Working Group Stories: Open Design & Hardware, Open Economics

Last week we published updates from the Public Domain, Open Sustainability and Open Education Working Groups. Look out for more stories next month, to keep up-to-date with the buzzing brilliance of the Network.

Open Design and Hardware Working Group

The Open Design and Hardware working group celebrated its one year anniversary and is busy working on new projects and plans for grandeur.

The Working Group is promoting the development of new artistic practices through projects that encourage members to actually produce new works. Initiatives like the Chuff-a-thon competition, a competition to design a Chuff (the OKF mascot), will be done entirely through open design. This competition will be promoted through a series of Physical Mashup workshops organised in collaboration with the Public Domain Remix (the first of these workshops will take place in Paris in the middle of October 2014). The group is also planning the creation of a new digital art journal, Miðli, featuring the work of group members. The journal will be a collaborative digital art magazine that examines the emergent tensions between creativity and openness across physical, machine and social spectrums. Details and planning found here.

Finally (and most excitingly!) the working group is applying for an art grant at Burning Man 2014 in order to disseminate the values of Open Design, Open Hardware, and Open Technology in the midst of Nevada desert…! To get involved, join the mailing list and follow @ODandH!

Open Economics Working Group

The Open Economics working group has been busy building apps, drafting principles and helping to define what open data means for the economics profession.

Over the course of the last year and a half, the main focus has been defining open data in economics, and this has led to the working group becoming the central point of reference in this field. The Open Economics Principles were released last month, and they have already received widespread endorsements across the economics community, including institutional endorsement from the World Bank’s Data Development Group! In June this year the second of two international workshops organised by the Working Group took place at the MIT Sloan in the U.S., with senior academics, funders, data professionals and students. Projects and flagship initiatives were showcased, and incentives and reward structures which would encourage economists to share more data were discussed.

The Open Economics working group will continue to work with a growing community of graduate students and early career professionals, as we strive to inspire a generation of economic researchers for whom sharing data and code is a natural part of their profession. Please support our work by endorsing the Principles.