Open Source Ecology Forums

Bwattie

Hi,

Sharing the OSE Ted talk with my fellow students garnered much interest and support. There are many people that believe in OSE's mission here in the Bioresource Engineering department at McGill, and I think there will be ample opportunity for funding. I propose that we start a university club/design team to invite other students of engineering innovation and inventing to join to help OSE's projects along as a design team.

I think what would work for us, would be to have a project that we can work on as a club, as we have access to necessary tool through our machine shop. In terms of scale I would expect abour 4-5 student to be highly committed with another 10-15 interested in contributing.

Please let me know what you think,

Bryan Wattie
Third Year Bioresource Engineering Student
McGill University
bryan.wattie@mail.mcgill.ca

Lloydrminick

I think that this is a great idea. I think that universities could be a tremendous resource for open source technology development.

Bryan, it would be wonderful if you could start a club at your school that would be centered around open source hardware development. It could be a great goal to choose one of the GVCS technologies to develop over the course of a semester. You could probably even get university funding for such a club. Then, each semester you could focus on developing a new technology. The larger goal would be to have groups of university students all over the country or world working collectively to develop the GVCS and a robust plethora of open hardware designs (including CAD and CAM files).

Bryan, I highly encourage you to start such a group at your school. Furthermore, as you do so, you could develop an OSE University Club Starter Kit outlining the resources and procedures required for starting such a club (as I am sure that the process would be very similar at most universities). That way, other people who are interested in starting clubs could have a how-to manual for how to do so, making the process much easier.

As an added point, perhaps we could be more actively and strategically marketing information about OSE and the GVCS to universities, encouraging the formation of Open Source Hardware Development Clubs such as what Bryan is suggesting. Does anybody have any ideas about how we could do this? The media package being developed by Isaiah and others will certainly be helpful in this regard. Perhaps it could also be worthwhile for Marcin or somebody else to try and do a lecture/presentation tour geared toward universities? Other thoughts?

All the best,
Lloyd

ARGHaynes

I think it would wise for us to ask people that are students of/alumni of/geographically close to Colleges/Universities to contact administrators/deans/professors.

Lloydrminick

@Brian,

In order to learn how your design team can best help and to decide which GVCS technologies might be most appropriate and helpful for your design team to undertake, you should consult the following pages:

- Get Involved page (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Get_involved)
- Global Village Construction Set (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Global_Village_Construction_Set)
- GVCS Development Template (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/GVCS_Development_Template)
- GVCS Tools Status (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/GVCS_Tools_Status)
- Subject Matter Experts (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Specialists)
- OSE Proposal 2012 (http://openfarmtech.org/wiki/Proposal_2012)

DanielKey

I had a similar idea today. It's incredibly easy to get the email addresses of basically every professor in the country by going to the university website. If each person hit up the universities in their area, we could get the entire college community at least aware of what is going on in a matter of weeks. I've already emailed every mechanical engineering professor at Mississippi State University, hopefully we will hear something soon.

ARGHaynes

@DanielKey, could you post an example of you letter so other's will have an easier time emailing people they know?

Edit: Nevermind, I just saw a second posting on the same material, which included the email.

DanielKey

@ARGHaynes, Yeah, the more that I looked at the email that I wrote, it was way too wordy and kind of looked like spam. We'll have to come up with something better.

Howard_V_Agnew

I was thinking of this and was tempted to make a post if I couldn't find someone making a topic like this already. There are lot of engineering students needing projects to work on ... why not develop one of the GVCS tools?

If you guys are having trouble wording an e-mail so it doesn't look like spam, I'd be willing to lend my eye. I have done a teeny amount of business writing before, and have been noted as a sharp editor now and then for catching grammar errors, wording and phrasing things better. I used to have a talent for writing a bit like an encyclopedia, not as strong in the wake of a mini-stroke ten years ago which has measurably damaged my coherency, but I think I could at least still help draft (or edit a draft of) a letter if it is still useful.

ChuckH

Since so many of our machines rely on hydraulics, it would be cool to get the word out to students participating in the CCEFP http://www.ccefp.org/about-us , which involves 7 research universities. It would also be nice to turn these guys towards open-source rather than the old "patentable value" line. I just read about this consortium today, and I don't have any specific contacts.

paulnodine

Clemson University is hosting a TEDx Talk on March 4, 2012. I've been trying to figure out how to get our local technical college involved in GVCS design, but perhaps the TED Talk would be a good way to introduce the idea of a club to Clemson students and garner support.

mjn

TEDx talks are a great way to spread the OSE concepts and ideas. I just saw one at TEXxCornell that mentioned OSE>

- Mark

caseyhubb

Great thinking. I'm trying to start my own open source club/chapter in the Seattle area. Working with schools and universities is a brilliant way to spread the movement!

caseyhubb

poli

Check out http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/OSE_student_organizations for a few ideas on what working within the University system entails. I hope it helps and if there are any suggestions you can edit the page.

ddalmon

Dear colleagues,

I would like to study open hardware/machine design/production in my PhD, motivated by the OSE project. By the content on this forum and wiki I started talking with Prof. Stephen Quilley from University of Waterloo in Canada and Prof. Paul Gardner from Flinders University in Australia, which are being great to me.

Still, I want to explore other possibilities, mainly to have a better knowledge of researchers on the theme. Do someone know other institutions/research groups or professors interested in OSE and similar initiatives.

Thanks!

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