Portability of Open Know-How - presentation of research results and next developments

Open Know-How
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Join Us for the Internet of Production Alliance’s Next Community Call:

Wednesday November 9th
12:30-13:30 UTC
REGISTRATION

During the November Community Call, Technical Lead @max_w and I will discuss the research findings and tooling development work resulting from continued progress on use cases for the OKH standard, and @AndrewLamb will be a part of the conversation as we discuss next steps for this R&D, and what is on the horizon for the IoPA.

This ongoing research and development, funded by the Sloan Foundation and NGI DAPSI, is in support of decentralized publishing and data conversion and mapping. During the call we will discuss the main developments accomplished over the course of DAPSI P2:

  • OKH Project Porter: prototype tool to allow users to extract project files from target platforms to their own devices.

  • OKH Solid App: enables makers to use the “Open Know-How” open data standard to transfer files from target platforms for decentralised storage in Solid Pods.

Criteria for a proof of concept and test cases were identified for data validation/conversion and mapping via survey research with maker community members; this data collection and analysis informed our understanding of maker ‘must-haves’ for a prototype, covering multiple characteristics of documentation types, schematics, file formats, and preferred storage platforms.

The goal of this tooling is to provide makers the ability to convert the data and files held on various platforms to a format that allows them to either store all affiliated project data and files locally on their devices, or in a decentralised manner by porting it to a Solid Pod.

These tools also enable makers to share their work easily with others by sending an OKH project manifest file rather than all of the project files. User testing of the developed MVP tools was carried out and the resulting feedback will be used to further develop and refine these solutions.

We look forward to sharing this progress with you, and continuing conversations with the community!

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Very interesting. I can present this to Sensorica and if possible we can also experiment with these tools and provide feedback, even write a blog post about this experience. Is that possible?

For example, we can take the Greens for Good open venture make a copy of all its digital assets, reformat according to OKH specifications and explore how that fits with Solid.
Note that Greens for Good, as a venture, doesn’t produce products as commodities, but rather open source DIY hardware devices. The distribution model is not a market-based, but dissemination of these digital commons, supported by an number of ecosystem services (trusted repository, mapping service, forum, mentorship services, etc.) – see more in the Dissemination doc.

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I would be very interested in seeing how the tooling that’s been developed using Solid could bundle the Greens for Good digital assets, and what’s possible. The GfG Plant Protein Extractor could serve as an interesting use case; thank you @TiberiusB for offering to talk with Sensorica about this as a possibility.

Would it be helpful for us to have a shared chat with @max_w prior to you presenting that possibility? I love the idea of showcasing the tooling for a specific use case and sharing user/community feedback more broadly via a blog post/other channels, and yes - that is definitely possible.

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Nice! We could schedule a workparty* between Sensorica and IoP. We can set it up on a span of 4, 5 hours for example, with people coming and going whenever they can. This would also be a nice way to share culture and practices. Then we can harvest this work into a piece of publishable content. I can facilitate this event. We only need one week to announce it in advance, for people to plan ahead. The rest will fall in place during that week. So to set your expectations, this is not heavy on planning and preparation. It is designed to be agile.

  • a work party is a mini hackathon, not a meeting, rather people get together to do some collaborative / co-creative work.
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I love this idea @TiberiusB - I’ll ensure we save room for mentioning this possibility during the call on Wednesday. Thank you so much for your offer to facilitate - when are you thinking of scheduling it?

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On the side of Sensorica, we need two weeks to give people time to react and plan accordingly. We could announce it even this week and plan and coordinate for the next two weeks, till the event.

On the side of IoP it is harder for me to predict. My experience so far is that the wheels are spinning slower… I think that it is better to ask you for a realistic date and I’ll follow.

We don’t need meetings and planning ahead, we do that during the interval between the announcement and the workparty day, in an open and inclusive manner, collaboratively, so that we build momentum as we plan and approach the date.

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I like the direction this is going - I err on the side of nimble planning to avoid unnecessarily over-architecting things. I can check on our end to see when a couple folks are available for a work party, and send a couple dates for you to play with… sound good @TiberiusB ?

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Hi there, I like the idea very much, I’m in. This means the potential week for the event is the one of Monday 28th Nov to Friday 3rd Dec?. I’ll be in Mexico on those dates, so our time zones will match, but I’d like to suggest an European friendly time. @schutton @TiberiusB

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We had a great conversation during Wednesday’s Monthly Community Call, which featured community updates and an overview of Open Know-How Portability R&D, a recent project co-funded by the Sloan Foundation and NGI-DAPSI.

For those who were able to join us for the call, thank you for a lively conversation! For those who were not able to attend, we have the following available:

Please reply in this thread to let us how you see us continuing the conversation on project portability using OKH (examples: more open community call discussions, forum discussions, creating a shared document on PubPub, etc)?

It would also be great if you could let us know what you see as being the priorities for our discussions surrounding OKH and portability:

  • Mapping out who in the community is using OKH, and for what purpose
  • Creating a shared pool/repository of use cases for tooling and standards that have been developed
  • Developing shared ontologies
  • Other? (Please provide details in a reply to this thread)

0 voters

Keep your eyes on this thread for updates and continuing conversation!

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@hoijui might you be available to join this party as well??

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Hi @schutton @kny5 @hoijui @max_w et all,

I created a page on Sensorica, under Events, to coordinate the Workparty on implementation of OKH standards to Greens for Good, and other projects in the orbit of Sensorica.
Note that this is the Sensorica-facing window into this initiative, to be used by those who are involved in activities in the network to engage. It is also proposed to use Sensorica’s online collaboration tools, i.e. bring the show to Sensoricans, right there where they are, which is supposed to produce better results, since everyone is familiar with the environment and the event would not seem too disruptive. Having said that, a similar page can be posted on IoPA’s website, as a gateway into this Workparty event for IoPA affiliates that can provide assistance with the implementation of the OKH standards. I’ll deffer that to whoever administers the website.

When it comes to the execution, we need to help participants prepare for this workparty in advance. Those involved with the OKH initiative please provide a list of ToDos in the Main Coordination Document (you have edit rights).
Feel free to add any information / instruction that you judge necessary or important. Don’t worry about the formatting, I’ll put things straight once your content is there. I may engage you in that do using comments if needed.

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@TiberiusB this is great - I’ve been seeing some activity on the Sensorica Discord around this, and like how you’ve framed the time in the session breakdown. I’m going to crossthread this workparty with the #okh channel. With this work party’s focus on establishing use cases and applications for OKH, that lends to conversations regarding future direction and development :dizzy:

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I do not understand what this is… we hollering with them hammers on some railway tracks?
Is it just a meeting, or are we meeting and working the whole day together on … something?
Or is it a meeting that would start us working together then?

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Check out the Main Coordination Document @hoijui - add things you’d like to tackle. From my understanding, this work party could also be called a ‘sprint’ or hackfest - many different phrases or words to describe it are possible. The purpose is to get folks together who have a shared interest in working on OKH, and ideas on use cases for what’s possible regarding adoption/use. @TiberiusB has a pretty clear guiding table in that Main Coordination Document :point_down:

Objectives Outcomes
Apply the OKH standards to your open source hardware project / venture. You streamline your documentation procedures and align yourself with emerging standards
Provide feedback to IoPA to further improve these standards. IoPA integrates feedback from your practice into the OKH standards design process.
Connect the OKH standards initiative with other endeavors within the open source hardware and material peer production ecosystem. All participants build general awareness and forge/strengthen many-to-many collaborations.
Activities will be harvested and deposited primarily into the OVN wiki. All participants can collaborate on content destined for social media.
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ahhh thanks sarah! :slight_smile:
hackfest and sprint I heard before/understand!
(I have looked at the document)
cool!
I’ll try to be there!

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@hoijui we are still early in this process, lots of room to propose ideas. Feel free to influence the process.
Speaking from my cultural standpoint, this event is emergent, driven by mutual interest, the idea of potential symbiosis between IoP and Sensorica.
The event was first proposed within this thread, see my first reaction above, 31 Oct., with the idea to have the OKH deliverables tested by a community of practice and then generate all sorts of happy outcomes in the process.
Yes, we do work during the workparty, it’s not just a meeting. But lots of other things can happen in parallel. The work is the anchor activity.
So it’s about hackers that work on open source hardware, being guided by a OKH team to implement the OKH standard. More concretely, we can be looking at a particular project, how it is currently documented, and produce documentation according to OKH. I think that we’ll all learn from this experience.

But I also invited hREA affiliates to this event, because we are collaborating on representing digital assets / resources on Holochain, using hREA. This addition may lead to happy little happenings that may create new connections and spark new collaborations. This is an example of an attachment of an adjacent network and activity to this same workparty, illustrating how it can be extended. Now you can decide between spending some time with hackers on OKH and spending some time with hREA people. To make it happen you just propose something in that Main Coordination Document and set some time aside with someone in particular from hREA, preferably within the same synchronous collaborative environment, to give a chance to other happy things to happen.
You may also want to invite some other individuals or groups that can add value to this experience that no one owns.

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@schutton @max_w I am also thinking about incentives for this OKH workparty, they can act in various ways and focus / structure activity.
What if we propose to write a report, could be a blog post, could even be turned into a more serious paper, if someone is up for it? This piece of content can be seen as a vector of dissemination of info about a particular project (function of outreach or marketing). Thus some individuals and groups, like hREA, would be motivated by the opportunity to showcase their work in association with IoP, Sensorica, etc. to attract some attention, gain some notoriety, attach some reality to their stuff, etc.
There is already motivation for the event, but adding other dimensions of value can only help. So we can discuss other ideas too.

If writing a paper from this experience resonates, I can propose a more specific harvesting mechanisms that will feed material into this process. We can also make people aware of it and let this other dimension of value do its magic on self-organization :slight_smile:

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Some propositions have appeared in the OKH / Sensorica Workparty document.
@schutton @max_w would be nice to animate a bit that exchange and perhaps offer some guidance / facilitation so that we can get the most out of it.

I also created a parallel document where we can gather feedback on the standard adoption process itself: Lessons and recomandations for sandard appropriation @BarbaraSchack

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@TiberiusB - animated a bit in the OKH / Sensorica Workparty document and encouraging Lynn to review the workflow she has proposed. Additionally added a link to a blank Miro canvas if folks are considering drafting up additional thoughts for the OSH lifecycle, based on the previous work of Bonvoisin et al.

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I believe @max_w will be diving in later today to make a few additions as well!