Long time ago, back in 2018 (!!) the GOSH Roadmap was published, and among others, it had recommendations for setting a collaborative research agenda on open hardware:
All the info about it is in the call, but in brief, the idea is to provide a much-needed forum for discussing the key aspects of open hardware as a field of study.
So, is it for you?
If you’re doing research on socioeconomic aspects of open hardware/open design practice, you’re invited to join us,
It’s not only for researchers in academia, if you’re doing research in a non-profit, or you are community-based, or maybe in a company, you’re invited to join us,
If you’re in doubt about joining, just ask here or drop me an email: ja2153@bath.ac.uk
The idea is to have a virtual call monthly, though frequency may change after the 1st call, depending on what we decide.
Joining is super easy, just subscribe to the mailing list. If you can’t attend meetings but you still want to join the discussion, subscribe as I’ll be sending the minutes there too.
Thank you to the awesome people who already joined!
I like the idea. But isn’t it better for the group’s visibility, and more inclusive of the overall community, to host this group as a category on this forum instead of spawning yet-another-mailing-list ?
Also, I don’t think the “meta” qualifier is very clear. You can do meta research on open hardware while remaining entirely “tech”, like researching tools for tool development. Maybe “STS Openhardware Group” is more descriptive ?
Hi @solstag! Yes, the forum was a possibility I considered. However not everyone in this group is part of GOSH, and maybe not all participants share GOSH values/interests. Beyond that, everyone uses email, and some of us still like mailing lists
Re: meta, yes, this is something I proposed and it’s open to discussion, will probably be part of a first meeting agenda. I’d love to call it STS, but again I’m very aware that not everyone doing research on open hardware comes from an STS perspective, with some framings directly clashing with, e.g. constructivist approaches typical of STS.
I understand better now. I’m in fact not personally interested in a thematic community with no coherence of values or foundations.
(And, for what it’s worth, in my experience mailing lists are not very effective in this kind of community; if they do grow, they tend to become shallow and hierarchical.)
Anyway, I think it would still be a good idea to create a category here in the forum to discuss and conduct research about the OSH movement with and within the broader community. I’ve found myself in want of such a category a couple of times already.
@jarancio : Sorry, I see I came out as rude. Sorry again.
@hpy : Maybe we also need a category for managing the forum (j/k a topic on Community Governance would do). For the name, I think “Social studies of OSH” as a subtopic of “Communities” could work.
