Meet Me At Open Hardware Summit 2024 Montreal

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Meet Me At Open Hardware Summit 2024 Montreal

By David Groom

David Groom

David bought his first Arduino in 2007 as part of a Roomba hacking project. Since then, he has been obsessed with writing code that you can touch. David fell in love with the original Pebble smartwatch, and even more so with its successor, which allowed him to combine the beloved wearable with his passion for hardware hacking via its smartstrap functionality. Unable to part with his smartwatch sweetheart, David wrote a love letter to the Pebble community, which blossomed into Rebble, the service that keeps Pebbles ticking today, despite the company's demise in 2016. When he's not hacking on wearables, David can probably be found building a companion bot, experimenting with machine learning, growing his ever-increasing collection of dev boards, or hacking on DOS-based palmtops from the 90s.

Find David on Mastodon at @ishotjr@chaos.social and to a far lesser extent on Twitter at @IShJR.

View more articles by David Groom

Last year’s Open Hardware Summit was one of the absolute highlights of my year. It was among the nerdiest, most inclusive, most stimulating events I’ve ever had the pleasure of attending. If my endorsement alone is enough to persuade you that you need to be there for the 2024 Open Hardware Summit, you can buy your tickets right now. If you need more convincing, read on, then come say hi to me when you get there!

So what is OHS? It’s the premier conference of the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), whose overall aim is to foster the dissemination of technical knowledge and research while advocating for user freedom. This manifests annually at a selected global location in the form of a multi-day smorgasbord of workshops, talks, discussion sessions, and more. This year the event takes place on May 3rd and 4th, in Montreal Canada, at Concordia University and the LESPACEMAKER makerspace.

I’m particularly excited for the keynote by my friend and personal hero, Indigenous robotics inventor and advocate Danielle Boyer. Other speakers include Phil Lam from open-source trackball wizards Ploopy, and another hero of mine, e-textile virtuoso Rodney Trusty. I’m excited to see what my favourite mad roboticist Jorvon “Odd-Jayy” Moss has conjured up since I last saw him wondering around at Maker Faire Rome with his latest companion bot. And Thea Flowers, who I’ve had the pleasure of many a livestream nerding out over open-source music hardware with, is sure to have amazing things to share. That’s just the tip of the open-source iceberg of amazing folks you’ll find at OHS2024.

Workshops last year were an absolute blast, and this year’s lineup looks similarly diverse and rad. And you can make a weekend of it with Sunday’s zine workshop at CyberLoveHotel, not to mention Hardware Happy Hour and open-source perfume making pre-events on Thursday, May 2nd. Are you excited yet? If against all odds you are somehow not frothing with enthusiasm by this point, then I challenge you to watch this livestream with myself and summit chairs lee and sid, as we reminisce about last year’s event and get hyped for this year’s:

YouTube player

After all of that, I assume you’re convinced and will be attending, in which case all that’s left is to buy your tickets, finalize your travel arrangements, and start packing!!!

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By David Groom

David Groom

David bought his first Arduino in 2007 as part of a Roomba hacking project. Since then, he has been obsessed with writing code that you can touch. David fell in love with the original Pebble smartwatch, and even more so with its successor, which allowed him to combine the beloved wearable with his passion for hardware hacking via its smartstrap functionality. Unable to part with his smartwatch sweetheart, David wrote a love letter to the Pebble community, which blossomed into Rebble, the service that keeps Pebbles ticking today, despite the company's demise in 2016. When he's not hacking on wearables, David can probably be found building a companion bot, experimenting with machine learning, growing his ever-increasing collection of dev boards, or hacking on DOS-based palmtops from the 90s.

Find David on Mastodon at @ishotjr@chaos.social and to a far lesser extent on Twitter at @IShJR.

View more articles by David Groom

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