Hello Everyone,
Freyja van den Boom (She/Her)
I would like to join the community council to help further develop and build our community. While my experience isn’t directly focused on developing hardware, through my transdisciplinary practice I have gained a good understanding of the field and its challenges. My focus will therefore be to help overcome barriers for the uptake we face, grow our network, look for partnerships and help secure funding.
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I have been a member of this and other communities including OSHA to contribute towards helping achieve better futures that represent our different cultural, societal and environmental interests and needs. For many years already I have been working as a researcher and activist to promote the uptake of Open Science I various regions across the world. I have conducted research including on the right to repair; the need for EU copyright reform as part of EU projects advocating for Open Data and Open Access; I have looked at the opportunities to adapt the FAIR principles to Open Science Hardware; and building upon my PhD research how to overcome the many barriers for academia and civil society to access and use (personal) data from connected devices.
Although I do not directly work on developing OS Hardware I have a good understanding of the many different components, and based on these experiences I have gained relevant expertise on the many challenges we face within our community of Open Science Hardware researchers and those who are working towards similar goals.
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I look forward to take on the following roles Gatherings/Events: Organise future global and local Gatherings. Management and ensure we stay on track with our roadmap.
My main focus in my own work and research is on whether, when and how to govern AI and who gets to decide. Especially now we have the opportunity to influence policies to shift towards OS by default (Let’s remain hopeful). The EU AI act is one example where it is important for us to inform and help governments make the right decisions especially when it comes to the access and sharing of the opportunities and benefits from AI models. With a reference to Open Source in the AI act the discussions about definitions and implementation of the requirements is something I will actively be monitoring and invite you to together contribute to.
What I further want to achieve and where I think I can contribute is to grow our network(s) and bridge some of the gaps and barriers between researchers, policymakers, industry and civil society. I have met with many people, networks and stakeholders who could benefit from being part and we could benefit from in return to share insights, opportunities and strengthen our aims towards these better futures that are equitable and support (beyond) human flourishing.
More concretely I will continue to conduct workshops and meetings that will focus on improving the lack of imagination, hope and empowerment of underrepresented non western, women and minority stakeholders to improve the discussions about AI enabled societies. This includes to present and help organise and initiate opportunities for our community members to present their work and perspectives how we can and should change our current very broken system towards open science societies where we all benefit from knowledge and opportunities emerging technological innovations bring.
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Happy to participate and help organise meetings