Become an OSHWA member today to vote on nominees!
This year, we have 4 open seats on the OSHWA board. Board members will hold a 2-year position. Once board members have been chosen by the community, the board will appoint a President, VP, and Secretary. As every nominee answered “Yes” to having 5-10 hours a month to give to the board, we did not include that question in each nominee’s data. Board responsibilities include fundraising, advising on goals and direction, and carrying out compliance of the organization’s purposes and bylaws. The vote will be open on Oct. 16th-18th. Members will be emailed a link to vote.
Here are the nominees in alphabetical order:
Joe McManus
Why do you want to be on the board? I firmly believe in the positive contribution to the world that open source hardware and software has made. Technology advances created by the open source ecosystem aside, the positive impact on society is immeasurable. I would love to add a usable/practical security view to the board.
What qualifies you to be a board member? I work for the open source company Canonical where I am the director of security leading a global team of engineers ensuring that users of Ubuntu are secure. Additionally I have been a senior security researcher at CERT part of the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University for the past 14 years. While there I contributed to open source NetFlow monitoring software which is used to protect over 14% of all internet traffic. For 5 years I was a professor where I ran the graduate security program at CU Boulder. Prior to that I have held positions in industry such as Director of Security, Head of R&D, programmer, sys admin, dba, bike messenger, etc.
Katherine Scott
Why do you want to be on the board? I am currently the developer advocate at Open Robotics. I want to help cultivate the open hardware community for robotics.
What qualifies you to be a board member? I’ve been a board member in the past and attended several conference Open Hardware Summit. I have helped create open hardware and software in the past.
Nadya Peek
Why do you want to be on the board? I believe technology to be a democratic tool. To enable this, I believe in creating reusable, modular, extensible, interoperable, and accessible technologies. Specifically, I believe in creating infrastructural technologies that can serve any (unintended) application. The Internet is a previous example of a successful infrastructure (providing a platform for applications such as the world wide web, email, or VOIP). Crucially, internet standards were open, free, and iteratively created by a community of practitioners. I believe Open Source Hardware can (and sometimes already does) fulfill similar infrastructural needs. Especially with respect to enabling distributed, low-volume, precise manufacturing tools, I believe it is crucial to create, maintain, and improve free and open standards and to prevent walled gardens or silos of technology. More than that, I also believe we need to create recommendations and guidelines for what makes open source hardware reproducible and extensible by other people, which I believe is more than putting some source online in a repo somewhere. Maker culture champions broader-base participation in technology, and I want to work on making sure that participation makes real lasting changes. I would like to serve on the board of the Open Hardware Association as I believe it to be an organization uniquely focused on developing, discussing, and disseminating open standards for technology.
What qualifies you to be a board member? I have been actively developing open source hardware for more than a decade! I’m a professor at the University of Washington where I direct a research group called Machine Agency which is dedicated to developing open-source hardware machines. I was on the board before, including serving as VP, but didn’t run for a year while I moved to the University of Washington. Now I’m all set up with a sweet new lab! I have previously worked on many engineering teams including for aerospace, manufacturing, medical devices, and architectural applications. I have helped set up more than 50 Fablabs and makerspaces throughout the world, giving me ample experience with how many different kinds of people interact with many different kinds of technology. I help organize many conferences, including the Symposium on Computational Fabrication, the annual global Fablab conference, and our very own Open Source Hardware Summit, and am familiar with event planning and fund raising. I am an advisor to the Fab Foundation (a non-profit that globally facilitates fab labs), the Distributed Design Market Platform, a variety of hardware related start ups, and in the Tool Foundry Accelerator. I have spoken about hardware and manufacturing on many occasions including at the White House, Hackaday Supercon, TEDx, HOPE, Teardown, and Chaos Computer Club Congress. I have a PhD from MIT and am in a band called Construction.
Salman Faris
Why do you want to be on the board? After my Graduation I spent most of my time in FoxLab Makerspace as a mentor, mentoring Students across Kerala, I was one among the team that setup FoxLab Makerspace. I’m keenly interested in learning new things and attending technical sessions and developer conference all over Kerala, I became Malayalam Translation manager of DuckDuckGO based on my contribution , hackster ambassador and seeed studio ranger based on my contribution .
Working with some great creative minds in Foxlab I gathered a lot of knowledge in technological advancements and through them I got introduced to digital fabrication. I then heard about Fablab and I joined! Working through the machines in and using the resources available in the lab really helped me improve my skill in digital fabrication. It made me feel that Fablab was the best decision of my life. All the necessary knowledge could be gained from the weekly assignments and through the Fablab network I also got the chance to interact with a lot of talented people across the world. I could also share my creations with the world which could otherwise have never been possible. I felt like the whole world was helping me achieve my target. Everybody in the network was an expert in some field or the other. They guided me a lot and I’m much obliged to them. The feeling of progressing was a great source of motivation for me. I could see myself improve each day I spent in the lab. Fablab is such a great initiative by Prof. Neil.
I believe based on my past experience with the help of OSHWA support and expertise I can Organize conferences and community events and Educate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.
What qualifies you to be a board member? From childhood I was very much interested in electronics and engineering ,I was very passionate about it and curious about it , based on my interest to learn more technology I pursued my graduation in Computer Science , at the time I get to know about arduino , beaglebone and raspberry pi , until then I thought hardware is very hard to learn and also I can’t find any resources to get started and most of the resources are very expensive , after that I enjoyed my programming classes with the physical computing using the arduino and beaglebone . at the same time my colleagues are stuck with the programming theory classes , so then I started to introduce to open hardware and the physical computing and they are really enjoyed and I was successful getting them onboard .
At the time I was getting to know hackster contest , I participated in several of them , at first time noen of the get it but learned more about the hardware ecosystem and its possibilities and that time hackster started a new programme called hackster live ambassador , I applied I got selected as a hackster live ambassador in india , it was my turning point to communities , at the time in kerala (a state in India) most of them focuses on software communities like mozilla , GDG , FOSS ..etc so there is hardware communities , and I realized that I got a great opportunity to enable hardware ecosystem in kerala by this hackster hardware communities , so with friends from colleges we started to conduct offline events and event was sponsored by hackster they will also provide the hardware too . so from that I organized 100+ hardware meetups and workshops across kerala and been part 50+ hackathon as hardware mentor
After my college I joined MIT FabAcademy to pursue the digital fabrication diploma, it’s an academy that teaches to make almost anything , I really enjoyed each of every day in the academy , I also received Fablab kerala scholarship too , part of the academy I designed and completed an open source waste management system (http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/fablabkochi/students/salman-faris/)
After that I joined kerala startup mission (a Govt entity ) As technology innovation fellow , and my focus into fabrication technologies , as part of the fellowship I got many opportunities to attend many hardware conference like LoRa Conference India , Maker Faire Hyderabad ..etc also as part SeeedStudio (China based H/W service company ) contest I got the chance to be part of MakerFaire Shenzhen , Good for Open hardware Summit by GOSH , Kick started creator meetup , China Industrial tour ..etc and after that I got selected as SeeedStudio Ranger .
As part of the fellowship research I was working on a project called FabScope , Fab μ-Scope is cheap, open source microscope that can easily build from a Fablab, main goal is to give quality health checkup to poor people and societies to get medical attention when it’s needed. http://salmanfarisvp.com/Fab-MicroScope/
This year I was an instructor at fab lab kochi for the Fab Academy 2019 , and it was an awesome experience , after that now I was working on a maker space as Space manager
We makers and hardware enthusiast from kerala create a maker helping platform called makergram.com and I understand that knowledge is of no value unless it is shared and put to practice. I want to keep this pace of my progress and I feel it is my social commitment to inspire a lot of people across the world to make their ideas a reality.For that I would like to join the OSHAWA as Board Member . It would deeply satisfy me by working on open source hardware ducate the general public about open source hardware and its socially beneficial uses.
Link :
Github : https://github.com/salmanfarisvp
Hackster.io : https://www.hackster.io/Salmanfarisvp
Linkedin :: https://linkedin.com/in/salmanfarisvp/
MakerGram : https://community.makergram.com/user/salmanfaris
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/salmanfarisnbr
Twitter : https://twitter.com/0xsalfar
Fab Academy : http://archive.fabacademy.org/2018/labs/fablabkochi/students/salman-faris/
Suhail P
Why do you want to be on the board? As a maker and open source hardware enthusiast, IAM always contributing to open source hardware by building my own projects and make technology more accessible to every person. i would like to support and promote open source hardware in depth by joining OSHWA board member to unleash more paths for that . Bringing more enthusiast to contribute into the the OSHWA community and make sure a good solid future for open source hardware. Iam trying to bring OSH culture in developing nations and rural areas were people lack of awareness about technologies.
What qualifies you to be a board member? Iam a part of major hardware communities in India. Running many open hardware programs and events across India with the help of govt. Also iam the official technology innovation fellow of Kerala startup mission ( a firm to support innovation and entrepreneurship by govt of Kerala) I am the corganizer of makerfest (a Indian version of makerfaire supported by Motvani jadeja found.). Running major online hardware community’s events locally. Spreading and building open source hardware and maker culture is my profession and I suppose to be contribute more in to the community.
