Submit

The Open Hardware Summit (OHS) invites submissions for the sixth annual summit, to be held on Saturday, September 19, 2015 at the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The Open Hardware Summit is a venue to present, discuss, and learn about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, law, and education. We are seeking submissions for talks from individuals and groups working with open hardware and related areas. Submissions are due by July 2 11:59pm (ET) extended through July 9. Notification of accepted proposals will happen by July 31.

Topics of interest for the summit include, but are not limited to:

• Digital fabrication
• Wearables, e-textiles, and fashion tech
• Quantified-self hardware
• Means of supporting collaboration and community interaction
• On demand and low volume manufacturing
• Distributed development and its relationship to physical goods
• Software design tools (CAD / CAM)
• DIY technology
• Ways of sharing
• Robotics
• Business models
• Competition and collaboration
• Sustainability of open hardware products (e.g. how to unmake things)
• Industrial design
• Open hardware in the enterprise
• Specific product domains: e.g. science, agriculture, communications, medicine
• Legal and intellectual property implications of open-source hardware
• Open hardware in education
• Addressing the gender imbalance or other types of under-representation in the open hardware community
• Any other topic you think relates to openness and hardware. We want to hear all about it!

Details:

• Expected duration for talks is between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the number and quality of submissions
• All talks are plenary (i.e. presented to the entire summit audience)
• Talk submissions primarily consisting of marketing for a product, non-profit, or company will not be accepted. Talks that share knowledge and insight derived from work on commercial products or organizations are welcome.
• The Summit, including its chairs and staff, is volunteer-based and OSHWA operates as a 501(c)(3) non-profit. We cannot offer travel assistance or speaker stipends.

Submission format

Submissions should be formatted as a PDF file of no more than 500 words in length and 1 MB in size. Your file should contain a header including ALL of the following, in this order:

• Submission Title
• The type of submission (talk, poster, or demo).
• (Optional) A maximum of TWO photos and/or ONE video that help explain your topic of submission. Photos should be embedded in the text, videos should be uploaded to youtube and a link should be provided. Make sure you save the PDF with the right compression so as not to go over the 1 MB file limit.

After the header, you should have your submission text, addressing two items:

• What you intend to talk about
• An explanation of the importance of your submission to the open-hardware community.

Reviews are double-blind: authors are not identified to reviewers and reviewers are not identified to authors. You’ll enter author information when you submit your proposal in EasyChair, your name should not appear on the submission itself. Keep in mind that we’ll be deciding what to accept based primarily on the submissions themselves and not external materials. You should NOT assume that reviewers will visit any website except for your video link. Be sure to give us enough information to make a good decision. Documentation of accepted submissions WILL BE PUBLISHED on the OHS website.

Submissions are through the EasyChair system. Email submission will not be accepted.

If you have questions and want to email us, make sure you send the EasyChair ID of your paper (one person might have many submissions).

A template for submissions in Word .docx and RTF formats are available on dropbox.

Links

• Submission templates in .docx and .rtf on dropbox.
• Submit proposal on EasyChair.
• Email the Review Chair at summit-talks@oshwa.org