Welcome to Open Hardware Summit 2023! We’re on-site at NYU, bringing you live coverage — refresh often to make sure you see the latest! Learn more on the OHS web site, plus grab in-person and virtual tickets or stream online.
Friday consists of two parallel tracks: speakers and workshops, after opening remarks and an amazing keynote by Dr. Carlotta A. Berry.
Huaishu Peng’s talk How to DIY High-Resolution Flexible (and Kirigami) Circuits with a Fiber Laser Engraver demonstrated an incredible technique for creating high-quality, flexible PCBs using a fiber laser.
During the lunch break, we took a trip over to Kelly Heaton‘s Circuit Garden installation, as well as to her lab at NYU Brooklyn.
Freyja Van De Boom’s The State of Glitch workshop was a fascinating exploration of the lack of regulation around AI and how we might preserve our humanity and autonomy.
A big hit with everyone, except perhaps the artwork on the walls, was Andy Quitmeyer’s Bubblepunk: Make Upcycled Toys for Fun and Science. By hacking cheap toys and adding highly-optimized bubble solution, participants were able to assemble “the AK-47 of bubble makers” and fill the air with prodigious portions of popables at a ridiculous rate.
In his Build-A-Book Workshop, Joey Castillo lead participants through assembly of an open hardware Raspberry Pi Pico-based e-book reader from scratch.
After talks and workshops, there was Knowledge Sharing & Zine Making, followed later by an afterparty at NYC Resistor in Brooklyn.
Saturday kicked off with a reflection on the State of Open Hardware by OHSWA team members Alicia Gib, lee wilkins, Claire Cassidy and Sid Drmay. Alicia received a nice surprise recognition for her decade of stewardship of the organization.
Parallel talk and workshop tracks resumed with Anuradha Reddy & Christin Lundgren’s highly-anticipated Kolam Antenna Workshop, during which we created functional Bluetooth antennas based on traditional South Indian folk patterns.
Laurel Cummings gave a fantastic, Tinder-inspired talk called Your Technological Go-Bag and You: Consolidating Your Workbench for the Field, in which participants swiped right or left depending on whether they thought various tools should be part of the go-bag.
Shaughn Martel’s Cross pollination for Cultural Shifts was a fascinating look at cross-disciplinary influences, as well as his extremely unique music projects.
Becca Rose’s Potato Computer Club workshop was a delightful respite from soldering, consisting largely of acrostics, colouring, and making potato batteries.
Soldering irons were back out for Alex Lynd’s Solder Your Own Cat-Shaped USB Hacking Tool with the Nugget. This cute-looking device is actually more of a cat in hacker’s clothing, since it emulates an HID device, and can deploy attacks to a physically connected computer, such as Rickrolling, or even more malicious, thanks to a built-in scripting language.
The even concluded with an Un-Conference, followed by an industry/academic networking happy hour, which was an excellent chance to connect more with OSHWA’s Trailblazer fellows.
The 2023 Open Hardware Summit was an incredible event, representing the fusion of numerous maker and academic communities, and clearly demonstrating the impact of the open source movement. The organizers did an incredible job of delivering fascinating talks and engaging workshops, while ensuring an inclusive, safe experience for all. A huge congratulations to Claire⚡Cassidy, Sid Drmay, lee wilkins, and the entire OSHWA team on such an incredibly successful event! I can’t wait to see what 2024 brings!!!
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