Hello! I am one of the team members at the Internet of Production Alliance (IOPA). (More about us here: website / community forum)
The team has a role as facilitators of the alliance community. I am also the project lead for the IOPA of a Horizon 2020 consortium project that we are a part of, in collaboration with people at the Global Innovation Gathering (GIG), members of which pointed me to Edgeryders! That’s how I ended up on this forum. I had initially thought that we might find a sort of (at least administrative) home for the IOPA with Edgeryders, as there was no registered entity for us. Long story short, we now do have a legal vehicle (called the Internet of Production Foundation).
So right now I mostly want to express how grateful I am that you have publicly documented how you go about running grants, as your way of operating and values very much echoes what we are trying to set up (for example: around how work gets distributed / is owned by autonomous teams of collaborators, and how this work is also shared on this forum). I am digging into these types of post and generally into the documentation & support category on this forum.
I’ll also be glad to look into other projects here and see where there might be overlap with work/interests of other in the IOP Alliance.
On a community facilitation/manager note, we have built a join broadcasting channel between several forums (IOPA, Gathering for Open Science Hardware (GOSH) , Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA), Open Toolchain Foundation )
About the IOPA:
a global alliance of people and organizations who believe in a future of production defined by decentralized manufacturing and shared knowledge. We are building a foundation to enable this future, a world where people can quickly create and fabricate products made from a combination of locally sourced materials and global designs.Groups currently represented in this community cover hardware design, design sharing platforms, manufacturers and manufacturing associations, maker and fab lab communities, assistive technology, disaster relief, international development, and open science hardware.
About our Horizon 2020 project - mAkE
mAkE is African-European wide consortium project focusing on makerspaces as key drivers for local digital innovation. The core concept of mAkE is to equip African and European hardware makerspaces and their members with relevant skills, infrastructures and regulation in order to support local businesses in implementing local digital innovation. Our work in this project focusses on open specifications, tools and systems enabling makers and makerspaces across Africa and Europe to form a distributed manufacturing network. We have for example published a map of machinery and a catalog of business models for local economies.