Dear GOSHers,
We are in the middle of a social experiment and reflections on how to promote our GOSH activities to the “real world” (ref. to Victor Papanek). At the moment we are at a large fair for agrictulture in rural Slovenia with our own booth for promoting our upcoming activities on UROŠ - Ubiquitous Rural Open Science Hardware, see more in this post.
I brought some projects, prototypes, products from our network:
- Hackteria DIY microscope
- GaudiLabs PocketPCR and the openFibre spectrometer
- JOGL’s GMO detective LAMP analysis
- CO2 soil respiration chamber
- Youth educational maker-projcets
- … and a 3D printer! Currently printing the openFlexure
Besides the language barrier, it’s quite a challenge to reach out to the passing audience of a farmer’s fair. Sofar, just having the 3D printer printing does a nice job to start with, and it’s kinda symbolic of the open hardware process, that “stuff” can be reproduced, re-designed and manufactured locally on-site. A bunch of blinking LEDs and free pencils also attracting a crowd.
But… what I am really searching for now, is easy to read and distrubute small flyers, single page descriptions, overview of projects, brochures, more other projects etc.
- What is GOSH on a single A4 page? Anyone has something?
- Overview of 3-4 example GOSH projects in a single A4 page
- our-sci? of GOAT flyers?
- Single project flyers
While I have time here at the fair, I am designing stuff on the fly… stay tuned for first drafts.
@gbathree @Rachel @gaudi @francois @amchagas @Amanda @julianstirling @jarancio @nanocastro @jcm80
Who wants to join designing, thinking about that?
4 Likes
@julianstirling @rbowman had a nice cartoon story of the openflexure I think… Not exactly what you were looking for I think, but if you are putting together an OpenFlexure, might be useful?
if you want suggestions/comments for current designs, I’d be happy to help!
1 Like
Thx for the reply. Yes, the openFlexure is in production, having the printer running really attracted the most people. Still at an agricultural fair, it’s the first time they see it for many people… and then opening the discussion “what are you printing?” leads to promoting the open hardware aspect of the project.
anybode recognize the scene on the screen?
Also screening the GOSH2018 video. subtitles would be super, so people can follow what we are talking about, cos we don’t play audio anyway.
But what i am really looking for are single page description of “What is GOSH” and individual projects. but no academic posters please. it’s a farmer fair… so i can be away from the booth tasting some wines, and people have something to look at or take with them some flyers and read at home.
I started collecting some printables here, feel free to add, should be open to drop files:
thx.
m
2 Likes
Hi!
You didn’t ask, but let me share some thoughts about open hardware for rural area (from my perspective from brazil).
I have never worked on any project of open hardware for rural areas, but I have worked on rural areas, with families that produce agroecological food and etc. Talking to them made me realize that, ok, 3D printing is important and symbolic, but is also super alien. Their techs and tools are mostly analogic, not digital, and this can be open hardware too.
Also, at least in Brazil, small farmers already have the culture of fixing, repairing, diy on the old style, so you could also try to approach oh from this perspective. What I mean is that the farmer culture have always being “hacker” and “maker”, not building their own tools is “new”. The older people probably lived the community culture when they build stuff together and shared the tools. So this can be a approach you can use to approximate the open hardware culture to their “repair” culture. This may make open hardware less alien and more familiar.
Those are thoughts I have from the brazilian perspective, NO idea how this relates to Slovenia.
2 Likes
Uffff for me this is THE challenge. Approaching them via repair culture as @marinappdf says it’s a good one. Other open movements work from the idea of the commons (e.g. Bioleft with this video), which I think is another alternative.
It also depends 100% on who you are talking to. If it’s small scale, family agriculture, the idea of small is beautiful, distributed DIY knowledge production can be super appealing. In particular if they are quite far from universities or research labs.
Having said this, for me this is a pending task for GOSH… To think of audiences and make videos/flyers/zines for specific groups. We have a video now at openhardware.science, but I still think the message could be more tailored. It shows what GOSH is for us, but not necessarily what it could be for others.
4 Likes
Having said this, for me this is a pending task for GOSH… To think of audiences and make videos/flyers/zines for specific groups. We have a video now at openhardware.science, but I still think the message could be more tailored. It shows what GOSH is for us, but not necessarily what it could be for others.
I agree! I wonder if we could get some interested GOSHers together to brainstorm on this 
Maybe even form a group focused on art and storytelling for GOSH? Just some thoughts, but I’d definitely be interested!
1 Like
