I’m part of a team organising a distributed international event to promote, explore and develop an Open Source Circular Economy. It will be held in multiple locations around the world between June 11th-15th 2015.
The core team is based in Berlin, Paris and London, we’re working out plans for Barcelona, Christchurch, Santiago and more. We’ve already got @Lauren on board organising something in Athens, and I’d love for more members of the Edgeryders community to join us wherever you are in the world.
We like the idea of a circular economy – one which works without waste, where all products should be designed for multiple cycles of use, so that the output of each production process feeds the input of another.
However, we don’t think this is in any way feasible unless we adopt an open source approach.
We need transparency and open data, modular open hardware, open standards, free software tools, and interdisciplinary, international collaboration. For a more thorough explanation of what we mean by an Open Source Circular Economy, and why we think it’s necessary, please read our Mission Statement.
OSCEdays is a very decentralized event, linked only by a name (OSCEdays) a date (11-15 June 2015), a hashtag (#OSCEdays) and a few key materials on a website (osced2015.org).
Otherwise it’s all in the hands of local organisers – what kind of events or projects to take on, what local challenges to address, what kind of people to invite, how to get relevant resources.
For now, teams can use whatever tools they feel comfortable with to work together – Facebook, Trello, Edgeryders, Google Drive, our website… but we do plan to hold daily video hangouts during the event, have a central repository for important information, provide clear guidelines for documentation of projects and to centralize and/or link documentation during and after the event.
We feel this is an increasingly important issue and we know that many others are working in a similar vein to us, but rather than chip away at the same issues in isolation, we want to ensure that any efforts put into this idea get the maximum possible traction – this can only happen by working together, simultaneously.
This has an internal effect – the participants feel motivated, they feel part of something, they directly benefit from the face-to-face and online networking, and individual open source circular economy projects from around the world get visibility amongst relevant groups around the world.
This also has an external effect – the combined activity of multiple events in multiple fields in multiple locations is big enough and exciting enough to get media attention and bring the idea of an open source approach to the circular economy to a much wider audience, and provide evidence to businesses and policymakers showing there is great potential and support for the idea.
We know that we’re not going to build a circular economy in 5 days. OSCEdays 2015 is just the first step of what we want to develop into an ongoing, long-term project/platform/social enterprise focused on building an Open Source Circular economy.
Reasons I think this is relevant to Edgeryders as a community and as individuals:
- Our working methods are very much aligned – distributed collaboration, open processes, no bullshit please, who does the work calls the shots.
- Focused on tackling local issues with the aid of global connections and shared ideas, along the lines of unMonastery, Spot The Future and various other Edgeryders projects.
What we need:
- Partnerships with projects and organisations. We're working with Future of Waste, POC21, Open Source Hardware Association and others, finding ways for our collaboration to be mutually beneficial. If you are part of (or you know of) any organisations doing similar work to us, or ideas of how we could best work together, let us know.
- Participants & Organizers interested in taking part, planning or running events, anywhere in the world*, whether a single 2-hour get-together or a 5-day harmonious hackathon. (Call for Cities)
- Ideas for and contacts with potential sponsors, whether local or multinational.
- Ideas for challenges and projects to work on.
- Core team members – there are many more types of skills and experience which would be extremely valuable to this project – our core team is currently made up of open source specialists, waste researchers, circular economy and sustainability experts, and our skill sets include many aspects of event planning and management, but there are plenty of areas we could use help (eg. web development, social media, accounting, community management, sponsorship... etc, etc, etc)
OSCEdays 2015 starts in 4 months. So please, feel free to suggest ideas, ask questions, create new posts, get in touch, plan events, ping people on ER, and get the word out!
*low earth orbit is also fine, in case you want to do something on the ISS