Who is Open Hardware Makers
for?
Any person or team starting a hardware project in any part of the world can apply to Open Hardware Makers, regardless of age, gender, ethnicity or professional background.
Open Hardware Makers supports the development of early stage open hardware projects around the world. You may want to build your project for different purposes (science, education, business, community) and use a variety of materials (analog, digital, mechanical, textiles, bio). In any case, the program will support you in making it open for anyone to reuse.
Learning Goals
Open hardware projects are as diverse as their creators. We propose a series of fundamental principles and concrete practices that are applicable to any open hardware project.
You will learn and apply these best practices in order to design and build an open hardware project in a collaborative way.
Participants who complete OHM will be able to:
- Understand what openness means for hardware projects
- Understand the role of their project in the open hardware community
- Build a fully-reusable project and make it easier for others to find it
- Understand & promote cooperation, diversity and inclusion in open hardware
Program Structure
8-weeks applying our curriculum to your own project, and preparing a demo to showcase at a public call. We support you with the following activities, all remote:
1:1 mentorship meetings
You will meet with your mentor every second week to review the week’s content and assignments, and for general follow-up on your project.
Cohort meetings
You will meet your fellow mentees every other week to peer-review your progress and share lessons, questions and concerns.
Round of experts
You will have access to a pool of experts who can provide support in different specific domains (technical, community building, business experts, etc.)
Curriculum
Our curriculum takes you through the fundamentals of open hardware, with concrete practices for building your project along the way.
During 2020, a grant from Mozilla Foundation allowed us to enrich the content via a community consultation and a review by an expert panel.
You can access the curriculum below, it is currently hosted in a GitHub repository and released under a CC-BY 4.0 license.
Roles in Open Hardware Makers
A Mentee is a person or a team running/starting an open hardware project. Mentees design and develop open hardware projects that empower others to collaborate within inclusive communities. They are passionate, ready to learn and apply open hardware practices to their project or community, supporting the global open hardware movement.
Project in the initial stages (either a link to publicly available documentation or an “one pager” with the project plan including materials and their availability). Willingness to publish all project details online
- 5h/week for 8 weeks
- Full-day availability for the Global sprint (week 7)
Mentors support participants as they practice working open and facilitate connections within their networks Mentors will provide support and guidance to their assigned mentees as they go through training and learn to work openly on their projects. Mentors will gain valuable coaching skills and connections across the open hardware community.
Has completed Open Hardware Makers training for mentors. Has demonstrated an understanding and ability to work openly
- max. 2 hrs weekly for 8 weeks
- One-time mentors training, 4hrs (one 3hrs session and one 1hr session)
Experts support participants with domain-specific knowledge as they practice working open and facilitating connections within the network.
Demonstrated expertise in their field Open to facilitate connections in their network
- One-time round of experts assessment of projects, 2h
- 45 min online meeting with interested participants on request