irrespective of their location, gets an opportunity to innovate, share, access to basic amenities, access to good education, access to infrastructures that enables growth, and be a change enabler should not be an abysmal venture. Hence the introduction of Greenlab Microfactory. Greenlab Microfactory was set up in Nigeria in 2016 to provide a community access to open-source concepts, tools, trainings, as well as facilitate social community projects.
Our aim is to encourage small-scale development of artefacts, by providing access to digital fabrication tools and technologies that encourages learning, sharing, rapid prototyping, and innovations. Our objective is to promote a green, eco-friendly, and sustainable environment, through research and development, education and training, technological and innovation awareness, and other human capital development projects.

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

In the face of infrastructural deficiencies, many Nigerians are unaware of the STEM terminology. We have a heart for the people, especially those in hard-to-reach / rural places in Nigeria with the knowledge of STEM. Through our TICK STEM kit, we have introduced over 30000 pupils to STEM in 9 states, at no cost to the recipients. However, merely introducing them is good but not efficient. Now we want to create modular STEM labs with partners in different places in Nigeria.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

4 Rural STEM Lab at 4 rural locations in One week in Nigeria.

This will be facilitated as a marathon event, simultaneously taken place in 4 different locations. We will facilitate a 3D assembly workshop, introduction to Arduino electronics course, and other STEM kits. We will setup the STEM labs at location we have already visited, train the local facilitator on effective digital fabrication techniques. Lastly, we will support to develop a curriculum for training and teaching the community.

The target audience of this event are participants from 8 years and above.

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

Round 1 - $9910

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

The budget will be spent to procure components needed for the marathon event. Part of it will also be used for logistics, event catering, and accommodation for our team.

Component Quantity Cost ($) Total ($)
Prusa Mini 3D printer 4 422.29 1689.16
Shipping and Customs 700
Makey Makey 8 60 480
Arduino kits 30 45 1350
Mini laptops 20 100 2000
Vinyl cutter (ScanNCut CM900) 1 460 460
Heat press machine (Cricut) 1 300 300
Event Catering (50 per location) 200 1.25 1000
Accommodation for facilitators (4 per location) 16 800
Teams’ logistics 1000
Miscellaneous 130.84
  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

The event will be documented via video recordings, photos, and a documented report. These will be shared on our website, other channels such as hardwarethings.org. In addition to these, a status report covering an evaluation of each location will be provided on our website on a quarterly basis.

  1. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

We will be facilitating this build workshop in 4 rural communities (Imefon village, Ajegunle city (Lagos), Odigbo village, and Oleyo village (Ibadan)) that would not have had such access. Though the technology scene is still male-dominated, adequate focus will be given to get high involvement of the female gender during the project’s execution. We will also be using female facilitators to conduct some of the trainings.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None.

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  1. Name of organization: LabHack and SANBio (https://www.nepadsanbio.org/)

  2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact):
    Louise Bezuidenhout (LabHack) louise.bezuidenhout@dans.knaw.nl and Ereck Chakauya (SANBio) EChakauya@csir.co.za

  3. Tell us about your organization:

LabHack started in 2019 as a collaboration between Louise Bezuidenhout, Helena Webb (both then at the University of Oxford) and Robert Shoniwa (Harare Institute for Technology in Zimbabwe). LabHack was designed to address the shortage of laboratory equipment for practical training in undergraduate STEM laboratories in Zimbabwe. In particular, it aimed to promote Open Hardware as a means of creating new practical learning opportunities for students experiencing these resource shortages.
LabHack events involve multidisciplinary teams competing around design challenges to build low cost and reproducible programmable laboratory equipment. At LabHack events undergraduate student teams design low-cost versions of common laboratory equipment (centrifuge, PCR machines, magnetic stirrers) using locally-available hardware. They also participate in workshops on Open Science and Open Hardware and engage with local makers and relevant commercial companies.
LabHack events are driven by a commitment to inclusion and open learning. While resource limitations are challenging to STEM students in Africa, they can also present opportunities to foster creative problem solving. As is evidenced by the growing Open Hardware/Software and Citizen Science movements, much laboratory equipment can be fabricated by enthusiasts at a fraction of the cost. LabHack is inspired by the opportunities afforded by the Open Hardware/Software movement, and by turning resource limitations into learning opportunities.
Based on the success of the 2019 event, LabHack formed a collaboration with the Southern African Network for the Biosciences (SANBio) which is based at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa. SANBio is a shared bioscience research, development and innovation platform that works to improve collaboration and research within African biosciences. They run a range of programmes designed to support African researchers, including specific programmes targeting female researchers and entrepreneurs, innovation and start-up support and continental collaborations. The collaboration enabled the LabHack organizers to gain additional support and scope for future events. Through this collaboration LabHack hosted a regional LabHack challenge in 2020 with participants from South Africa, Zimbabwe, Botswana and Malawi.
Unfortunately plans to continue hosting these events were curtailed by the COVID-19 pandemic, and this funding application is submitted to continue this successful collaboration.

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?
    The commitment to inclusion and diversity are core to the design of LabHack events. These commitments are also reflected through the activities of SANBio, which runs flagship STEM projects in female empowerment, grassroots innovation and capacity building in STEM inclusion for previously marginalized communities.
    LabHack events are open to any undergraduate team from within the catchment countries. There are requirements placed on team membership that directly address issues of inclusion. These include requiring representation from at least three academic disciplines, and at least one female team member. While issues such as sexual orientation are not an explicit requirement for team composition, the use of the GOSH guidelines for participation outline the expectations for inclusive and supportive collaboration and participation. LabHack also actively seeks the support of mentors and presenters that represent diversity of backgrounds.
    Funds are provided to the teams to cover fabrication costs to ensure that the economic background of team members is no barrier to participation.

  2. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
    LabHack events have three main objectives:

  3. To raise awareness of the potential for Open Hardware and Open Science for learning and research

  4. To use team collaboration around Open Hardware challenges as a means of fostering creative problem solving

  5. To encourage students enrolled in low-resourced learning institutions to engage in resources that can enrich their STEM educational experience and to create peer networks to support this learning
    Funds are being requested to host a LabHack event in collaboration with NEPAD-SANBio. Due to COVID-19 travel challenges, this event will be hosted in South Africa and focus on South African undergraduate teams. Applications will be open to teams from neighbouring countries, but travel will be at the teams’ discretion.
    The LabHack event will be a two-day event hosted in Pretoria, South Africa. Teams will use the event to showcase their designs (built prior to the event) and to participate in Open Science, Open Hardware, and Innovation workshops as well as receiving feedback from the expert panel of judges. The afternoon of the second day of the event will open to learners from local high schools to further increase the impact of the event and to raise awareness of Open Hardware and Open Science.
    Draft programme:
    Day 1 morning: set up of prototypes, team introductions, welcome and outline of event
    Day 1 afternoon: workshop on Open Hardware, discussions with judging panels, selection of workshops (ie. Using Arduinos, 3-D printing)
    Day 1 evening: social mixer
    Day 2 morning: workshop on Open Science, group discussions on prototypes, workshop and “hot seat” on documentation
    Day 2 afternoon: workshop on innovation and STEM careers, judging and prize giving

  6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)
    $9910

  7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.
    • Venue = $1000
    • Refreshments and evening social = $2000
    • Prizes = $500
    • Student support (10 teams) – Arduino kits, seed fund for building materials = $2000
    • Student accommodation and subsistence (50 students @R200 per student per night) = $1000
    • Organiser, speakers and judges travel = $1500
    • Gifts for exhibiting businesses = $500
    • Materials for event = $500
    • Audio-visual support = $910

  8. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)
    The event will be documented and promoted via LabHack social media accounts and on an webpage hosted by NEPAD-SANBio. An event video will also be produced and promoted. These event videos have proven very successful for previous LabHack events. In addition, news articles will be written to promote the event to a wider audience.
    During the LabHack event all teams will attend a workshop on documentation. This will be followed by one-on-one “hot seat” consultations between teams and experts. This will enable teams to prepare documentation on their prototypes for submission to an open repository such as Zenodo. In line with a successful initiative launched at the Zimbabwe LabHack, teams will also have the opportunity to be profiled on the event webpage together with their prototoype and documentation.
    While the LabHack event has previously been described in academic and non-academic publications, a more user-friendly “how to” guide will be prepared to enable interested communities to replicate LabHack events around the world.

  9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
    LabHack events directly address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion. They engage with groups of undergraduate students who may not have the opportunity to participate in Open Hardware events due to the paucity of similar events at their institutions or in their cities. The team demographic requirements also ensure that students from a range of disciplines and genders are included in the event. By explicitly using the GOSH participation guidelines to outline expected behaviour at the events, LabHack events also ensure that the issues of diversity, respect, inclusion and tolerance are foregrounded in all social interactions.

  10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?
    None

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  1. Name of organization:

International Hackteria Society

  1. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact):

Please us my forum contact, or email (i guess you have it, i dont’ want to post it here.)

  1. Tell us about your organization:

Global Hackteria Network and online knowledge sharing platform
Since 2009 Hackteria has established a global network of long term collaborators from Switzerland to India, Taiwan, Japan and Indonesia, aswell as various other groups & individuals across Europe. Hackteria has also actively contributed to global events such as the Biofabbing convergence and other meetings of the DIY biology communities, and has been foundational in the pre-phase and execution of the first GOSH event in Geneva 2016.

Hackteria has been starting with a focus as a web-based knowledge platform, establishing a large wiki with instructions and documentations of various DIY projects, open hardware and workshop methodologies around DIY biology, Open Source Biological Art and Generic Laboratory Instruments. The wiki meanwhile describes over hundred projects and is an extensive archive of all the events, workshops and labs Hackteria has organized or been involved. Maybe the most known project was one of our first: instructions to build a DIY microscope by hacking a cheap webcam and making a simple setup for the microscope stage for focusing and analysing various samples, and it’s use for performance, artistic projects or live VJing.
Many more information can be found on our wiki here:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/

Hackteria methodologies
Throughout the years the focus has shifted to more human interaction and physical formats of learning environments to share and experiment with DIY practices to allow anybody outside established research institutions to perform their own experiments in lifescience, environmental monitoring and artistic approaches involving biological mediums. We have always embraced a methodology of “radical transdisciplinarity” with the belief that the challenges of our times can only be tackled when all players of society globally are involved; crossing different cultural backgrounds, socio-economics situations and a large diversity of practices from art, hacking and engineering to cooking, anthropoloy and experimental electronic music.
See various articles that have been written about hackteria:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Press_Coverage

HackteriaLabs 2010-20xx
Hackteria has established a methodology of “temporary labs for collaborative production and transdisciplinary research”, which has been done several times over the last decade. Under the name “HackteriaLab” we have done such events in Switzerland 2010, 2011 & 2017, Bangalore 2013, Okinawa 2020 and also in Yogyakarta 2014, Indonesia. Especially the latter has been extremely fruitful in establishing long term collaborations, friendships and new projects that extended years beyond the events itself.
See the trailer and documentary film here:
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/HLab14-Documentary

UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware
In 2021 Hackteria has initiated a project “UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware” with support from Slovenia and the European Union, with the goal to research the more “real world” application of various open science hardware projects in a rural setting and agricultural applications. The projects involved remote researchers in Argentina and Yogyakarta, aswell as a 3 weeks temporary autonomous lab (can also be described as a group residency / hackathon) in Maribor, Slovenia. We hope to continue and culminate this event series with a larger regional gathering in Yogyakarta and the support of the GOSH funding round 1.
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/UROS

ROŠA Gathering organizing team:
Marc Dusseiller (CH)
https://www.hackteria.org/wiki/Dusjagr
Andreas Siagian (ID)

tbc Adeline Seah (SG)
tbc at least 1 or 2 more persons

“A workshop is playground for human interaction”
Interview with Marc Dusseiller on GOSH commmunity medium:

"Lifepatch. Situated Assemblages of Un-Situated Things"
Article and Interview on Lifepatch’s activities in Yogyakarta:

International Hackteria Society (legal text)
Under the name “International Hackteria Society”, is an association according to article 60ff of the Swiss Civil Code (ZGB) with seat in Zürich. The association aims to guarantee the organizational and financial processes of the project “Hackteria | Open Source Biological Art”. It wants to further development and access to practical knowledge in artistic engagement with the lifesciences. It wants to create platforms for public discussions and invite international artists and scientists for critical and theoretical discourse. The association works as a non- profit organization to reach its aims.Commercial register ID for International Hackteria Society: CH-020.6.001.605-2Unique enterprise identification number (UID) for International Hackteria Society: CHE-192.885.318

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

The organisation “International Hackteria Society” is registered in Switzerland, but our aim was always to connect a global network of individuals and groups from diverse cultures, low resource environments, as they also exist in Switzerland, Europe, aswell as everywhere on the globe.
Our subtitle “Open Source Biological Art” describes the focus to empower amateurs and various professionals, such as self-employed artists, makers, free-lancing creatives or underground (h)acktivists, with knowledge and skills to do their own projects in the field of lifescience.
Within the hackteria network many projects have already been established with a focus on trans-hack feminist approaches, gender hacking, and more.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Hackteria has been focussing in the process of long term collaboration by initiating many regional activities especially Indonesia. The connection between Hackteria with Indonesia has started since 2009, from small scale activities such as workshops, talks, lectures, labs, residencies and even a festival - scale event called HackteriaLab 2014 - Yogyakarta. This strong relationship is a fruit of a consistency in reaching out, developing ideas, making things, experimenting and/or even hanging out to talk about cultural differences.

In short:
“A regional event series combining a longer on-site residency, multi-geographical work connection local outreach tour, as-well as a research & production lab and a gathering of interesting players from the region of South East Asia.”

Schedule:
1 April - Start of residency (duration 5-8 weeks)
April - ROŠA workshop and outreach tour in Java and Sulawesi (duration 3 weeks)
5 - 15. May - ROŠA temporary lab, Yogyakarta
12 - 15. May - ROŠA gathering, Yogyakarta

Residencies:
We will be happy to host and finance one person for a longer durational residency to work in the local context of Yogyakarta, aswell as exploring other regions of Indonesia together. The focus of the applicatants should cover the main topics of “rural open science hardware” in the newly eyplored regional context. The residency will be choosen through a call, by the organising team, and selected according the GOSH values and experiences to create valuable research.

(The second residency is Marc Dusseiller, mostly in the role of co-ordination and organzing the event series. His travel costs are covered privately.)

ROŠA workshop and outreach tour:
The local team and residence researchers will be invited for a tour through Java and Makkassar, Sulawesi to visit selected communities and learn and share experiences in open science hardware in the local context through workshops, expeditions and talks.

ROŠA temporary lab:
For 10 days we’ll inhabint a public venue in Yogyakarta to set up a temporary lab for developing and experimenting with our hardware projects, host local visitors and public events, promoting the collaborative and open source spirit of our activities.
A small group of participants will be invitied to the ROŠA temporary lab. we are aiming at a focused group of 10-15 active participants, if travel restrictions are allowing it, 50% from South East Asia and the others from different local communities.
More international guests are welcomed (2-3 persons), but will need to support their own travel and covid-19 related quarantine costs.

ROŠA gathering:
During a 3 days gathering we will share our practices to a wider audience of local researchers, students, activists and creatives. Various methodologies will be implemented, such as site-visits, working groups, skill-share sessions and talks.

Embedded ethnographic research:
We have collaborators locally who have an interest to study our transdisciplinary laboratory as an ethnographic - cultural anthropological field or how to establish quality observation and understanding of collective and interdisciplinary work in innovation laboratories. In short, how to observe, participate, learn and innovate collective work methods and how to use different methods of thinking (scientific, artistic, economic, everyday) and how to build (different examples from the world) bridges between science, art and industry.

Plan B for more restricted Covid-19 measures:
In case of tougher travel restrictions, we will reduce the number of participants from outside of Indonesia, to guarantee full financial coverage of extra costs of quarantine hotels and other testing and visa costs that will be needed. Additionally we will partially change to a more hybrid format collaborating with the larger group of participants through our set of open source tools for online collaboration (see below). Common materials will be sent out by mail, to mirror similar sets of hardware and prototyping materials in different environment, as we already have explored during the UROŠ Temporary Autonomous Lab in October 2021.

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is avaiable for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

Regional Event series, Round 1: USD 9910$

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

As a continuation of the project “UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware”, we already have sourced some funding through the kons-platfrom, a grant from Slovenia and the European Union. The execution of the event series will also rely on in-kind contribution from some international participants to cover their own travel costs (approx 30% of total expenses).

For the ROŠA we have the following project phases and estimated costs:
Total Expenses: 22,700 USD
3,050 USD - General Management
5,900 USD - ROŠA residencies
9,450 USD - ROŠA Gathering
1,300 USD - Open Hardware Research Projects
700 USD - Workshops – Local Outreach
1,100 USD - Documentation & Dissemination
1,200 USD - Administration

Allocation in percentage to the following items:
43% Travel
11% Accommodation & Hospitality
14% Materials & Equipment
21% Fees
11% Communication

Total Income: 22,700 USD
1,500 USD - Hackteria in-kind
1,300 USD - Marc Dusseiller travel costs in-kind
4,000 USD - Travel costs funded by participants
6,000 USD - UROS funds via kons-platfrom, EU grant
9,900 USD - Requested from GOSH Phase 1 funding round.
A more detailed planning budget can be found here:

  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

We will use the Hackteria wiki to document the events and our research as text and photo.
The organisational working group will use our self-hosted nextcloud for collaboration.
For online meetings with our collaborators we will use our self-hosted BigBlue Button, and workadventure, and we’ll use advanced streaming methods with OBS (open broadcast studio).
Regular outcomes, discussions and outreach to the GOSH community will be on the GOSH forum.
Individual projects will be published on github repositories.
Interviews, research and reflection will be published as a booklet and released on archive.org

  1. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

Enabling an exchange across different people in Yogyakarta and other parts of Indonesia with regional practioners from the region of South East Asia, covering all costs of travel and participation, if needed.
Including free-lancers, creatives, hackers and artists, along-side researchers from established research institutions and professional hardware/software developers.
Aim at a geneder balanced group through the selection process of the participants.
Include embedded ethnographic - cultural anthropological researchers through-out the process to reflect on our methodologies.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None.

The following points are mentioned here:
Marc Dusseiller aka dusjagr has been a former member of the organising teams of the global GOSH 2016 and 2018.
The GOSH community manager, bri, has expressed interest to join the organising team and participate in the event in Yogyakarta, due it’s vicinity to Australia.

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  • Name of organization
    Digital Naturalism Conference (Dinacon)

  • Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

Info@dinacon.org or hello@leecyb.org

  • Tell us about your organization

Dinacon is a unique event that hosts field biologists, interaction designers, engineers, artists, and anyone simply interested in exploring new ways of interacting with nature in some of the world’s major hubs for biological field research. The key goal of the conference is to share knowledge, so we bring together a mix of connecting local and international groups who want to spread their knowledge about hacking and nature. Dinacon was created in reaction to many traditional academic conferences which fail to connect the participants to the interesting locations they visit (or even to each other) There have been two previous Dinacons, one in Thailand, May-July 2561, and one in Panama, August 2019. The work of the participants was collected and freely shared in these nice books we made for each conference: https://www.dinacon.org/2018/11/02/book

You can also review our website for more information about people and events from past conferences: www.dinacon.org

  • Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

We strive to be actively inclusive in an environment known to have embedded and systemic bias. To do this, we partner with local organizations in every space we visit, and ensure they are gaining benefit from hosting our conference in a true partnership. Our organizational team is intentionally made of a diverse background, and we uphold a commitment to ensuring our attendees come from varying backgrounds as well. To do this, we understand that many attendees may apply with experience that may appear different than traditional “academic” “scientific” or “professional” and actively look to elevate alternative experience of science, hardware and hacking. Our leadership team actively seeks out Node Leaders, workshop leaders, and attendees that would benefit from experiences like dinacon or who are typically marginalized by science communities and offer them opportunity to grow, participate, and lead.

  • What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Every year Dinacon is hosted in a different location. This year we will be in Sri Lanka working with Dreamspace Academy, a local makerspace. Participants from around the world submit attend and spend at least 1 week exploring the environment, researching, and collaborating with locals and peers. Participants, who can be artists, designers, scientists, engineers, academics, etc, are encouraged to give skill-sharing workshops and must produce 1 project themselves.

There are only 3 basic requirements for participating:

  1. Make something
  2. Document and Share it Publicly
  3. Get at least two other participants to provide you with recorded feedback

Participants will use the facilities at Dreamspace Academy to build and document projects. Outings exploring the biodiversity of the area will take place throughout the month, as well as skill building workshops. The conference will run for the entire month of July, with a rotating set of attendees.

  • Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

9910 USD

  • What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.
item cost
Local documentation Team 3000
Local space Rental 3000
Supporting Travel Costs 3000
Accessibility Accommodations 910
Total 9910

This funding allows us to provide additional support and wider access to the conference.

Rental and documentation costs go directly to our partner organization Dreamspace Academy and their support team.

Supporting travel costs are intended to allow marginalized participants to travel if attending the conference is beyond their financial ability.

Accessibility: These costs are dependant on the needs of applicants, it is intended to offer support services which can range from: mobility assistance, travel accommodations, support persons, etc so that anyone may attend.

  • How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

During our conference we have a documentation team that is dedicated to both general conference documentation as well as individual project documentation. At the end of the conference we have a published book that showcases the work done at the conference.

We require that all participants review each other’s work and provide constructive feedback. At the end, all participants get professional documentation of their work, feedback, and a published work. In addition, social media posts, chat groups, and community newsletters offer ongoing support.

In summary:
. A freely available, peer reviewed book that documents how each project is done
. Each node leader is required to teach a workshop at the conference which is documented in the book
. Social media documentation
. Photo, video, and audio recordings for personal use

  • How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

As stated above, we strive to be inclusive in our leadership, partnership, and attendees. We actively seek leadership and attendance from marginalized people in science and hardware and approach people actively to take part. We believe it is not enough to state that we are open, or to mandate it, but that it is critical to actively invite and support women, people of varying (or lack of) genders, people of color, people of varying (dis)ability, people from varying social and economic backgrounds, and people with alternative education or professional structures that differ from those often presented as “leaders” in science/hacking/hardware/engineering/research. We offer accessibility support to leadership and attendees, and provide mentorship. We have a robust code of conduct, which we frequently review and adapt as we learn and grow to ensure everyone involved feels safe and has a path to resolve any conflict that may arise, and believe structures of power should be challenged and rebuilt to be inclusive.

  • Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

Yes, Andrew Quitmeyer is on our leadership team

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  1. Name of Organization:

Prunedge Development Technologies Limited

  1. Email Address :

info@prunedge.com, rilwan.saliu@prunedge.com

  1. Tell Us about your Organization

Prunedge is a Technology company building innovative solutions for real-world problems, founded in 2015 in Nigeria. The company’s mission is to innovate and create affordable technology solutions that help to solve the world’s greatest problems, day-to-day human problems as well as increase efficiency of systems and processes within the social, public, and private sector space. The company creates innovative solutions to global problems by creating software and complementing hardware solutions to address various social problems within her areas of focus, carrying out sensitization activities to strengthen public awareness as well as help ensure successful deployment of developed solutions. collaborating with organizations with similar objectives to solve global problems within our areas of focus, providing technology support to non-profit organizations within the company’s area of focus toward ensuring improvement of delivery of service to the public.

  1. Does your organization have a representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Prunedge is an organization that has a great representation for marginalized demographics as it is a company whose headquarter is based in Lagos, Nigeria in sub-Saharan Africa. The company’s workforce is populated by blacks of which 40% are female ensuring proper inclusion of the female gender whose participation in tech hitherto has been minimal. The company does not tolerate any form of discrimination in any kind and shade, the company is big on people and holds its workforce in high esteem with a work-life balance of which can be found in any fortune 500 company that prioritizes its employees.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

The event is a hardware exhibition conference to be hosted by the IoT department which is a key unit of the technology division of the company, the program will bring together key players in the hardware space in Nigeria and beyond to talk about how strategic interventions can help to give the sector a leap, bring more people to play in the space, encourage more women participation in hardware and also talk about the gospel of open-source hardware and how collaboration within the industry, education institutions, and government can be a major driver in innovation, helping to reduce the rate of poverty in the continent and also helping the continent to push further in achieving the sustainable development goals (SDGs). The event will also focus on an inclusive discussion to help solve problems such as epileptic electricity supply and towering carbon footprints in Africa through the use of sustainable and open hardware solutions.

  1. Which of the levels of funding would you like to apply for? (In round 1 only USD $9910 Is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD$9910 will be available)

$ 9910

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how

Rent of event space: $1000

Event awareness campaign: $1000

Snacks for attendees: $10 x 100 persons

Accommodation and feeding for facilitators: $1000

Miscellaneous: $1000

Hands-On Lab & Exhibition (Purchase of Hardware component): $5000

  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (Videos? Photo? A how-to? Innovative hardware designs?)

The entire event will be recorded and uploaded to a dedicated website which will be created for the event, videos and how-to guides recorded during the event will be made available to the public for sensitization and educational purpose.

A comprehensive post-event report will be generated, and the key ideas and solutions discussed will be used to engage major stakeholders across Africa’s hardware space.

  1. How would your event address GOSH’S values of diversity and inclusion?

Organizing an event of this magnitude in sub- Saharan Africa is a big deal and will help to get people from all backgrounds into hardware.

Moreover, our plan of incentivizing event attendance for marginalized demographics in hardware space such as; female gender, people with disability, minority tribes among others would encourage uniform hardware sensitization and subsequent participation of all demographics in Africa’s hardware space.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None.

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1. Name of organization:

Culture²

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact):

hello@culture-culture.com

3. Tell us about your organization:

Culture² is a platform which focuses on highlighting research related to community biology, ancestral knowledge, and creative biology while also specifically highlighting the research of BIPOC and LGBTQ+ practitioners of various socioeconomic backgrounds and lived experiences. We focus on slow platform development with an emphasis on paying contributors, building relationships, and providing opportunities for emerging practitioners.

Our board of directions and organizers can be seen here:

https://culture-culture.com/aboutus/ About Us (Board of Directors, Organizers)

Our current projects have been:

  1. Our conference in 2021, which shall soon be integrated into a syllabus that will be paired with our journal: https://culture-culture.com/portal2021/ (Link to 2021 Conference Portal/ Archive)
  1. Our peer-reviewed journal will be published in Spring-Summer 2022. We will be taking a new approach to a peer-reviewed model which will be emphasized in a “dialogue” style format.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

To the best of our ability, we do. Although we do not advertise that we are a diversity forward platform (to avoid tokenization), we make sure to consult (we pay honorariums for), and build our platforms with various culturally specific communities to make sure the platform’s vision supports a need.

For example, we have built our journal and conference so far to support not only established researchers, but to highlight emerging work as well that might seem unconventional (ex, small scale/ culturally specific farming) to traditional research institutions or granting bodies with more conservative views.

Instead of focusing on building an audience based on an institutional celebration of science, we have found niches in supporting practices such as market gardening, climate activism, food sovereignty, and food processing which can integrate a scientific approach at a community level. This allows us to reach a wider audience at varying socioeconomic backgrounds.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Within the current COVID era, there has been a growing interest in building businesses and developing research on the cultivation of locally grown + culturally specific foods using traditional farming methods in urban communities local to Ontario, Canada.

There are many practitioners and community leaders from equity deserving groups within Ontario’s food systems whose practices do not currently qualify for academic or arts funding (the funding models are quite conservative), but are incredibly relevant in addressing issues related to sustainability and community science. Another incentive in this initiative is to provide formal opportunities for equity deserving groups to build up experience with tangible outcomes in preparation for future funding opportunities to support their work.

The event that we would like to hold focuses on including various stakeholders in food systems (within Toronto, Canada) to document strategies and co-design tools that could be used in the cultivation and processing of crops for culturally specific needs. This was inspired by one of our community members sharing their personal research in finding culturally specific but climate resilient crops with experimental plots; and another member whose practice centers around Black futurisms focuses on developing open source protocols and hardware for propagation and cultivation.

We are currently looking at a hybrid-event (depending on what our public health regulations allow) for a three day program which focuses on mentorship, site visits, meals, and project development with community leaders. The in-person programming will take place in Toronto, Canada.

With our current administrative capacity, the number of selected applicants that we can support so far is 15 (of varying levels of backgrounds and expertise). We also would like to specifically provide a scholarship for Black, Indigenous, and participants of colour as well as financially precarious individuals to not only compensate for their time, but to be able to take three days off (of work or other kinds of labor) to be able to participate.

Steps:

Pre-Production

Consultations with experts in various cultural farming practices, community science + social justice workers, and Indigenous new media technologists to assess the scope and develop a more granular events calendar.

Day 1- Roundtable + Speakers:

A day of roundtable discussion, experience sharing, speakers, and an unconference style breaking out into two groups. The opening discussions will include introductions and examples of open source hardware that is relevant to the field of agriculture and community science. Speakers are experienced in community based hardware development, agricultural data collections, and ancestral knowledge.

Day 2- Ideation + Check-In:

Moving from ideation to low fidelity prototyping and working with workshop technical assistants and workshop leaders.

Day 3- Documentation + Check-In:

Project scope and rough prototyping will take place, documentation will also be collected and turned into a collaborative small publication (zine), with the addition of online and accessible documentation.

Post Production:

  • Since we involve varying backgrounds and levels of experience from various stages, we would like to hire either a fabricator, hardware, or software developer to conceptualize any of the projects over the weekend.
  • The post-production project builders will be sourced by the community and involved in the first stages of building an iteration of designs based on the co-design process. Our organizers and board members are well versed in varying levels of technical expertise, but we would like to compensate and involve someone local to our geographical community as well as offset some additional labour from organizing (organizers are unpaid).
  • There will also be the development of an e-zine (pdf) that outlines the research process and project development. Web development will be done internally (no budget for this needed).

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available):

Round 1

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

The current request for funding is based on our current understanding of organizing needs (which could be subject to change).

(CRADD application had great formatting for their budget so we copied them!)

Unit Quantity Unit Price $ USD Total Amount
Community Leader Consultation Consult 2 $100 USD $200 USD
Administration:
(Promotion, press, social media,
email, invitation copy, Q&A Sessions,
Toolkit Development)		 Monthly 5 $100 USD $500 USD
3-Day Event Photographer Photographer 1 $200 USD $200 USD
Speaker Fee Honorarium 3 $400 USD $1200 USD
Workshop Technical Assistant Day 3 $200 USD $600 USD
Scholarship Participants 7 $400 USD $600 USD
In-Person Event Hub/ Venue (TBD) Full Day 2 $600 $1200 USD
Welcome Package (notebook, workbook,
pens, stickynotes, prototyping materials)		 Pariticpants 15 $20 USD $300 USD
Transportation Participants 15 $15.50 $260.50 USD
Grocereies (Ingredients for meals) Participants 15 $33.3 $500 USD
Accessibility Needs
(Transcription/ ASL as requested)		 Software/Service 1 $220 (20 for transcription
+ $200 ASL interpreter)		 $200 USD
Post-Production Assistant Fee Assistant 2 $500 USD $1000 USD
Prototyping Material Budget Group Projects 2 $500 USD $1000 USD
Total Amount: $9960.50

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

We will be sharing the documentation process online including photos, hardware designs (on social media, website) and in print.

Documentation could include potential how-to’s, hardware designs, and web app ideas/ prototypes. A small series of zines (self published low cost books) will be developed and distributed within food systems activists, community tech zine distributors, and publication communities (a popular avenue of information sharing within interdisciplinary activist communities).

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

We are opening up our applications to a wide range of skills with an emphasis on lived experience not only with racialized equity deserving groups, but are planning to accommodate what is generally a hardware centric event to work with food workers in agriculture and service (who might or might not have an existing relationship with do-it-yourself tool making).

Through years of experience in workshop organizing with equity deserving groups, one strategy that has been employed is to hire a post production assistant to “bring it all together” as a point of iteration. In providing this service, we hope to alleviate the pressure off of participants in having an intermediate baseline of technical knowledge, so we can access a wider audience as well as a tangible and polished outcome which can support the future endeavours of participants.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None.
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1. Name of organization

Associazione Kin - kinlab.it (Nonprofit organization)

2. Email address

info [at] kinlab.it

3. Tell us about your organization

KIN is an interdisciplinary laboratory recently open in the San Siro neighborhood in Milan (Italy) - located in one of the largest public housing areas of the city with a migrant population twice the Milano average. The space - owned by Aler, the regional institution managing public buildings in the area - is managed in collaboration with other local associations. Kin’s experimental approach actively engages people in generating knowledge about their own living conditions and offers innovative participation processes. The first project born within KINlab is called Obot (OurBodiesOurTech) and uses a synergic perspective and a set of creative methodologies in order to foster a richer and deeper social and spatial understanding, necessary for the activation of transformative interventions with the involvement of diversified target groups in a series of research and action processes.

We developed a series of workshops during and artistic residency at Hangar.org in Barcelona, selected by Biofriction project.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

The recent pandemic and lockdown measures disrupted the education and training of an entire generation in Italy, especially of vocational education and training learners from disadvantaged socioeconomic backgrounds, migrants and from ethnic minorities and with special education needs. In order to tap these urgencies our project aims at fostering artistic expression starting from science practice, involving new subjectivities and pilot a community of practice as described in the work of Lave and Wenger (1991) who studied the social context, or ‘situatedness’, of learning in informal groups. The event is based on a learning-by-doing experience deeply connected with disciplines like participatory design and experimental media art focused on free software, open hardware and digital fabrication tools in order to engage young people, especially women, in unexplored areas.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Thinking-with trans feminist and queer Science and Technology Studies, OBOT addresses methods to lower the barriers of scientific knowledge production by making tools, protocols and data accessible and by promoting collaborative inquiry practices which enact forms of epistemic inclusion. Within OBOT’s workshops, the study of the bodies’ micro world comes by focusing all gazes on participatory action research, and with experimenting the material aspects of being without removing the symbolic and the magic of its procedures. The practice of socialising science knowledge and production creates potential alternative’s imaginary and literacy.

OBOT project objective is to implement the citizen science approach in the investigation of the female body identifying a toolbox of processes and practices to design a replicable blueprint for a neighbourhood wetlab able to engage youth and womxn in the unknown place of a laboratory to build awareness on our own bodies and health, making the first steps of building collective intelligence through DIT analysis in a networked way.

The 4-day event is the occasion to kickoff Obot Wetlab and engage citizens of the neighborhood to discover open hardware and science with the support of foreign mentors from a wetlab outside of Italy.

Day 1 and Day 2
The workshop is a research on tears, or on the fluid that we expel from the eyes for emotion, reaction or simply through some biology laboratory tools such as sponges and tweezers. Participants are introduced to different types of microscope (DiY and professional), 3d printing and lasercut to manufacture open-hardware adaptors to attach a mobile phone to the microscopes. We are then preparing together the slides, experimenting on different ferning patterns according to the classification of tears. Play with this, making pictures, video, giving space to participants to learn by practicing with the essential bio lab tools (pipettes, slides, sponges, centrifuge) and compare tears from different emotional sources.

Day-3
Setting up of the exhibition and zine together with participants and artist mentors

Day-4
Exhibition and presentation of the output and processes (pictures, videos and laser engraving of the tears ferning) to a broader public.

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for?

USD $9910

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

  • Coordination&Admin: $1500
  • Communication&Documentation (Flyer/Poster, Photographer, Social Media, Press, Stickers, Zine): $1500
  • Makers and educators for (Tue-Thu-Fri-Sat): $1500
  • Travel and hospitality for mentors: $1500
  • Additional hardware & consumables (microscopes/projector/pc) : $2410
  • Snacks and beverages: $500
  • Indirect cost (expenses for use of space, cleaning, etc)t: $1000

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

We’re going to publish all the documentation of the exhibition, processes and open hardware on the project website and social media.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

The event will be the starting point to create degrees of union by developing common interests through learning and practice and especially with the creation of repertories of science-knowledge. The target group we identified (new Italians and women) is often struggling with the lack of space for listening, research and expression and the focus on science and open hardware is the starting point to spark interest in topics which are not covered in secondary education.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

None

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1. Name of organization

  • reGOSH Mendoza Node, Argentina
  • Centro de Educación, Formación e Investigación Campesina (CEFIC) (or Peasant Center for Education and Research)

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

reGOSH - Mendoza Node pablocremades@gmail.com

CEFIC cefic.tierra@gmail.com

3. Tell us about your organization

About reGOSH

reGOSH is a network connecting people, communities and institutions in Latin America and the Caribbean, working on Free and Open Source Hardware for science, entrepreneurship and education. Its mission is to strengthen, make visible and connect the work of those who study, develop and use open technologies for science and education in the region, facilitating the exchange of knowledge, resources and experiences and linking them with the global community. Today, the network spans 7 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (Argentina, Brasil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Perú, México) and can be considered as the regional chapter of GOSH global community.

reGOSH main activity consists of running annual events or “residencies” that gather its members to collaboratively work on open hardware prototypes for three weeks. reGOSH has secured funding from CYTED, the Iberoamerican programme of science and technology, until 2023. These funds can only cover mobility costs of reGOSH members for attending reGOSH annual events (“residencies”). These funds can’t be used for any other expenses than air tickets for members, even in a pandemic context… In 2022 the reGOSH residency will be held in Mendoza, Argentina.

The Mendoza node in Argentina has been a co-founding member and an active participant of reGOSH since its inception, shaping its agenda and activities. Its members develop work on open technologies both in academia (mainly National Cuyo University), and in civil society organizations such as CEFIC and the Ayllú Cooperative.

About CEFIC

CEFIC is a space for education and research on agroecology and food sovereignty. It is run by the “Unión de Trabajadores Sin Tierra (UST)”, a peasant organization born in early 2000. It is connected to regional and international organizations, including the Coordinadora Latinoamericana de Organizaciones del Campo (CLOC) and Via Campesina. CEFIC is located in the rural area north of the city of Mendoza, with 3 hectares of dedicated experimental fields and infrastructure to hold gatherings, workshops and events.

Some members of the Mendoza Node also work in academic settings. They mostly develop their work at the Interdisciplinary Laboratory of Open Technology for Science (LITEC). The lab is part of the Natural and Exact Sciences College at National University of Cuyo (FCEN-UNCuyo).

Background and previous activities

The Mendoza node has already organized several workshops on open science hardware in academic contexts:

Furthermore, it has organized several activities in rural contexts, many of them together with CEFIC:

  • “Jornadas de diálogo de saberes sobre suelos”, with CEFIC in 2019.
  • Socio educative practices: “Las Tecnologías libres y abiertas para el cuidado ambiental como puente entre la Universidad y la Escuela Campesina Agroecológica de Jocolí” together with UST, Escuela Campesina Agroecológica and UNCuyo during 2020.
  • Workshop cycle AgroPacha organized together with Ayllu Cooperative as remote events of project UROS during 2021.
  • A 10-day residency, hosting @naikymen and Juan Fernández Zaragoza for a DIY soil microbiology workshop on Ayllu Cooperative grape farm.

Today the Mendoza node is working together with CEFIC and Coop. Ayllu in the Open Agroecology Lab. Agroecology research is scarce in official research agendas dominated by industrial agriculture. The proposal aims to integrate several low cost and open source methods and instruments into an open lab, to generate local appropriate knowledge for the agroecological transition in the region. This year, with support from Mendoza node and founded by Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, the first Lab will be materialized at CEFIC.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Our organizations develop their everyday work in the so-called Global South. We face a complex context of chronic economic crisis and socio-environmental conflict due to constant pressure on natural resources. Research budgets are highly limited, which makes us work with scarce resources even in well-established academic laboratories.

Our reGOSH node is in constant dialogue (and cowork) with actors of many different backgrounds (ie. peasants, farmers, school teachers). On the other hand, as part of reGOSH we recognize there is gender bias in open hardware as in other STEM fields. reGOSH intentionally addresses this issue in its activities, while having a gender-balanced board of node coordinators. We consider inclusion as meaningful participation, aligning our work with the GOSH manifesto. This is why we focus on co-creation of open source tools so participants can appropriate them to address their own relevant problems or questions.

As a result of the ongoing dialogues between academic and rural knowledge(s) in the node, in 2011 CEFIC created the Escuela Campesina de Agroecología (Peasant school of agroecology). This secondary school for teenagers and adults works with a pedagogic model of alternation: students’ activities alternate between the formal education setting and community-based work. In 2021, CEFIC created the Tecnicatura en Agronomía con orientación en Agroecología (Bachelor in Agronomy, specialization in Agroecology). Both, the secondary school and the bachelor program, emerged from dialogue with peasant communities and in response to the need for pedagogical processes that respect the characteristics of the communities and value their knowledge.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

We want to organize a Regional gathering of open science hardware as part of thereGOSH/Cyted 2022 residency, in September 2022.

The event will gather Latin American developers, maintainers, users and researchers of open science hardware. We will involve members of reGOSH and aim to expand the network and attract new members. The 4-day event will be an opening instance of the residency, contextualizing the technical work on prototypes.The combination of the event and the residency will ensure the participation of a diversity of profiles interested in open science hardware.

The structure of the event will follow the GOSH events’ framework, with unconference sessions, hands-on workshops and collective agenda-building activities. Both events will take place during september 2022. Core themes will be: open hardware for education, agroecology, environment, and health.

Main activities will take place at FCEN-UNCuyo in Mendoza city, while other activities will take place in the rural installations of CEFIC.

During the coming months we will work to build the programme in collaboration with local and regional partners. Moreover, we want to involve some community folks from global GOSH to share their experience with us and strengthen global connections. We already started conversations with Greg Austic @gbathree, as his work at the Bionutrient Institute is locally relevant and because of his connections with the GOAT Community. We are also working with Julieta Arancio @jarancio, as her knowledge of the local open science scene and experience facilitating previous gatherings is instrumental for running the event.

The main goal of this event is to establish solid links between open science hardware advocates and current/potential users of the tools that allow the design of a common agenda and appropriate strategies for advancing it in Latin America. We believe these conversations can add a “reality-check” to the open science hardware activities of our network, and useful lessons for the global community. Another goal of this event is to raise the profile of open hardware in the open science scene, which is quite active in Argentina. We aim to attract local and regional media, connect with potentially interested policy makers and establish the Mendoza node as a reference for open science hardware. Finally, we aim to grow the reGOSH network, both in terms of attracting new members and developing capabilities in existing participants.

As regional outcomes, we expect to grow and consolidate the open science hardware community in Latin America, raising its profile as an opportunity to address systemic technological dependence and lack of scientific equipment. We also expect to diversify the audience of regional open science hardware activities, extending the scientific and technological dialogue outside formal institutions to work and build a common agenda around relevant regional themes.

On a global level, we believe an outcome of this event will be to fuel highly contextualized, experience-based conversations to advance the open science hardware agenda, and build key connections to exchange lessons with global GOSH…

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

Round 1: USD $9910

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

This is our planned budget for the Regional GOSH funding:

  1. Airplane tickets for global GOSH members $ 4000
  2. Airplane tickets for key participants that we want to involve in reGOSH but are not part of the network yet $ 1500
  3. Tools and materials for workshops $ 1000
  4. Communication $ 500
  5. Operational expenses (catering, per diem) $ 1210
  6. Accommodation $ 1200
  7. General organization $ 500

reGOSH/Cyted 2022 residency travel and accommodation of regional network members are already funded by CYTED.

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

We will present and share the documentation of all designs resulting from the residency in Gitlab, and document all sessions and workshops held during the event in the GOSH forum.

We will work and document a common regional agenda around relevant themes in line with the global GOSH Roadmap.

All these materials will be released under a CC-BY 4.0 license, hardware and software under CERN OHL and MIT/GNU GPL.

To facilitate reuse of this information, summaries of each prototype and day of the event will be documented in blogposts published in reGOSH website. As long as participants provide media consent, we will produce audiovisual documentation of the event and work on prototypes. We will contact local media and press offices at university to increase the visibility of the event.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

We will translate and be respectful of the GOSH manifesto and will follow the guidelines for selection of participants and other recommendations from the GOSH community events framework.

As such, diversity and inclusion will be a transversal strategy, embedded in calls for participants, participants selection, and running the event. We will post the call to participate on the forum in English, Spanish and Portuguese; communication materials will be distributed online and offline, according to what is best to involve a diversity of knowledges. Facilitation techniques will also be designed to contemplate the context in which we run the event, in particular to include non-academic participants into activities run in academic venues

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

@nanocastro and @jarancio are part of the evaluating team of Regional funds, but will excuse themselves for the evaluation of this proposal.

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1. Name of organization

   * Vilsquare

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

   * hello@vilsquare.org
   * obasegun@vilsquare.org

3. Tell us about your organization

Vilsquare Global Resources Limited is incorporated under the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria with registration number RC1471638. Its mission is to provide communities with innovative technology solutions that improve their processes and connect them to the global digital economy, using a combination of artificial intelligence, data science and the application of open science. Research and Development activities are undertaken by its subsidiary, the Vilsquare Makers’ Hub. Vilsquare currently focuses on the education sector, with two flagship innovations – VoltSchool and VoltMicroscope. It was recognised in 2020 by the African Union as a top 50 education innovator on the continent, for its work on VoltSchool. The VoltMicroscope which is extended from multiple Open Source hardware and software is used across 100+ Nigerian institutions with 50,000+ science students.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Yes.

The Vilsquare Makers’ Hub community is open to creatives, from across all socio-economic demographics, irrespective of their religious, ethnic, sexual or other orientations and preferences. Our activities seek to promote gender equality, by paying attention to the particular needs of women and men.

Vilsquare’s Inclusivity policy mandates that Persons living with disabilities are provided with equal opportunities to participate in project activities. This means that where applicable, meeting venues will be accessible to wheelchairs, audio narrations and sign language interpreters will be available.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Vilsquare seeks to host a National Open Science and Hardware Summit focused on bringing participants from Nigeria’s informal, segregated and fragmented OSH community together to create awareness, discuss challenges and chart the way forward for OScH in Nigeria and the African continent by extension. Ultimately, this Summit is one of several steps towards domesticating and adopting a proposed National OScH Policy for Nigeria.

Proposed Outcomes:

  • Increased awareness and adoption of OScH as a means of national development.
  • Improved access to nationwide OScH information and networking potentials.

Proposed Outputs:

  • A National Open Science and Hardware Summit hosted.
  • Draft National OSH Guidelines and Principles declared.
  • National database of OSH actors created and populated.
  • Video recording (compatible with assistive technologies) of Summit
  • Media publications (traditional, print and audio-visual)

Participants:

70 expected participants will be drawn from across academia, policy makers, open science and hardware actors, tech hubs, private sector organisations, civil society and the media. A conscious effort will be made to target women and youth participants.

Event activities:

The event is designed to be held in 3 sessions.

Session 1: Opening Plenary

  • Opening Remarks by a representative of the Government arm responsible for Science policies
  • Keynotes
  • An introductory presentation on OScH
  • Panel discussion on OScH as a means of meeting SDGs and engendering National Development
  • Open Discussions

Tea Break / Exhibitions

Session 2: Presentation and Breakouts

  • Expert panel presentation on the Complexities of Open Science

  • Break – Out session

    • Participants will be grouped into smaller thematic groups according to expertise, interests, specialization. These groups will brainstorm and collectively contribute the content for the domesticated National OScH Principles. Proposed groups will include:

      •	Accessibility
•	Quality and Integrity
•	Legal
•	Diversity and Inclusion
•	Technology

Lunch / Exhibitions

Session 3: Closing Plenary

  • Presentation of thematic group reports
  • Presentation of draft principles for adoption
  • Launch of National OScH actors’ database
  • Presentation and adoption of Summit Communique

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

$9910

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

The funding will go towards organising a one-day National Open Science Summit in Abuja, Nigeria. Transportation and accommodation costs will only cover out-of-town participants. Vilsquare will bear the cost of building and managing a website for the event, accommodation for organisers and honorarium for speakers and facilitators.

ITEM QUANTITY NO OF DAYS UNIT COST (USD) TOTAL COST (USD)
TRANSPORTATION FOR PARTICIPANTS
Domestic Return airfare to Abuja 15 1 160 2400
Road transport 5 1 65 325
SUB-TOTAL 225 2725
ACCOMMODATION FOR PARTICIPANTS, ORGANISERS
Participants’ rooms 20 2 62.50 2,500.00
Organisers’ rooms 5 2 0.00 0.00
SUB-TOTAL 2,500.00
CONFERENCE HALL
Meeting Hall (To take up to 70 persons) 1 1 500.00 500.00
SUB-TOTAL 500.00
FOOD AND BEVERAGE
Lunch 70 1 20.00 1,400.00
Tea Break /Snacks 70 1 5.00 350.00
SUB-TOTAL 1,750.00
HONORARIUM
Speakers and facilitators honorarium 10 1 0.00 0.00
SUB-TOTAL 0.00
SIGNAGE/VENUE BRANDING
Back Drop 1 50.00 50.00
Roll-Up Banner 2 50.00 100.00
SUB-TOTAL 150.00
SUMMIT BRANDING COLLATERALS
Name tags (participants, media, guests, organisers) 70 2.00 140.00
Jotter, folder, pen, agenda 70 5.00 350.00
SUB-TOTAL 490.00
MEDIA RELATIONS & PHOTOGRAPHY
Facebook Ad 1 150.00 150.00
Photography & video coverage 1 500.00 500.00
SUB-TOTAL 650.00
SECRETARIAT EXPENSES
Rapporteurs 2 1 120.00 240.00
Sign language translator 1 1 200.00 200.00
Stationaries and other consumables -paper, ink, toners, etc 1 300.00 300.00
Internet expenses (including live streaming summit) 1 150.00 150.00
Courier 1 150.00 150.00
Telephone expenses 1 100.00 100.00
Summit website -design & hosting 0.00 0.00
SUB-TOTAL 1,020.00 1,140.00
SUMMARY
TRAVEL EXPENSES FOR PARTICIPANTS 2,725.00
ACCOMMODATION OF PARTICIPANTS, ORGANISERS 2,500.00
CONFERENCE HALL 500.00
FOOD AND BEVERAGE 1,750.00
SIGNAGE/VENUE BRANDING 150.00
SUMMIT BRANDING COLLATERALS 490.00
MEDIA RELATIONS AND Photography 650.00
SECRETARIAT EXPENSES 1,140.00
GRAND TOTAL 9,905.00

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

All event documentation including event recordings and photographs will be hosted on the event website, social media handles and through strategic media partners. A communique will be issued, announcing the agreed upon draft Nigeria OScH Principles. The draft will be validated and adopted at a future separate event.

A comprehensive report will also be shared with the GOSH community and published as a preprint on AfricArxiv.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

  • Promote accessibility and inclusion by streaming a virtual version of the summit to ensure wider participation irrespective of socio-economic factors that may include cost of travels, government restrictions on large gatherings, etc.

  • Consideration will be given to achieving an optimum balance of diversity in terms of gender, skills, and backgrounds, when drawing up the Speaker and facilitators list.

  • All communiques will be published online and through traditional media channels to reach offline audiences across board.

  • The Call for participation will run through all 36 Nigerian states and the Federal Capital Territory.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

    No
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  1. Name of organization
    Community Creativity For Development (CC4D)
    (Facebook: Community Creativity For Development - CC4D)

  2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)
    comcreativ4d@gmail.com

  3. Tell us about your organization
    Community Creativity for Development (CC4D) is a Refugee Youth led non-profit community-based organization founded in August 2019 by South Sudanese Refugee ICT professional who saw a gap in repair and reuse of Electronics as a means of Environmental protection from carbon emission and landfill due to E-waste. It previously implemented activities on mobile repairs and maintenance of electronics in Rhino Camp with the main aim “To Inspire Communities to be Creative using the available resources for self-reliance and sustainable development.” with its objectives as;
    (a) To promote open access and safe use of technology to protect the environment from global warming.
    (b) To contribute to poverty reduction through livelihood programming and community development
    (c) To empower women, youth groups and other vulnerable community members with market based hands on skills to improve their social economic wellbeing and sustainable self-reliance.
    (d) To promote peaceful coexistence through the repair cafés
    And the vision of “A transformed and committed society fully in control of their social economic wellbeing using the available resources to reduce poverty, building peaceful and prosperous communities.”
    In February 2021, the organization piloted the repair café project through its small funds from member subscriptions in one location (Eden) Rhino Camp Refugee Settlement that attracted over 500 electronic devices that comprised of solar lanterns, mobile phones, radios, computers, solar panels, generators and bicycles where 15Youths (10males & 5female) were empowered with repair skills. The project was demanding and the communities kept pursuing CC4D to source for further funding from well-wishers in order to scale up the program for the benefit of the communities not only in Eden but other zones within the settlement since the project helped reduce the long distances travelled to fix devices.

  4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?
    Our organization is a refugee founded and led with members drawn from the refugee and host communities within the refugee settlements in West Nile, Uganda. CC4D is entirely made up of refugee and host community – Ugandan youths aged between 18 – 35 with a female representation percentage of 40, thus making our organization inclusive of the marginalized communities.

  5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
    Rhino Camp and Bidibidi refugee settlements in the Northern region of Uganda are homes to 127,574 and 239,141 refugees from South Sudan, Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda, Burundi, Central Africa Republic and Kenya respectively who flee because of political instability(war) according to UNHCR’s data shared in July 2021. UNHCR and other Partners distributed electronic devices such as Mobile Phones, Radios and off-grid solar products have been increasingly provided to and coupled to those owned by the local community members (refugees) as main sources of communication, entertainment, access to news, recharging of electronics and lighting respectively. These electronics, like any other, break down or reach their life expectancy and are oftentimes disposed-off by way of burying into the ground, burning, dumping to pit latrines and open landfill which result in human hazards and environmental pollution.
    Community members often travel a longer distance of not less than 60km in search for repair centers to fix their broken devices at the nearest trading centers due to lack of repair shops within the settlement which is costly in terms of distance and money and obviously not sustainable. To make it worse, access to Information and knowledge on electronics repairs, reuse and maintenance has been a challenge to most of the women and youths including people with disabilities in Rhino Camp and Bidibidi Refugee Settlements in West Nile, Uganda.

CC4D plans to organize a three (3) day repair café event in each of the three (3) most densely populated locations in the two refugee settlements of Rhino camp in Arua City and Bidibidi in Yumbe district with the objectives as below;
a) T0 make repair accessible and affordable by taking it closure to the community
b) To empower at least five (5) youths from each repair sessions in the three (3) locations with repair skills.
c) To extend the life span of at least 100 electronic devices in the hands of the refugees and host communities from each repair sessions in the three (3) locations by fixing them.
d) To raise awareness on repair and reuse of electronics as a means of reducing carbon emission and landfill from electronic waste
e) To enable community members, have access to repair tools

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)
    Round 1: $9910

  2. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

  • Purchase of Repair tools and materials = USD $1500
  • Visibility material = USD $300
  • Communication costs (cellular airtime and internet) = USD $900
  • Hire of repair café venue including public address system = USD $1500
  • Logistics to facilitate mobility = USD $900
  • Facilitation of 5 volunteers for 3 days per center in 3 sites = USD $3000
  • Accommodation and feeding of 5 volunteers for 3 days per location = USD $1350
  • Printing costs = USD $300
  • Miscellaneous = USD $60
    Total = USD $9,910

  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)
    • CC4D shall do short video clips of the empowered youths repairing community devices which will be shared on social media platforms like Facebook, tweeter and Instagram
    • Photo documentation of the whole event will be shared on social media platforms like Facebook, tweeter and Instagram
    • Pre and post interview sessions with community members to ascertain satisfaction from the repaired devices
    • A general report shall be written and submitted to GOSH and other stake holders like UNHCR and Office of the Prime Minster (OPM)
    • This report will also be shared on other open source platforms like GitHub and WikiPub
    • A google drive folder shall be created for safe storage of all the documents including pictures and videos of the events and access rights shall be shared with the relevant stakeholders.

  2. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
    CC4D being a Youthful refugee led non-profit community based organization made of refugees and host community youths with a female representation of 40% and 60% male addresses part of the inclusivity component
    CC4D with this event is set to attract and empower not less than fifteen (15) youths who shall support in fixing not less than 600 electronics devices from the community. This event shall move the repair services closer to the refugee community, empower the youths with repair skills and contribute in reducing environmental pollution which could have been caused as a result of e-waste thus addressing some of the values of GOSH

  3. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?
    NONE

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Oh GOSH,

At the Edible Makerspace we’ve been fermenting conversation around science, art, and food.

In an effort to enmesh the disciplines of art, research, and citizen science, we would like to put forward our aspiration to create a forum toward what we lovingly call “Fermenting Community”.

In the face of being isolated within the confines of our archipelago, we observe a pattern of crisis management, which we hope to change from “near-survival” mindset towards one which has more open collaboration, analogous to the modus we enjoyed in pre-pandemic times.

In order to facilitate this mindset transition, we would like to conduct informal gatherings, discussions, and workshops, in a meetup environment. We would like to engage artists, researchers, and citizen scientists in dialogue through food, fermentation, and collaborative experimentation. The format will be primarily in-person, but will have a hybrid facet in order to be globally inclusive.

Being centered around Singapore allows the event to invite local supporting institutions including the ArtScience Museum, Science Center Singapore, Singapore Art Museum, and informal spaces like the HackerspaceSG, Edible Makerspace, and the like. This effort would be the first step toward establishing new norms fostering collaborative culture.

Thanks and regards,
Saad, Mixael, and the Edible Makerspace collective.

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1. Name of organization.

TanzaniaOSH

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact).

tanzaniaosh@btech.co.tz and tanzania@africaosh.com

3. Tell us about your organization.

Tanzania Open Science Hardware (TanzaniaOSH) is a Registered NGO under the Non-Governmental Organization Act 2002, with a registration number 00NGO/R/2606.

Vision

To Make Open Science and Hardware ubiquitous in Tanzania and beyond.

Mission

To provide a friendly environment for the individuals interested with Open Sciences and Hardware principles, methods, and practices, as a means of achieving locally adaptable technologies that will foster economic growth in Tanzania and Africa as a whole.

Objectives

  • Empower the African Community, which comprises of makers, hackers, practitioners and researchers in science and technology inclusive of government officials, private sector players and civil society across the African continent, the global south, and the world as a whole, on Open Science and Hardware.
  • Raising awareness in the Tanzanian community and beyond, about the benefits of Open Sciences and Hardware practices as means of achieving locally adaptable technologies that will foster economic growth in Africa.
  • Empower and enable local innovators/makers to solve the local community’s needs and challenges.
  • Promote sustainable practices and processes for knowledge transfer and collaboration, guided by Open Access and Open-Source philosophies, in Tanzania and elsewhere in the world.

Previous Events

  • AfricaOSH Summit in 2019 in Dar es Salaam – Tanzania.
    Our team hosted a successful second AfricaOSH Summit. A summit that brought together a number of participants from across the globe and opened a broad conversation on making Open Science and Hardware ubiquitous in Africa.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

Yes.
Africa as a whole suffers from a lack of access to resources, quality education and poor supply chains making it even harder to source materials here.
Our organization is 100% representing marginalized population on the global stage fully being dedicated to Tanzanian and African development!
Specifically, innovation in Tanzania faces a great challenge! A very limited part of the population had the chance to join the formal educational system. This leads to a great divide between them and the ones who are formally trained and greatly hampers innovation.
In practice, the local fundi (workers) have a lot of good ideas and projects, but they don´t feel that they are part of the community.

TanzaniaOSH fights to bridge the gap between innovators/makers who have gone through formal education and those with informal education, along with the other stakeholders in the ecosystem: policy makers, researchers and academia practitioners, so as to build a strong and a sustainable pool of problems solvers.
Our policy is to ensure inclusiveness of all actors and players in the ecosystem, from across all socio-economic demographics, irrespective of their religion, ethnic, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification.
TanzaniaOSH seeks to open a conversation by and for Africans on how to benefit and participate to the maker movement, open science, and open hardware, from our own social, cultural, political, and environmental realities, yet connecting with the bigger global community.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Event type:

Summit with Hands-on workshops.

Theme:

How to bring open source hardware production to the next level; Lessons from all around Africa.

Presentation

Africa has different constraints than the developed world. We need our projects to make our living for us to be able to dedicate time to them.
To do that, we need to help makers and open source hardware contributors to make a business that enables them to make a living wage.
We identified different labs that managed to do that by designing their own products, producing open source and collaborating with researchers locally and across the world and selling them in their region. We want to invite them to share their experience and enable everyone to follow their hard learned lessons to become more autonomous and liberate more resources to accelerate the adoption of open source practices.

We want to do that by inviting different people to speak:

  • MboaLab, from Cameroon, to speak about how they build a business from open source enzyme production.
  • FabLab Rwanda, who produced for 200 M RWF (±200k$) during COVID allowing it to go from a governement subsidized company to, soon a self-sustaining business.
  • BongoTech, describing scientific collaborations with Universities.
  • University of Bath on documentation and building an OSH community.
  • Ariasana Ltd, about accelerating distributed manufacturing through shared businesses and open communities.
  • …

We are looking for other speakers from all around Africa and the world promoting and implementing open source practices.

Invitees

We will invite makers from all around East Africa to bring the community closer, be inspired, learn and go back home with partners and a plan to start their own lab.
Locally, we will also invite Tanzanian informally educated workers to join us, be inspired, bridge this divide and propagate our message in their community.
We also want everyone to be able to join and benefit from the talks so we will set everything up to have a hybrid event enabling everyone to join but also recording and editing the content to make it available for the ones who missed it!

Expected Outputs

  • Kickstart the community of OSH actors across East Africa and facilitate collaboration.
  • Creating a TanzaniaOSH roadmap that aligns with both AfricaOSH and GOSH.
  • Publishing a guide with advice and a roadmap to build a lab.
  • Created a pool of sustainable solutions easily available and producible locally.
  • Creating awareness towards the utilization of Open Sciences and Hardware principles, methods, and practices, as a means of achieving locally adaptable technologies that will foster economic growth in Tanzania and Africa as a whole.
  • Videos and other media available for spreading awareness online through GOSH network and our own

Impact

We´ll measure the impact of the Summit by measuring :

Impact on one participant x Number of participants

Specifically, we aim to:

  • Aware of open source hardware principles
  • Connected to the regional community and to other makers across the GOSH Community working on similar problems
  • Able to start a business to develop, contribute and commercialize OSH products
  • Happy to have come to the conference

We will evaluate these indicators by asking the participants their opinion throughout and after the event.

Event duration

The event will be held in 3 days.

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available).

Round 1 ($9910)

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

We will use the funding for: Inviting speakers, renting a space, arrange catering. Besides that, we will set up a system to record and allow a hybrid event enabling everyone to join the conference through the internet.
We will also be using the funding for the set-up of a prototyping area close to the conference hall with machines and supplies available to last the duration of the conference and build flagship open source products of the event. We will have identified and crowdsourced ideas and that require innovative products that could be built with simple machines across developing countries.

Budget

Item Quantity Nb days Unit cost
USD		 Total cost
USD
Transportation 2,750.00
Transport for Participants 15 50.00 750.00
Transport for Speakers 10 200.00 2,000.00
Accommodation 1,200.00
Participants 0 3 40.00 -
Speakers 10 3 40.00 1,200.00
Conference hall 600.00
Meeting Hall for 100 people 1 600.00 600.00
Food and beverage 2,700.00
Lunch 100 3 7.00 2,100.00
Snacks 100 3 2.00 600.00
Communications 880.00
Banners 3 60.00 180.00
Promotion and Advertisement 1 150.00 150.00
Photography and Video 1 500.00 500.00
Social Media management 1 50.00 50.00
Materials expenses 1,775.00
3D printing filament 5 35.00 175.00
Assorted Electronics Components 1 1,000.00 1,000.00
Materials for laser cutter: Wood, Acryllic, Cardboard 1 400.00 400.00
Internet Installation 1 200.00 200.00
TOTAL 9,905.00

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event? What documentation will result that will benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?).

We will gather all the business approach to make a guide on what we’ve learned and how it can be used in small makerspaces to become fully fledged businesses.
We will have a cameraman onsite during the event during the event and release in small edited clips to increase the visibility of GOSH on social media as well as the complete conferences.
We will encourage the community to design, build and document products that answer challenges we identified together.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

  • Keen consideration to achieving a fair representation of the regional community, specifically encouraging women to step up and take the stage.
  • The call for participation will go through Tanzania Mainland, Zanzibar and other Eastern African countries.
  • Aim at a gender balanced group through the selection process of the participants.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

No!

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  1. Name of organization

University of Zimbabwe STEAM Makerspace

  1. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

skembo@ceic.uz.ac.zw

  1. Tell us about your organization

The Centre for ICT Product Development, Training and Services (CITS) is a non-teaching unit that leverages the university’s research and development competencies leading to the development of digital artefacts and services targeting underserved communities and markets.

CITS core mandate is to provide solutions to the problem of Digital Divide. The unit’s operating framework views Digital Divide at three levels namely Economic Digital Divide, Usability Digital Divide and Empowerment Digital Divide. Consequently, the three main units target each of the three levels of the Divide as follows: ICT Product Development (Economic), ICT Services (Empowerment), and ICT Training (Usability).

At the centre of CITS’ operations is a Digital Microfactory aimed at producing digital products and services with a niche in small-scale digital production that include microcontroller production, 3D printing and 3D printer assembly, edge and fog infrastructure as well as Science Technology Engineering Arts Mathematics (STEAM) boot camps.

Some of CITS’ development work is done through development groups within the university community also known as “Communities of Passion”. The Communities of Passion include: Digital Fabrication, Fog & Edge Infrastructure, STEAM, Swarm Intelligence, Community Networks, Smart Communities, User Experience Design, Lean Digital Transformation and Decentralised Finance.

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

STEAM Makerspace
One of CITS’ running project is an after-class STEAM Makerspace. The STEAM Makerspace is space for students, mostly from non-science backgrounds like Arts, Social Sciences, Public Administration, and Law, to come and learn about Open Source Hardware and Software, Embedded Computing and Design Thinking whilst solving real local challenges.

Setting up the STEAM Makerspace was a direct response to an observation that whilst on-going Science Technology Engineering Mathematics (STEM) initiatives are life-changing, most Zimbabwean schools in rural areas and high-density suburbs do not have adequate Science Technology and Engineering facilities such as science laboratories and exposure to technology projects. Most students in poor rural areas and high density urban areas consequently do Arts subjects, thus the Makerspace’s focus on STEAM which acknowledges “Arts in STEM”.

The gap between the digital “haves and have-nots” in Zimbabwe is further widened by use of ICT in education which was evident during COVID-19 lockdowns. The STEAM Makerspace specifically aims to tackle disparities brought about by the following demographic factors: ability, place of birth and socioeconomic class situation.

Socioeconomic Class Situation and Economic Digital Divide
According to the Nielsen Norman Group, Economic Digital Divide is “manifested in the fact that some people cannot afford to buy a computer”. A survey published by Afrobarometer in 2020 (https://bit.ly/3rfGfHo) revealed that only fifteen (15) percent of Zimbabweans own computers. This situation can possibly be attributed to dwindling disposable incomes as the Zimbabwean economy has been on a free fall since 2000. There is therefore need to find creative ways of narrowing the Economic Digital Divide. Microbit and Arduino microcontrollers and Raspberry Pi Single Board Computers form the bulk of the tools used in the Makerspace as they are inclusive, affordable and accessible to the university students from digitally unconnected communities and backgrounds.

Ability and Usability Digital Divide
In addition to supporting the younger generation of “digital natives”, the STEAM Makerspace also pays a lot of attention to the older “digital immigrants” population. Usability divide is the digital gap arising from the complexity of digital tools and applications which alienate those lacking the necessary digital literacy. The hands-on and local context-based approach to training of the Makerspace narrows the usability digital divide among the locals.

Place of birth and Empowerment Digital Divide
The ultimate goal of the STEAM Makerspace, in the long-term, is to reduce reliance on imports which reduces pressure on scarce foreign currency. This will be achieved, in part, by developing high-quality alternatives to devices such as microcontrollers and single board computers. Arduino, due to its open licensing, is the Makerspace first target for local production thus its production is the central theme of the Open MicroTech Maker Faire. In addition to technical skills the Makerspace also has training sessions for Lean Startup and Open Source economics to economically empower the students.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

Open MicroTech Maker Faire

The event is named the “Open MicroTech Maker Faire” It will provide a platform for students from the STEAM Makerspace to demonstrate the usefulness and ease of development of open hardware and software to various stakeholders within the university community. Academia, in Zimbabwe, is generally sceptic of open-source and open science and a practical, hands-on display by the Makerspace students provides the first step to getting the buy-in of the various stakeholders especially decision and policy makers that include the university executive.

For GOSH Regional Event, the UZ STEAM Makerspace roped in the experience of Marcin Jabubowski from Open Source Ecology to assist in the development of the Minimalist Arduino microcontroller board. As such, a demonstration of how to develop an Arduino microntroller board from scratch, by the students, forms the main activity of the Maker Faire.

In order to provide local context to the developed microcontroller boards, four (4) Internet of Things projects that will be controlled by the assembled Minimalist Arduino boards and targeting the most common local challenges of security, health, agriculture and air quality will be exhibited. The IoT projects include Face Recognition, Health Wearable Bands, Smart Lighting for Gardens and Pollution Monitoring applications. The IoT projects will be centrally managed by a Raspberry Pi 4 cluster made up of four (4) boards.

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

$9910

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

Funding will mostly be used to buy components that the makers require to assemble the microcontrollers and to implement the open science projects at the Maker Faire. Table below shows all the items that will form the budget.

Item

Cost

Arduino Components

1,155.53

LED Smart Lighting Project

1,996.20

Pollution Monitoring Project

660.75

Health Bands Project

1,163.63

Face Recognition Project

223.28

Raspberry Pi 4 & Bitscope Cluster Blade

621.00

Accommodation for Project Developers

560.00

Internet Expenses for Project Developers

700.00

Travel Costs for Project Developers

1,330.00

Maker Faire Branding

300.00

Maker Faire Refreshments

150.00

University of Zimbabwe Admin Cost (10%)

991.00

TOTAL

9,851.38
  1. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

The major outcomes of the event include assembling microcontrollers and developing IoT projects controlled by the assembled microcontrollers. These artifacts will be shared with the target stakeholders within local academia in real time at the Maker Faire.

The University of Zimbabwe (UZ) Media team will be engaged to take photos and videos of the Maker Faire. The collected media will be uploaded on the UZ website as well as the various university social media channels. STEAM Makerspace will also write a paper for the ZAMBEZIA journal, which is a bi-annual journal focusing on humanities at UZ.

The Makerspace has a Github organisation that hosts all its work. Designs of the Minimalist Arduino developed as well as the four (4) projects will be uploaded on the publicly accessible Github organisation and repositories.

  1. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

  • STEAM/Arts Thrust
    The current emphasis on STEM in Zimbabwe inadvertently excludes students from non-science backgrounds. The STEAM Makerspace was specifically set up to find ways to include students that ordinarily do not get STEM support thus the thrust on non-science students from very diverse academic and socioeconomic backgrounds.

  • Micro Tools
    Science and Technology requires substantial investment to import components and equipment for a net importing country like Zimbabwe. As such science and technology is a luxury for most Zimbabwean families that mostly survive on less than USD$1 per day. Most of the work earmarked for the Makerspace will revolve around affordable “micro tools” such as Microbit, Arduino, Raspberry Pi and open source hardware and software that country can afford due the difficult economic reality the country is facing.

  • Tackling Digital Divide at three levels
    The department housing the STEAM Makerspace, CITS, has three units namely product development, training and services that target the digital divide levels of economic, usability and empowerment divides respectively.

GOSH values state that “GOSH democratizes science - Open science hardware decreases the divide between the global north and south, professionals and amateurs, particularly in low incomes countries.” Our economic divide drive targets low-income students who are unable to buy expensive digital tools.

The usability divide targets of the Makerspace align well with GOSH’s values that highlight that “GOSH has no black boxes – black boxes refer to any complex piece of equipment with contents that are mysterious to the user.” The Makerspace’s training targets mostly “digital immigrants” and is aimed at demystifying the digital world.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?
    No
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  1. Name of organization “The Foundry”

  2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

foundry@bravosfoundry.com / Paulapin24@gmail.com / dennisselbst@hotmail.com

  1. Tell us about your organization.

The Foundry is a non-profit organization based in a previously abandoned Galician village. It functions both as a residency and as a project space. It subscribes to the ideals of self-organization, and has the following three objectives:

  1. Organizing activities in the field of the arts, science and humanities outside of traditional institutions, focusing on critical discourse.

  2. Promoting the exchange of ideas and intellectual collaboration outside of the constraints imposed by state and market.

  3. Increasing self-sufficiency, sustainability, and an awareness of the environment using appropriate technology and open source as main resources.

Taking into account this context, our aim is to reinforce the capacity to generate networks flowing from rural to urban context supporting non hierarchy and democratic exchanges of knowledge and practices that can enable new and sustainable models within rural contexts. According to that we consider that the new trans-disciplinary creative sectors in which we are entangled can have a huge and positive impact in the creation of this new paradigm. https://bravosfoundry.com/

Activities from the network of regional and international collaborators:
2019: Thinking Figuratively, a workshop organized by Hansun Hsiung and Roland Bolz.
2020: Pathfinder; a meditative audio experience by Yuri Tuma.
Edible / medicinal plants workshop by Botánica Silvestre.
The Commons; Between Tragedy and Recuperation.
Open rehearsal of the Butoh (Japanese dance).
Intergalactic Memorial Carnival for David Graeber.
2021: Rethinking education through Open Source and Transfeminist practices by Paula Pin.
Metal Garden, workshop on Metal.
There is no Time, Only Geometry; Workshop to build a geodesic Domo.
2021: Sharing experiences about Alternative education and Immigration. Cristina Castro, Dennis Schep, Stefania Fernandez.
Open Source Hardware hacking, with Paula Pin.
Workshop on Mushroom Cultivation.
Earth and freedom; Event with one Zapatista delegation.
During 2021 we host the meeting from our expanded regional network Aldear.
2022: How to build a microscope to identify microorganism on the earth.

Aside from organizing activities at the Foundry some members of the organization have collaborated with institutions outside of Galicia in the field of Open Source and Free and Open Technologies. Here are some example:

  • Elaboration of Seminar “Biotranslab”. Science from a transfeminist perspective. UDK Berlin.

  • Elaboration of the Molecul.lab Biology program/ teacher. Etopia Zaragoza.

  • Coordinator of the Woman & Technological Program Cooperativa La Fábrica. BCN

  • Coordination and hosted https://transhackfeminist.noblogs.org/ at Calafou.
    PECHBLENDA | LABORATORI INTERDISCIPLINAR D'EXPERIMENTACIÓ BIO-ELECTRO-QUÍMICA. Hardlab TransHackFeminista [Laboratori de Hardware Lliure]

  • Coordination of Hangar Wetlab during the program Prototypome where we collectively build the wet lab that promotes transhckfeminist practices and beyond, preparing the space and context for the Biofricition Lab on 2020/2021.BioAutonomy - Hackteria Wiki
    Prototyp-ome autoresidence - prototyp_ome

  • Seminar on BioAutonomy and Free Hardware. Master of Biotechnology of the Technical University- Slovenia.

  • Founding member and committee member at The Public School Berlin, organizing various classes and providing a framework for autodidactic activities.

  • “Affect – Capital – Critique”, workshop at the Humboldt University Berlin (co-organizer).

  • “Gastfeindschaft”, conference at the Free University Berlin (co-organizer).

  • “Roundtable: Critique”, roundtable discussion at Spektrum Berlin (organizer and moderator).

  • Initiator and co-editor of the blog: www.literaturwissenschaft-berlin.de ok

  • Seminar based on the use of open technology for the achievement of Bioautonomy, realization of solar panels with organic and recycled materials.New Digital Media and Electronics Seminar.

  • Participation at GOSH 2018 and at UROS project during 2021.

  1. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

The Foundry is situated in Lugo in rural Galicia, a region struggling with depopulation. Bravos, the nearby town, had over 1000 inhabitants in the 18th century; now about 90 remain, and many houses are abandoned. By developing the project here, we contribute to the vitalization of a region that is slowly turning into a museum.

Aside from that, there is thematic focus on transdisciplinary feminism and post-humanism. While this focus is not adequately grasped by identity-political categories like race or gender, we hope it leads to the subversion of hegemonic structures inscribed in the binarisms upholding many of these categories. Our interest lies in the development of tools and technologies that subvert contemporary structures of domination, exploitation and marginalization, not in those that reproduce it.

We seek to develop a more sustainable environment by opening up our practices based on a free culture framework, generating networks and interest around them, enabling a flow of exchange of innovation across creative sectors focusing on revaluation of rural contexts and its knowledge heritage.

  1. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

The event aims at addressing the lack of women, queer, trans and diversity in technological fields in general and hacking more specifically. But even more so, it aims at creating a community that critically assesses the hegemonic narratives around technologies, the modernity aspects of its underlining Western assumptions and its inherent capitalist inflections, among others.

The main purpose of the event is to organize a series of workshops in different sites in rural Galicia to develop kits that focus on interacting with the natural environment in two fields: energy and biology. In the first, the focus lies on harvesting the energy of the natural environment, primarily of water and wind. These power kits will be scalable and can be used both as pedagogical material and to set up site-specific power plants in different sites as well. There is a counter-infrastructural component to this work: one possible consequence would be to empower people to generate their own energy instead of relying on large and often extractive companies.

The biological kits will develop instruments related to the field of biohacking to investigate ecological practices that works with biological materials, such as bacteria, living organisms and life processes.

Traditional knowledge about fermentation and pickling can now be approached from a minor science perspective, using self-made microscopes, centrifuges, bioreactors and PCR machines to better understand our interactions with the microbial beings that live around us and inside of us.

Recently, transdisciplinary relationships between art, science and technology have led to the emergence of hybrid contexts that not only provided a new conceptual and practical framework for artistic research, but also provoked paradigm shifts that affect other areas of knowledge / cultural areas. We are interested in connecting sustainability and BioArt practices to improve the transmission of knowledge and build new realities through this intersection.

In order to pursue real changes that help to create a more just world, we need to think differently about ourselves, the world and our connections within it, and apply that thinking to artistic educational practice and systemic change. We say this not only to emphasize the thinking and perspectives of communities of practice, but also to apply the extra step taken by critical posthumanism. The collective can be rethought in terms of human and non-human groupings in which all elements share agency, that is to say, treat each other non-hierarchically. This is why we think it is necessary to inscribe our practices in transdisciplinary and post-humanist perspectives.

Becoming transdisciplinary implies attitudes such as adaptability, flexibility, creativity, openness and a deep interest in building bridges and venturing to approach an object of study or problem from (in)discipline. Transdisciplinarity configures a different point of integration and a vision that is supported by many disciplines, without being reduced to them. A transdisciplinary identity will make those who participate in the generation of knowledge about a specific problem be the co-producers of hybrid forms of knowledge. This allows multiple voices to become legible as voices of education.

The goals for the event can be summarized as follows:

• Find points of intersection between traditional knowledges and contemporary practices of self-care, feminism, DIY and open-source technology.

• Promote easily accessible open-source technologies that can be applied in multidisciplinary fields and enhance the inclusiveness of marginalized collectives.

• Foster the adoption of collective practices of mutual self-care. Generate networks from the margins through collaborative research, collective education and social development.

• To work on human and non-human alliances and solidarity through DIY/DIWO/DIT biotechnology, artistic and cultural practices.

• Re-visit, re-think, co-design and co-develop processes, tools and technologies for biological exploration, from a transhackfeminist perspective, and focusing on Open-Source Science for art and natural science topics and experimental notions of Health, Life, Body, Artistic Research and Critical Practices.

• To provide artists, scientists, creators and cultural organizations with tools, methodologies and good practices in order to properly address the creation of common cultural spaces for the generation of transversal knowledge in Bioarts practices, environmental issues and ecology.

To achieve these goals, we propose to elaborate a Critical Tool Kit that provides material and theoretical resources to change the paradigm of traditional education. The kit will combine DIT (do it together) materials in order to explore environments and help users to form a deeper understanding of nature and the beyond. This tool kit will be open art/sci, built to be modified by students, artists, creators and cultural workers with the aim of opening new ideas and unforeseen applicability.

To achieve these goals, we propose to elaborate a Critical Tool Kit that provides material and theoretical resources to change the paradigm of traditional education. The kit will combine DIT (do it together) materials in order to explore environments and help users to form a deeper understanding of nature and the beyond. This tool kit will be open art/sci, built to be modified by students, artists, creators and cultural workers with the aim of opening new ideas and unforeseen applicability.

  1. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

$9910. The main activities will take place at the Foundry, but we will organize interventions in other regional spaces as Fur Alle Falle, Casa do Río and will produce a kit that can be used as an educational tool in public schools and beyond.

  1. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

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  2. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

  • A critical tool kit with an instruction book and materials list will be the consolidation of the project for future use and dissemination. The whole kit, the materials and the book will be done with Open Source Tools and will be useful for inter-generational students from 14 years old in advance.
  • Photo and video documentation of the whole event will be shared on social media platforms.
  • DIY video tutorials will be shared on social media
  • We will update a new WiKi to document all the processes.
  • A general report shall be written and submitted to GOSH.
  1. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

  • Analyze and shape the terrain for network culture, aiming to establish a constant
    dialogue, building cooperative models as a result of symbiotic process connecting
    rural and urban systems.

  • Contribute to the formation of a culture of sustainability within the creative sectors and their practices, focusing on transfeminist practices we will ensure diversity and inclusion of minored collectives.

  • Generate support mechanisms and infrastructure for creative initiatives that strengthen the capacity of rural organizations under a transfeminist and ecologic perspective.

  1. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

Not that we know of.

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1. Name of organization
Fr3dprNaija

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)
fr4dpr.naija@gmail.com

3. Tell us about your organization
Fr3dprNaija is an initiative designed for reaching out to and empowering unreached and underserved communities (youths preferably the girl child) through the use of Foldscope, Robotics, and 3D Printing. The aim is to train unreached and underserved students to adopt or adapt these technologies as tools to increase the curiosity and creativity of Secondary Schools Students.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation or other identification? If so, how?

The focus is on individuals who are drop-outs or financially incapable to pursue or complete secondary education and is geared towards helping them to solve their personal problems and problems in their communities. Many Communities especially the rural ones have the wrong mindset that they do not have what it takes to develop their communities. As a result of this, they focus more on appealing to the external bodies and foreigners to help them in the area of development.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?
Foldscope, 3DPrinting and Robotics are tools for improving Science, Technology, Engineering, Education, Agriculture, Arts and Mathematics, Medicine, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (STREEAAMMIE Beyond STEM) education in Nigeria. This involves setting up a centre within a community that is full of teenagers and youths who do not have enough funds to conclude their secondary education or further their post-secondary education or not motivated to do so. The idea is not to send them back to school but to provide an alternative means of education that will propel them to be self-sustained.

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)
Round 1

7.What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how
8 X Foldscope Kits + Accessories - $1,800
8 X 3D Printer + Accessories - $4,000
10 X laptops + Accessories - $2,000
Venue rent - $100
Transportation/Communities Tour=$150
Accommodation for 20 participants =$1,000

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)
There will be a detailed audiovisual documentation and a written report that will put all activities and success stories into account.

The event will also be highlighted on hhtps://3dhubs.com. As a follow to the event, a 3D Manual for beginners will be developed and distributed to all participants.

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?
The event will focus on exposing underserved and unreached youth in rural communities that have little or no access to education or technological advancement.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?
None

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1. Name of organization

Braid Theory, Inc. (http://braidtheory.com/)

2. Email address (or preferred and reliable way of official contact)

caroline@braidtheory.com

3. Tell us about your organization

Braid Theory is a vertically integrated venture advisory and accelerator based at the Port of Los Angeles, operating in bluetech and the blue economy space. We work with dedicated technology leaders, providing assistance to startup companies that want to embrace opportunities to amplify their presence in the marketplace. Additionally, we provide our innovators with collaboration opportunities with industry partners, through objective-driven planning and sustainable business models, driving market building. Braid Theory provides proof that strength lies in a collaborative framework, and results-driven, evidence-based market-tested opportunities for traction and growth.

Annually, Braid Theory works with more than 50 deep-tech startups, from early- to advanced-stage. Through our acceleration programs, we encourage companies to transition to innovative and open-source business models that align with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) principles. Our industries of focus include:

  • transportation & goods movement
  • energy, water & utilities
  • agriculture & food tech
  • ocean & maritime
  • smart cities, construction & infrastructure
  • aerospace & advanced manufacturing
  • digital tech
  • biotech & life sciences

At Braid Theory, we approach innovation with solutions that look beyond commercialization, reexamining transformative technologies, impact, business application, and interconnectedness.

Braid Theory is located in San Pedro, California at AltaSea at the Port of Los Angeles. AltaSea’s 35-acre site includes a 400,000 square foot campus built on a historic pier on the Port of Los Angeles waterfront.

4. Does your organization have representation for a marginalized demographic due to factors such as, but not limited to, race, ability, place of birth, gender, sexual orientation, socioeconomic class situation, or other identification? If so, how?

Yes.

The Port of Los Angeles is the busiest shipping port in the United States. Yet, where maritime-related industries once provided a large supply of diverse well-paying jobs, economic forces have severely weakened the wellbeing of the surrounding community. Over the last century, the communities surrounding the Port, including San Pedro, Wilmington, and Harbor City, have been largely comprised of recent immigrants to the region. These communities are some of the most vulnerable in the Los Angeles area, with high rates of poverty (38% locally vs. 25% statewide). According to CalEnviroScreen, which identifies California communities by pollution burden, the area is disproportionately highly-affected. Especially of note are the diesel pollution, hazardous waste, and impaired water access due to port and other industrial operations. Related health and social issues, such as high rates of asthma and unemployment, further plague the area.

We strategically located Braid Theory in the heart of the Port to bring deep technology solutions to the maritime sector as well as support this underrepresented community. Through Braid Theory’s existing programs and activities, we are achieving close to 50% participation from women, BIPOC, and underrepresented startups and scaleups in pitch competitions, panel discussions, and workshops. Additionally, Braid Theory is actively engaged with partners in pilot projects at the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach dedicated to reducing the environmental footprint from port operations.

Braid Theory aims to always include diversity of thought, geography, and background, with participant split in past events of around 40% entrepreneurs, investors & catalysts, 22% industry adopters (private and public partners), 14% scientists & researchers, and 21% supporters & influencers (artists, local and global community members, etc.).

Finally, Braid Theory is an equal opportunity employer and applies these same principles when working with startups, partners, researchers, and other stakeholder groups.

5. What is the event about, and what do you want to achieve with it?

IGNITE22, Braid Theory’s flagship event, is a two-day science-based innovation conference that breaks down silos and engages with passionate tech innovators from across industry sectors and around the world, celebrating the individuals who are shaping the 22nd century. At IGNITE22, entrepreneurs meet investors, corporate leaders discover emerging technologies, and researchers learn about market opportunities for their scientific discoveries. The fourth edition of IGNITE22 will take place mid-Q2 2022, at the Port of Los Angeles in San Pedro, California.

The San Pedro Bay Port Complex, including the Ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, is a gateway for international trade with 40% of all goods shipped to the US coming through the Ports. For blue economy and bluetech entrepreneurs (we’re expecting between 80-100 this year), this means unparalleled opportunities for market research, scaling, and collaboration.

IGNITE22 program activities will take place in a 60,000 sq. ft (5,574 m2) AltaSea facility, an industrial creative space directly on the LA waterfront for tech exhibits and demos, with high open ceilings and additional features supporting COVID-19 compliance and participant safety.

IGNITE22 is not a trade show or marketing opportunity and all event partners agree to follow Braid Theory’s goals towards advancing sustainable blue economy and bluetech solutions (versus joining to access mailing lists for product promotion).

A brief program breakdown:

Day 1:

  • Moderated panels on the technology demands of future climate scenarios
  • All-day exhibits with deep tech innovators
  • Pitch sessions with global entrepreneurs

Day 2:

  • Entrepreneur “Afterparty” with facilitated networking & matchmaking
  • Engaging day activities including harbor & port tours

6. Which of the three levels of funding would you like to apply for? (in round 1 only USD $9910 is available for applications, in further rounds $3000, $6000, or USD $9910 will be available)

USD $9,910

7. What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how.

The administrative and “existential” costs of IGNITE22 are covered by other sources of funding. We are looking to GOSH to support our vision to democratize access to the event even further for our entrepreneurs, supporting exhibition opportunities for any early-stage startups (seed funding or pre-revenue) interested in attending and engaging with a wide variety of potential partners and investors. Without funding, IGNITE22 will still take place, albeit without equitable access for early-stage (often financially uncertain) entrepreneurs, those who benefit most from such events and their network effects.

Funding would also go to expand our current photography-only plans to include compelling videography about the event and its entrepreneurs. Budget breakdown below (formatting taken from CRADD):

Item Unit Cost (USD) Quantity Total Cost (USD)
Meal tickets for 50 early-stage startups 16 4 per startup (2 lunches x2 entrepreneurs) 3,200
Furniture rental for 50 early-stage startups (tabletop display) 12 50 600
Signage printing and online directory setup for 50 early-stage startups 70 50 3,500
Videographer (½ day) 600 1 600
Video Editing for post-event videos 60 per hour 34 2,040
Total 9,940

8. How will you share the outcomes of this event. What documentation will result that will this project benefit the community as a whole? (videos? photos? a how-to? innovative hardware designs?)

Planned post-event documentation includes:

  • videos featuring snippets of engaging event programming (video lengths to be determined, imagined to be 3-5 minutes of a “main” video for use on social media with additional short videos of lightly edited footage involving entrepreneurs to be shared directly with the relevant participants for personal use)
  • public photo album (with verified participant consent, participants can feely request to opt-out)
  • short blogs showcasing entrepreneurs, including storytelling on open-source tech and innovative business models
  • comprehensive impact report including reporting and analysis of quantitative and qualitative metrics following systems MERL (Monitoring, Evaluation, Research, and Learning) approaches (looking beyond short-term results to measure potential event impact and network effects)
  • 2-3 months of virtual programming to create a consistent drumbeat of awareness
  • sharing of any open-source designs & prototypes via social media and/or website

9. How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion?

As stated above, early-stage entrepreneurs are often not yet financially-secure enough to easily afford participation (especially if non-local) to such events as IGNITE22. We often find that these types of entrepreneurs benefit most from our events, through direct access to potential startup investors and collaborators, larger advanced-stage startups, subject matter experts, potential mentors, and other future advocates. Increasing access for these entrepreneurs ensures greater representation and impact, paving pathways to get these deep-tech innovations more efficiently into the market. Adopting open-source approaches play a key role in this process, as they break down protectionist “business-as-usual” policies and empower more people to get involved in solving pressing global issues like climate change. Although not all startups involved may have hardware solutions, the open-source mindset will be present throughout the event. A breakdown of how IGNITE22, and GOSH’s potential funding, influences key elements of the GOSH Manifesto can be found below (somewhat grouped for clarity)

  • Accessibility

IGNITE22’s in-person programming will be open and free for any early-stage startups adopting innovative business model approaches related to blue economy and bluetech. Any materials created for the event will be understandable and use clear language (also making them easily translatable). The same applies to any in-person and post-event virtual programming (where closed-captions are intended to be activated).

  • Changing the culture & democratization of science

IGNITE22 helps unlock group thinking and collaborative problem-solving by enabling startup founders to talk to each other, potential partners, mentors, and funders, as well as share their open-source solutions. IGNITE22 also engages not-directly-scientific stakeholders such as artists (multimedia, authors, musicians, etc.) for mutual inspiration, bridging different ways of thinking and innovating. This push towards interconnectedness and collaboration unleashes possibilities for transformative impact.

  • Ethics

In-person IGNITE22 participation is not restricted to any particular background, country, race, sex, religion, etc. (outside of regulatory requirements, ie. entrance into the US is currently limited due to COVID-19 vaccination status).

  • Empowering people

IGNITE22 aims to break down ingrained siloes and “business-as-usual” approaches in favor of more sustainable and open models to move forward climate science, from carbon sequestration to ocean cleanup to regeneration and aquaculture. The event aims to excite participants and offers a way of engaging further in concepts presented and conversations taking place.

Of note here is also the planned Impact Report to be published post-event that will be available for free (via Braid Theory’s website) which will share the realized and potential influences such an event focused on innovative business models may have in the future.

10. Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare?

No immediate conflicts of interest come to mind.

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