MAPPING DEMAND – organizers Andre and Julieta
Summary
While the needs and application of Open Hardware (OH) communities around the world are highly varied, there remain similarities between institutions and countries regarding what is needed to establish and conduct OH activities. In many areas, communities who could benefit from OH do not, which raises the question of how best to connect OH experts with the people who need their expertise. This workshop aimed to discuss the potential of mapping demand needs so as to best identify areas in which OH practitioners can work with communities to address their requirements.
In the discussion it became apparent that developing maps of communities was extremely diverse. While some communities, such as academia, are relatively discrete and potentially more easily “mappable”, social communities with extremely diverse needs are more challenging to map. In particular, two key issues need to be confronted – how to engage with the communities in a culturally-sensitive and constructive manner, and how to engage with communities who potentially do not know what equipment would be helpful in their setting.
What became clear was that there are many different communities and perspectives that will need different approaches. We even perceived that one good way to start is to map ourselves, the demands of the GOSH Community. The only thing in common is that there is no standard. It was decided that the best way to proceed would be to identify people who are willing to be initiators and leaders at different points. Later it will be interesting to pull the data together and try to find a way to build as few common pieces of hardware that could be diversified by the communities themselves.
Notes
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Rationale: similarities between institutions and countries regarding what is needed to establish and conduct OH activities.
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How do we connect OH experts with people who need their expertise?
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How do we get to know these communities?
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How can we work with them to address their requirements
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Introductions – interests include communities incl. agriculture, small producers, maker communities generally, academics and public, local manufacturing and demand for OH, how to interact with different communities in the same space, biotech and STEM education, biohacking, communities facing environmental challenges, environmental and conservation, public health interventions
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Andre: how to map demand of OH and make it into a database. How can we make sure we’re getting best value for money to ensure that tools being used can be used for maximum amount of people?
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Q: what is the database?
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No public info of people
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Info of what people want wrt OH equipment ie. 100 people in Brazil want microscopes
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What do people need that we could build?
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Demands could be objective or subjective – do they need that they know . . .
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Andre suggest split:
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1. How can we contact people to find out what they need, even if they don’t know they need it?
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2. How do we contact those (ie. researchers) who know what they need?
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Q: are we talking about demand from academic institutions. Shouldn’t it also include public health clinics etc?
- Session should not only be about academia
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Q: how do we map the communities – ie. who is in charge etc? How do we understand communities?
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Probably useful to pool contacts via different areas of expertise to find out strategies to implement
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Also need to understand that approaching communities is a human process – there are other factors in play other than a demand. Need to understand stresses and barriers
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Observation: probably easier in academia, but shouldn’t exclude communities that already have a developed need
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Probably also easier if already embedded in communities
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We need to understand how to conceptualize real demand
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Observation: project in Ubatuba with active local communities. Identified the volume of mentions of the city in academia is high in contrast to other cities with bigger infrastructures. Created project within a network (OCSD) for action research project. Initially wanted to identify researchers and encourage sharing within and out of academia. After 2 years identified that it was not only about getting researchers to go open, but what was missing was the goals and methodologies needed to be defined with communities. Needed collaborative science (TDR) to open the whole scientific process. Felt that citizen science communities were using these communities to outsource data production rather than engaging with communities. Needed to build trust with local communities – it’s a slow process. It is really important to invite the communities to generate knowledge.
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Suggestion: OH is a good way of getting communities involved as the knowledge can go both ways. It can be a strategy to go to a community and show that they can produce knowledge
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Observation: it’s a problem if you say to scientists that the community can use the equipment too. They think that the equipment is not accurate and won’t use it. It’s different processes to convince an academic than a member of the public.
- Just need verification stats. That’s something that could encourage more people to get access to open hardware.
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Observation: we need to be clear about the outcome of any mapping activity. We need to be able to collaborate in the development of a tool – it could be a community building tool
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Observation: there are many communities already working with tools that are not open. Knowing that there are some people that are doing work ie. environmental monitoring – but with closed tools. We would like them to be more open, but at the moment we don’t even know who they are.
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Suggestion: Andre discusses draft survey – includes questions as to whether activities are stopped because they don’t have equipment or can’t repair it.
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Suggestion: 3 different types of demand mapping: demands that you can only map when embedded in community, communities that need equipment for which there are existing solutions, and communities that are using proprietary equipment that could be open
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It is possible that existing data could already contribute to this database. Lots of research identifying community problems could be used to identify equipment needed.
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Should also look in regional and local journals – should also look for less successful experiments (?)
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Perspectives:
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good to separate into 3 sub-topics that should be explored
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need to tailor mapping to community needs
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go for low-hanging fruit to map people who are already in the field – bring more people in who are already working
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communities are not unanimous in their needs and will probably need to make value judgements as to what constitutes a real need
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literature reviews are a solid way to start this process, tap into networks of community groups as a way in to communities
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scientific literacy (or lack) could be a barrier
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not mapping needs but mapping interests, some groups serve as hubs for communities (ie. PublicLab)
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how do we constitute use, perhaps need to focus on a discipline and/or region as a pilot, perhaps need to trawl the internet to find words to identify communities
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who leads communities and speaks for them
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important to establish representatives in local communities and start communication – but also need to empower leaders
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there are many different types of communities. There is a lot of citizen science, and those are also working across communities. There is a lot of information that needs to be sorted through. This will enable you to start understanding where the harder-to-reach communities area
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interesting to map ourselves so that other communities can reach us. We also possibly need different approaches for different communities wrt approaching them
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how can we find a way to survey different communities if the documentation is different
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Wrap up: clear that there are many different communities and perspectives that will need different approaches. The only thing in common is that there is no standard. We need to find people who are willing to be initiators and leaders at different points. Later it will be interesting to pull the data together and try to find a way to build as few common pieces of hardware that could be diversified by the communities themselves.
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Julietta – there is a map of GOSH on GitHub that will be transformed into a database. To share link.
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One thing is to map interest globally, and the other is to map topics – need to complement database with knowledge map.
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Could also include communities in this database to get an idea of who is involved in what communities
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Need to think about what we want to map – understanding our demands will help us to map other groups
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Clarification – what is the end goal of the map?
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People with access would be able to do whatever they want – ie. start collaborations, advice, approach communities
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BUT, how can it work if it is going to be anonymous – perhaps need some mediated access
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Database could have ethical complications – ie. recognizing lack of equipment and/or service provision
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Perhaps GOSH should be gatekeeper – but this will involve quite a lot of admin
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Are we mapping need or expertise?
Need a 2-stage process – anonymous first with an opt-in for identification
Actions:
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Different types of mapping will have different goals and different timelines. We need to find people to take charge of different areas
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Andre will take charge of academics (Lou can help), Julietta will do interface between academics and communities, Nano – good qualities, Minerva – communities, Pierre – health systems, all will take charge of synchronizing
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Will start a topic in the GOSH forum
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Need to check if there has been any previous work in GOSH to avoid duplications
Attendees
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Anna Lowe
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Andre Chagas
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Louise Bezuidenhout
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Marina
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Pierre Padilla
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Minerva Castellanos
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Joel Murphy
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Nano Castro
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Pollock
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Sam Kelly
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Leonardo Sehn
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Elizabeth Xing
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Andy
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Felipe Fonseca
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Moritz v Buttlar
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Cassie Hoffman