Express your interest in helping with GOSH's Regional Funding Distribution working group!

Community Governance Council News
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Good morning/afternoon/night,

We at the GOSH Community Council are forming a working group that will oversee the distribution of the funding from GOSH to those who want to run regional events in 2022.

The total amount of funding that will be distributed is USD $96,800. This money is open to any applicant (no prior GOSH affiliation needed), and will be used for events that are aligned with the GOSH Manifesto for making open source hardware ubiquitous, and the GOSH ethos of inclusivity.

We will open the applications for this funding on 15 December 2021. The official announcement post is coming soon so put your thinking caps on!

Before the applications open, we need to have a working group in place for Regional Funding Distribution. At least one member of the working group will be a Community Council member, and all members of this working group will be volunteers. The responsibilities of this working group are:

  • Review the applications (this is the main task)
  • Checking in on the deliverables of the applicants selected
  • Overseeing the money transfers to the chosen groups
  • Participate in a meta-review/reflection event of this funding process in late 2022 (probably November)

The most active/busy times for the working group should be (a) 15 January 2022 to 1 February 2022 for the first round of applications; (b) possible second round soon after if funding remains; and (c) late 2022 for the reflection event.

Please note that because of the tight schedule, for this time the Community Council will make the final decision on the composition of this working group.

If you are interested in joining this working group, please let us know. There will be a minimum of 3 people in this group and a maximum of 7. Also note that if you are planning on applying for this funding yourself for an event you are also helping organize, it will most likely constitute a conflict of interest, and you will have to - at a minimum - recuse yourself from that part of the review process.

Thanks and please express your interest by responding to this forum thread!

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I’m mostly just replying to this to pop some life into this thread, and letting you know if you want to help review these and help decide some funding for regional gatherings, please reply here!

Also im down to be on the working group

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Hi I am interested to help at the level of Africa Region.

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Great to see this being finally launched.
As i have been discussing the importance of such support for projects and regional activities for many years, i hope some of those inputs are integrated into the methodology for distributing the funds.
Starting from discussions since Summer 2017 and recent reflections on our regional event, UROS, in Maribor (which still continues through-out until next summer).
Talking abiout “deliverables”, i would ideally see a very open ended process being followed. Many good projects take a long time to get somewhere interesting, especially with hardware. And beyond that, regional events are very much about “people”, which is hard to asses, on what happens in such new collablrations and friendships formed for years later. Please don’t go into check-box ticking and number lotteries, as used in EU funded projects schemes.

I would be interested to be only part of the last round to review and reflect on how that process worked.

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Cool!

to clarify though, this would be to join the working group in order to help review ALL the applications people submit for regional events funding (e.g. AfricaOSH, Regosh, and others will all likely submit applications, and you will be there to help review and distribute the money)

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Cool, im sure the working group will be happy to have you at the meta-review!

In general our funding scheme will be as open-ended as possible.

The main things for groups being awarded will be to:

a) tell us what you are going to do
b) what you will use the money for
c) document it (in whatever way makes sense) and you finish the requirements plus get an extra documentation bonus
d) everything needs to be done by November (because of how the funding works) (and why we are trying to get this going ASAP)

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I’m so excited too! This should be the focus for how money is distributed… we have an amazing trustworthy validated community more than capable of making it’s own investments.

I’m excited to see this all work!!!

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We would love to host it in India region!

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cool, welcome Richa! Applications will open to submit proposals for hosting your own regional gathering hopefully next week!

for right now though, we just need to know about people who want to be on this working group overseeing this :slight_smile:

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And to add to @hikinghack’s point, reviewing the applications will not be a super onerous task so please don’t be afraid to step up!

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I’m going to put a limit on this:

Please reply to this thread by Dec 31 if you wish to be considered for this review panel / working group!

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buendĂ­a
I can help with the reviewing of applications

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I’m in if you need someone to review applications and provide scoring/written feedback, I won’t be able to attend meetings though. Thanks for setting this up, it’s so exciting!

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@richa.shrivastava: Sounds cool! Please do submit an application by posting to the call for applications thread. :smiley:

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Dear @hpy

On behalf of Africaosh, I have applied to this regional GOSH event funding. In order to avoid any conflict of interest, I think it is better for me to not review applications.

Thanks

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