Application: reGOSHito BA
- Name of organisation:
- reGOSH Buenos Aires.
- Email address (or preferred and reliable way of contacting you)
- regoshito-ba-23@googlegroups.com (common mailing list inbox).
- Tell us about your organization and your event team (approx 50-100 words).
- reGOSH Buenos Aires is a node of reGOSH, the latin-american network connecting groups working on free-libre technologies for science and education. The network’s mission is to connect and build latin-american communities around these technologies, specifically the study, use and development of open-hardware devices appropriate to local needs. The event team includes artists, teachers and researchers from reGOSH and the CoSensores group. The event will be hosted by the Buenos Aires reGOSH node and CoSensores at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín, and will receive participants from the Mendoza and Chile reGOSH nodes.
- Community Sensors (CoSensores) is a group of researchers, teachers, and students from Argentine national universities. It has recently joined reGOSH Buenos Aires, and has been working since 2013 on the development and calibration of free tools and technologies for the survey of environmental parameters together with organized communities immersed in environmental conflicts.
- The organizing team includes: Camila Saveika (CoSensores/reGOSH BA), Lara Jatar (CoSensores/reGOSH BA @Laraja), Kevin Poveda (CoSensores/reGOSH BA @KevinPoveda), Laura Olalde (reGOSH BA @laola), Nicolás Méndez (reGOSH BA @naikymen), Lucila Herbert (reGOSH MZA @LuHerbert), Alejo Bonaficio (reGOSH MZA @alejobonifacio), Ignacio Boron (CoSensores), Fernando Castro (reGOSH MZA @nanocastro), Alejandro Nadra (reGOSH BA), Pablo Cremades (reGOSH MZA @pablocremades).
- Does your event team have representation of 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? (approx 25-50 words)
- The event team develops open science hardware and citizen science projects in the so-called Global South where we face a complex context of chronic economic crisis and socio-environmental conflict with highly limited research budgets and resources, even in well-established academic laboratories. We also recognize the historical centralization of resources in the country’s capital (Buenos Aires) and the difficulties for organised communities immersed in environmental conflicts, and promote the participation of individuals from different parts of the country to achieve federal representation.
- The event’s organisers take into account the difficulties that are presented to unaffiliated people to reach funds to develop open science hardware and citizen science projects. The articulation with organised communities immersed in environmental conflicts and independent researchers is implicit in the present proposal.
- What scientific discipline is your event related to? (approx 10 words)
- Environmental monitoring / Chemistry.
- Describe your event. Include the aims and outcomes, who will be invited and how, how the event will be advertised. Summarize the event timeline, agenda and facilitation plan. (approx 200-250 words).
- The event’s main objective is to work collaboratively on the improvement of several free hardware tools for environmental monitoring of aquatic environments (Appendix III), developed by the event’s participants to research and facilitate organised communities with tools to tackle water related socio-environmental conflicts.
- As secondary objectives, the event hopes to (1) strengthen bonds between participants within the Buenos Aires reGOSH node and between the BA, Mendoza and Chile nodes, and (2) improve the design and documentation of the projects shared during reGOSH 2022 which took place in Mendoza.
- The event will be held at the Universidad Nacional de San Martín (UNSAM) and will be advertised through reGOSH networks and the official networks of the University. Teachers and students from UNSAM will be invited. Members of reGOSH Chile have also been invited to promote the exchange of experiences around environmental monitoring and introduce local projects to other nodes of the network.
- Structure of the meeting: 4 days to be defined between May 8 and 19 (see Appendix II).
- The event will also encourage other interactions critical to the node’s growth and consolidation. During the event we will visit TECSCI, an open hardware startup, incubated at UNSAM, which is also part of the local reGOSH node.
- What type of outputs will result from the event (e.g. reports, documentation, media) and how will you share them? (approx 100-200 words).
- One working unit of each device per participant, to spread across the network and the country. Full assembly and usage guides for these devices: pH-meter, conductometer, turbidimeter, colorimeter. Improvement of the documentation for CoSensores projects started in reGOSH 2022.
- Multimedia content for communication and documentation.
- An event report, allowing other institutions or communities to replicate the activities.
- A list of educators and researchers in need of these devices for the lab or classroom.
- One of the projects funded by GOSH’s CDP will be at the fair. The Pipetting bot will be set-up by Laura Olalde and @naikymen to print environmental microorganisms on petri dishes. The microorganisms will be taken from the environmental samples collected and analyzed by the event’s participants, and displayed during the fair as a way to explore new visualizations of the results, to boost dissemination of the projects, and integration with the community.
- How will your event promote or advance open science hardware within the specified scientific discipline? (approx 100-200 words)
- Environmental monitoring technologies are, in almost all cases, prohibitively expensive, especially for low resource countries and groups. This is true not only for acquiring these technologies but also for maintenance. Even when researchers and communities get access to them, they often end up obsolete as there are no resources for preventive maintenance nor to repair them when they fail. In this sense, our meeting will offer scientists and users the opportunity to get to know open hardware tools for environmental monitoring as an alternative to the traditional “proprietary” devices. They will also be able to learn in detail how these tools are built and how to repair them, thus empowering people to replicate what they need and repair at lower costs than closed commercial designs. Communities in the Global South are the most affected by environmental degradation and in most cases those most economically vulnerable. Opening up environmental monitoring technologies to these communities is an imperative need. This resonates with a current increasing demand from affected communities to self monitor environmental issues and an explicit official recognition of the importance of citizen science (i.e. a new national government fund), creating a promising ground for furthering the reach of open hardware.
- How will your event and its outputs have an impact on the broader open science hardware community? (approx 100-200 words)
- Our event seeks to connect different open hardware projects related to environmental monitoring happening in southern Latin America. It is an opportunity to boost the connections generated during reGOSH 2022 between the groups working on these projects. CoSensores is one of the groups new to the network, and we will work jointly in the development and set up of technologies for measuring water quality parameters. Other participants of the event include members of other environmental monitoring projects that seek to replicate and disseminate these technologies in the region. In this way, open science hardware will reach new places and communities. This process will also involve crosstalk with other open science hardware projects, creating a multidirectional dialogue that will expand and improve these projects.
- The event will strengthen and create new bonds both within and outside the Buenos Aires node, whose efforts have been relatively scattered and require direct endorsement to consolidate.
- In the wake of the event, the teaching community of UNSAM will get a first-hand approach to open technologies for science and education. We hope that new connections with the teaching community will facilitate the inclusion of open hardware in classrooms.
- Outputs will be uploaded to public GitLab repositories and photo albums on social networks. General updates and links to the event’s materials will be posted on the GOSH forum.
- What is the funding for? Describe your budget. List what you are going to spend it on and how. (include a table, no word limit)
- See the budget table below (Appendix I).
- How would your event address GOSH’s values of diversity and inclusion? (approx 50-150 words)
- Our event will also facilitate participation of the broader UNSAM community, including students from a secondary level technical school (Escuela Secundaria Técnica de UNSAM). This university and its community belong to a peripheral area of Buenos Aires.
- Representatives from the organised communities located in the territories in which CoSensores works will be invited. This will create a space of dialogue and collaborative construction of knowledge between actors from territories immersed in socio-environmental conflicts and researchers, regarding limitations in the access to scientific and technological knowledge.
- For this event, we will follow the reGOSH code of conduct regarding diversity and inclusion and will encourage participants to follow it too.
- Are there any conflicts of interest that you wish to declare? (approx 10-50 words)
- Laura Olalde is also part of the review panel for the funding program we are applying to, and will excuse herself from evaluating this proposal, according to what is established in the “REVIEW PROCESS” in the call at the Forum.
Appendix I: Budget
| Item | Category | Cost |
|---|---|---|
| Aeroplane tickets (1 Chile, 4 Mendoza). | Travel allowances | $1.500,00 |
| Lodging (5 guests). | Travel allowances | $1.000,00 |
| Food (15 guests). | Travel allowances | $600,00 |
| Components (pH electrodes and other sensors). | Hardware | $2.238,98 |
| Advertising material (flyers, banners, etc.). | Communication | $500,00 |
| - | Subtotal | $5.838,98 |
| FUNDACEN (5% fee for fiscal sponsoring) | Sponsor fee | $291,95 |
| - | Grand total | $6.130,93 |
Appendix II: Schedule and activities
Structure of the meeting: 4 days to be defined between May 8 and 19. Participants will be required to test and set up their hardware prototypes before the event.
- Day 1. Present the projects and prototypes prepared by the team for the event (CoSensors, 3D Printing, “We Preserve”, etc). Begin to assemble new units.
- Day 2. Assembly and documentation of prototypes for environmental monitoring tools. Improve hardware and documentation of reGOSH 2022 projects.
- Day 3. Rinse and repeat.
- Day 4. Conclude the assembly and documentation of the devices. The event will close with an open day / projects fair. The projects and developments will be shared with the local community of university teachers and students, to bring open science hardware closer to classrooms and labs.
Appendix III: Projects
Established projects:
- pH-metro.
- Conductímetro.
- Colorímetro.
- Turbidímetro.
- Robot pipeteador.
- Medidor de calidad de aire.
- Data logger
Candidate new projects:
- Monitor de temperatura,
- robot artist,
- PCR con calentador de hotend.
