We’ll be presenting and demonstrating our gear at the TechCrunch Disrupt NYC 2012 conference today.  Last time we did this was with TechCrunch Disrupt in SF last September with Ford showing off our OpenXC platform.  It was a great event.  TCD NYC is hosting a “Hardware Alley” in response to the growing interest in DIY and open source hardware, especially in the Big Apple, where there are a number of interesting start ups, hackers groups and university interest.  The venue is located at Pier 94 on 12 avenue at 55th st. Come down and check it out!

Update – here’s some coverage on the panel I was on.  Great event!

When I look back over 2011 and review our accomplishments, I feel good about how far we’ve come.  We felt the sky was the limit four years ago and we still feel that way.  Open source hardware and the Eric von Hippel’s concept of “democratizing innovation” have become much more mainstream.  Joi Ito recently said as much in an interview.  We’re proud of our participation in these movements and look forward to continuing to actively contribute.

2011 had some very memorable achievements.  As a company, our revenues again grew 100% year over year.  We added a host of new customers and struck some important partnerships (Arrow, Pitney Bowes).  We were invited to display our unique modular hardware designs in the MoMA’s “Talk to Me” exhibit, which was a particular thrill for me personally. We hosted the 2nd Annual Open Hardware Summit in Queens to another sell out crowd.  As a car lover, the announcement that we signed a Joint Development Agreement with Ford Motor Company to start building an open source hardware and software-based automotive platform was a dream come true.  Lastly, we formally announced BUGswarm, our new cloud-based IoT application platform, and launched our official Developer Preview.   Great stuff.

I believe 2012 will be a great year for us.  In addition to some very cool projects that we’ll soon be talking about publicly, we have a bunch of other announcements coming up so stay tuned!  Looks like we’ll be very busy

Lately, we’ve been using it in our battle against the antiquated term “M2M”.  Maybe not surprisingly, it’s been helping.  At the very least, it helps to re-orient the discussion around where we see a whole new class of applications.  Traditionally, M2M applications have focused on helping organizations become more efficient.  The goal was to save money and resources.  The ROI was based on reducing costs.  These types of applications will continue to drive a significant percentage of activity in the years ahead.  But what we see happening more and more is interest in M2M-type applications that help companies *make* more money, not save it.  The ROI is top-line based.

There are a couple reasons why this trend is interesting to us:

1 – The budgets for these types of projects come from marketing and sales organizations, not operations and IT.  This usually equates to faster time to results.

2 – The technical skills necessary for building the apps for these types of opportunities are, in many cases, employed by the marketing department itself –> web developers.  This means there is less reliance on corporate IT staff which means faster execution.

3 – Both of these factors help companies do what’s absolutely necessary these days – innovate continuously, rapidly and at low cost.

What are some examples of this type of application?  Think about “social” vending machines and kiosks.  Think about social rental systems – cars being a great current example.  Think about social health devices.  The list goes on.  The point is – we’re not talking about remotely monitoring a coffee maker in a 7-Eleven to detect the need for maintenance.  That’s old school M2M.  The future belongs to something more interesting – social machines.  And perhaps, finally, a way to incorporate their existence, and the information they hold, into our lives more seamlessly and meaningfully.

TICKETS
Please, purchase your tickets here: http://ohs2011-eorg.eventbrite.com/
Tickets include breakfast, lunch, snack time, cocktails, plus an amazing goodie bag from our fabulous sponsors. The goodie bag will also include one (1) complimentary Maker Faire ticket. More about tickets and accommodations on the Attend page.

This year we’ve created an overflow space in the cafeteria to accommodate more people. The auditorium seating is first come.

BREAKOUTS

Due to popular demand, this year we have breakout sessions in the afternoon session, to facilitate smaller group discussions. You will be asked to select a breakout session when purchase your ticket.

SPONSORSHIPS

Sponsors, we still need you! The Open Hardware Summit would not be possible without you. We strive to keep the summit accessible, and still need some help covering our budget. Please consider joining our current rockstar sponsors, and see the amazing benefits you can get!

Salesforce.com came to market in 2000 with a (cloud-based) $999 package that competed admirably with the then best-in-class, behind-the-firewall Siebel SFA system costing hundreds of thousands more.  Even better, there was nothing to install, no IT manager to contact/coerce, no boss to convince.  It was easy to try with little to no risk if it failed.  It made the SFA experiment affordable.  The “I” in the ROI equation was very low and potential “R” disproportionately high.  It had the added benefit of making the sales manager look like a hero to his/her boss.  Salesforce.com used this approach spectacularly well.  They are now a huge, successful business and Siebel is no more.

The same approach that brought the value of SFA to the world’s millions of sales people, can now be used identically to bring value to the growing millions (no, trillions! thx Ericcson) of net-connected machines around the globe.  “Machine2Cloud” applications will bring low cost, low risk, high impact solutions to organizations that may have eyed and admired the perceived benefits of real-time information but were concerned about costs.  M2C architectures will help take the pain out of experimenting and trying new things.  It will provide the opportunity to scale quickly without the attendant, risky investments in IT infrastructure and IP licensing.  In short, it will bring all the benefits of real-time information – namely better, more timely decision making – to anyone interested in giving it a shot.

Supporting my belief that M2C will soon get a lot of attention is the rapid increase in interest of the world’s wireless carriers in M2M.  All the US providers have organized dedicated M2M sales units.  The major carriers in EMEA, Latin America and Asia are also announcing programs.  Why?  It’s simple.  They have to sell significantly more data at substantially higher rates of growth (if they’re to keep Wall st. happy) and the M2M/M2C worlds are a natural.

Low cost, easy to setup/administer wireless access to machines, I strongly believe, is a cornerstone for next the wave of M2M innovation.  M2C is a natural derivative.  Imagine setting up a complete telematics solution in a week instead of 3 months.  Or installing a group of innovative POS kiosks or vending machines over a weekend.  The tools coming available today allow for a literal “drop & go” approach.  This will radically change the landscape for M2M/M2C innovators.

This type of thinking fits neatly into what I suggested in my earlier post.  M2M will get absorbed into the more general, and meaningful, enterprise apps space.  Which, frankly, is better for everyone in the industry, and most importantly, more valuable to customers.

Now let’s look at what I call Mobile M2M.

With the success that has come with enabling mobile workers with real-time information has come the realization that the same ROI benefits could also be collected from other types of mobile “assets”, for example cars, trucks, locomotives, golf carts, bicycles, shopping carts, etc.  A system that tracks things via a network connection is usually categorized as telematics and is a classic M2M market segment.  And this category is experiencing significant interest and growth right now, which makes complete sense.  Vehicle efficiency, safety, compliance, etc. is of vital interest to the business managers who operate them.

Keep in mind that “mobile” doesn’t have to mean constantly-in-motion.  It could be a kiosk that gets moved once a month.  Or a digital signage system that promotes a weekend sale and is then relocated to another part of the store.

The point is, everything we’ve learned from empowering mobile humans with the ability to produce/consume real-time business data is exactly applicable to mobile machines.  And rather than try and create a new way of defining and conceptualizing M2M as something *new* I think it is far easier to see it from the eyes of a business owner/manager/partner –> it’s an extension of an already well-understood, ROI-centric revolution called Mobile Enterprise.  Mobile Enterprise and Mobile M2M are the same thing because that’s how managers run their businesses.  The differences are purely technical.

This is good news for potential users because it becomes part of a seamless value proposition.  It’s good for M2M vendors because using this context helps fit solutions, that may have been pigeon-holed as a separate silo into a mainstream, well-understood and valued application category.

Sponsorship for the Open Hardware Summit is open! Special thanks to our sponsors who have already donated.

Founded last year by Bug Labs and littleBits, The summit is in its second iteration in partnership with MAKE and Makerfaire at the New York Hall of Science. Last year, 350 people came together to share knowledge about bringing open hardware to market, solving issues around open design, protocols and licensing. Many more people watched online and got involved in the conversation through the forums and twitter. Together with support from you, we have gained more momentum as a team. The definition we signed last year was turned into a license by CERN. We held a logo competition which received 129 submissions and chose one by popular vote. The summit continues to be about the DIY, Maker, small scale (and growing to large) fabrication movements and Open Hardware, and legalese around open source hardware.

By sponsoring the Open Hardware Summit you’ll be fostering the open source hardware movement. Read more about Why to Sponsor.

Sponsor Levels

SUPPORTER: $300-$1,499

• ONE complimentary ticket to the Summit
• Your logo will appear on the banner, website and program
• You will be able to add one (1) item in the goodie bag.

ENTHUSIAST $1,500 – $3,999

• TWO complimentary tickets to the Summit
• Your logo will appear on the main section in the banner, website and program
• You will be able to add one (1) item in the goodie bag.

FANATIC $4,000 – $5,000

• TWO complimentary tickets with RESERVED SEATS in the auditorium
• Your logo will appear on the main section in the banner, website and program
• You will be able to add one (1) item in the goodie bag.

This is a non-profit event. Extra funds from sponsorship will be put toward a scholarship for creating open hardware.

Would you like to Sponsor?

Your donation is tax deductible. Thanks to Eyebeam Art and Technology center, our non-profit fiscal sponsor for handling the finances.

Hardware is hard.  It’s a reality that our customers confront every day.  The fact is, working with atoms is far more problematic than fiddling with bits.   As a career software person, this basic fact continues to frustrate me.  I dream of the day when the gulf between the two, from an ease-of-innovation standpoint, collapses.

One of most basic issues with atoms is that their supply, by definition, is limited.  When it comes to electronics, the atoms that go into making all the components needed to build interesting things, are in vastly shorter supply.  We’ve all experienced it as consumers – six week waits for [fill in the blank popular gadget].  The flip side is equally troublesome.  Inventory, shipping, customs, accounting, etc – everything you need to worry about when it comes to selling your limited supply of atoms-as-gadget is a serious pain in the neck.  Trust me.

These special demons of hardware innovation – finding, buying, trading, storing, shipping “stuff” – stop many would-be Steve Jobs’s from ever getting out of the starting gate.  Wouldn’t it be nice if it were easier, more transparent/visible and affordable?  Wouldn’t it be cool if the whole process of going from hardware prototype to selling production devices looked more like the Apple Appstore model, where developers spend time developing and Apple handles the rest?

Yes it would –> enter Arrow Electronics.

Arrow is to BUG’s community of hardware innovators what Apple is to its software developers. They offer the supply, inventory management, manufacturing and worldwide distribution services needed to take a BUG prototype and make it a BUG-based production unit – in a fraction of the time and cost of “normal” hardware innovation processes.  You can now do in weeks what used to take months or even years.  They’re able to do this because they understand and support our platform across all our customers and that scale (horizontal not vertical) provides benefits to everyone.

Bottom line – You spend your time building and supporting your device/application.  BUG provides the IP (hardware, software) and Arrow provides the rest.  It’s a compelling combination – for everyone from individual innovators to Fortune 500 corporations.

Stay tuned for further updates in the very near future.  Everyone here is excited by the potential. Please let me know if you have any questions.

The Open Hardware Summit (OHS) invites submissions for the second annual summit, to be held on September 15, 2011 in New York City. The Open Hardware Summit is a venue to present, discuss, and learn about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, and law. We are seeking submissions for talks, breakout sessions, and demos from individuals and groups working with open hardware and related areas. Submissions are due by June 24, 2011. Notification of accepted proposals will happen by August 1st.

Since the first Open Hardware Summit in 2010, we have seen the open hardware movement continue to flourish. The Open-Source Hardware Definition was announced, the OSHW logo was selected by a popular vote, an open source oil spill cleaning robot got more than $33,000 in crowd funding, Google adopted the open hardware movement’s biggest success story, Arduino, as its platform and our very own keynote speaker, Limor Fried, was featured on the front page of Wired Magazine – to name a few. Needless to say, open hardware is getting BIG.

Submission topics

Topics of interest for the summit include, but are not limited to:

• Lessons learned from past projects
• Legal and intellectual property implications of open-source hardware
• Means of supporting collaboration and community interaction
• Manufacturing
• Distributed development and its relationship to physical goods
• Digital fabrication (e.g. laser cutters and 3D printers)
• Software design tools (CAD / CAM)
• DIY technology
• Ways to share information about hardware that’s not captured in source files
• Business models
• Manufacturing on demand
• Competition and collaboration
• Sustainability of open hardware products (e.g. how to unmake things)
• Industrial design
• “open-washing” (green washing for open source)
• Open-hardware in the enterprise
• Specific product domains: e.g. science, agriculture, communications, medicine

And any other topic you think relates to openness and hardware. We want to hear all about it!

Types of submissions

You may submit proposals for one or more of the following formats:

Talk

• Expected duration for talks is between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the number and quality of submissions.
• We expect all talks to be plenary (i.e. presented to the entire summit audience).
• Talk submissions primarily containing marketing for a product will not be accepted. However, talks that share knowledge and insight derived from work on commercial products are welcome.

Breakout session

• Depending on submissions, there may be an opportunity to organize breakout sessions with smaller groups (5-40) to discuss a particular topic
• We expect breakout sessions to occur during a single time-slot of approximately 1 to 2 hours.
• Breakout session submissions should include an overview of the content and plan for the session.
• You are encouraged to co-author breakout session submissions with other interested parties but sessions will be open to general summit attendees.

Project Demo

• This is a casual show and tell session that will take place during the end-of-day drinks.
• You are encouraged to include pictures as part of your demo submissions.
• Please include all demo requirements: amount and type of space (e.g. “one 3×3 foot table and one chair” or “a 5 × 5 section of wall with at least 10 feet in front of it”), power requirements (note: we cannot provide any power adaptors). Please keep in mind this is an informal project demo, and complex requirements/constraints (internet, light/sound conditions etc) will be difficult to accommodate.
• It will be your responsibility to carry/assemble/set up/disassemble your demo. We cannot provide any support for the receiving, storing, or shipping of demos.
• Note: If submitting a project demo, Your project MUST be working by the time of the summit.

Submission format

• Submissions should be formatted as plain text of no more than 1,000 words in length and include ALLof the following:
• The type of submission (talk, breakout session, or demo)
• A title
• A bio of the speaker(s) (That’s you!)
• What you intend to talk about, the topic for your breakout session, or a description of your demo
• An explanation the importance of your submission to the open-hardware community
• A maximum of TWO photos that help explain your topic of submission (optional)

Submissions should be emailed to proposals [AT] openhardwaresummit.org with the subject line “Open Hardware Summit submission” followed by the type of submission in parentheses (e.g. “Open Hardware Summit submission (breakout session)”). Deadline is JUNE 24th, 2011 BY 11:59pm (EST). Accepted submissions WILL BE PUBLISHED on the OHS website.

For more information

For more details about the Open Hardware Summit, see the website at openhardwaresummit.org Please direct questions about submissions to the Review Chair, David Mellis, at

mellis [AT] media.mit.edu.

Please direct other questions about the summit to General Chairs Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir at

info [AT] openhardwaresummit.org

Thank you and we hope to see you in September!

* * * Please Redistribute * * *

The Open Hardware Summit (OHS) invites submissions for the second annual summit, to be held on September 15, 2011 in New York City. The Open Hardware Summit is a venue to present, discuss, and learn about open hardware of all kinds. The summit examines open hardware and its relation to other issues, such as software, design, business, and law. We are seeking submissions for talks, breakout sessions, and demos from individuals and groups working with open hardware and related areas. Submissions are due by June 24, 2011. Notification of accepted proposals will happen by August 1st.Since the first Open Hardware Summit in 2010, we have seen the open hardware movement continue to flourish. The Open-Source Hardware Definition was announced, the OSHW logo was selected by a popular vote, an open source oil spill cleaning robot got more than $33,000 in crowd funding, Google adopted the open hardware movement’s biggest success story, Arduino, as its platform and our very own keynote speaker, Limor Fried, was featured on the front page of Wired Magazine – to name a few. Needless to say, open hardware is getting BIG.

Submission topics

Topics of interest for the summit include, but are not limited to:

• Lessons learned from past projects
• Legal and intellectual property implications of open-source hardware
• Means of supporting collaboration and community interaction
• Manufacturing
• Distributed development and its relationship to physical goods
• Digital fabrication (e.g. laser cutters and 3D printers)
• Software design tools (CAD / CAM)
• DIY technology
• Ways to share information about hardware that’s not captured in source files
• Business models
• Manufacturing on demand
• Competition and collaboration
• Sustainability of open hardware products (e.g. how to unmake things)
• Industrial design
• “open-washing” (green washing for open source)
• Open-hardware in the enterprise
• Specific product domains: e.g. science, agriculture, communications, medicine

And any other topic you think relates to openness and hardware. We want to hear all about it!

Types of submissions

You may submit proposals for one or more of the following formats:

Talk

• Expected duration for talks is between 5 and 20 minutes, depending on the number and quality of submissions.
• We expect all talks to be plenary (i.e. presented to the entire summit audience).
• Talk submissions primarily containing marketing for a product will not be accepted. However, talks that share knowledge and insight derived from work on commercial products are welcome.

Breakout session

• Depending on submissions, there may be an opportunity to organize breakout sessions with smaller groups (5-40) to discuss a particular topic
• We expect breakout sessions to occur during a single time-slot of approximately 1 to 2 hours.
• Breakout session submissions should include an overview of the content and plan for the session.
• You are encouraged to co-author breakout session submissions with other interested parties but sessions will be open to general summit attendees.

Project Demo

• This is a casual show and tell session that will take place during the end-of-day drinks.
• You are encouraged to include pictures as part of your demo submissions.
• Please include all demo requirements: amount and type of space (e.g. “one 3×3 foot table and one chair” or “a 5 × 5 section of wall with at least 10 feet in front of it”), power requirements (note: we cannot provide any power adaptors). Please keep in mind this is an informal project demo, and complex requirements/constraints (internet, light/sound conditions etc) will be difficult to accommodate.
• It will be your responsibility to carry/assemble/set up/disassemble your demo. We cannot provide any support for the receiving, storing, or shipping of demos.
• Note: If submitting a project demo, Your project MUST be working by the time of the summit.

Submission format

• Submissions should be formatted as plain text of no more than 1,000 words in length and include ALLof the following:
• The type of submission (talk, breakout session, or demo)
• A title
• A bio of the speaker(s) (That’s you!)
• What you intend to talk about, the topic for your breakout session, or a description of your demo
• An explanation the importance of your submission to the open-hardware community
• A maximum of TWO photos that help explain your topic of submission (optional)

Submissions should be emailed to proposals [AT] openhardwaresummit.org with the subject line “Open Hardware Summit submission” followed by the type of submission in parentheses (e.g. “Open Hardware Summit submission (breakout session)”). Deadline is JUNE 24th, 2011 BY 11:59pm (EST). Accepted submissions WILL BE PUBLISHED on the OHS website.

For more information

For more details about the Open Hardware Summit, see the website at openhardwaresummit.org Please direct questions about submissions to the Review Chair, David Mellis, at

mellis [AT] media.mit.edu.

Please direct other questions about the summit to General Chairs Alicia Gibb and Ayah Bdeir at

info [AT] openhardwaresummit.org

Thank you and we hope to see you in September!