GOSH @ Santiago de Chile
In March, researchers, technologists, hackers, citizen scientists, and just plain curious folk came together in Santiago Chile for the Gathering of Open Science Hardware (GOSH). Building off the manifesto developed the previous meeting in 2016, this meeting focused on roadmapping the future of information sharing and community building surrounding open hardware. With group reflection, we expanded our perspective of what hardware is — not just Raspberry Pis, Arduino, or electronics, but physical tools that interface with the world we live in.
The meeting commenced with the announcement of a new journal, the Journal of Open Hardware, which aims to connect academic research with the hardware hacker community and citizen scientists.
And of course, you can’t have a conference about hardware without demos! There were show-and-tell tables highlighting the variety of projects the attendees are working on. Above is a mini-lab produced by Xiamyra Daal and her team at the Waag Society Biohack Academy, which aims to bring biohacking and biotechnology to the masses.
The citizen science movement has reinvigorated scientific engagement with the general public. Xiamyra gave a talk highlighting the need to break down the barriers of paywalls and jargon to bridge science with society.
While I was in Chile, I took a day trip with a friend to Valparaiso and it is such a hidden gem. It’s situated on the coast of Chile and it has picturesque architecture and hills with beautiful vantages. I played the role of tourist and snapped some photos:
I also had an opportunity to co-lead a workshop at Derechos Digitales with Open Web Fellow, steffania paola, on basic Python programming skills and version-controlling with git.
I also had the opportunity to learn about Chile’s past at the Museum of Memory. More details on that experience later.
Santiago was pretty great, I made lots of new friends and potential collaborations all around the world. From Santiago, I flew to NYC for the Supervised Neural Time Series Sprint, more to come.
