Become a member to vote on board members today! The vote will go out by email 9/29 and be open for 48 hours. Here are your nominees in no particular order.

Joel Murphy

My career and work have been supported by open-source hardware. I have benefitted greatly from the smart, creative products and tools made by open hardwarians. I would not be in the position that I am in today without the community. I am already giving back by offering two well received open hardware tools, and I would like to be more involved in helping Open Source Hardware organization build on its successes.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I have had a close relationship with Open Source hardware for the past 10 years. I taught Physical Computing from 2006 to 2014, and saw the exponential rise in open-source hardware use and availability. I built a successful consulting company, Solutions Design, by providing design services to artists and inventors with open-source hardware products, and I am co-founder and owner of two open-source hardware startups: World Famous Electronics, LLC, maker of Pulse Sensor, and optical heart rate monitor for Arduino, and OpenBCI, Inc., a low cost, high quality EEG system. My experience as a teacher and evangelizer as well as an open hardware entrepreneur gives me multiple perspectives on the challenges and opportunities that the open source hardware community faces.

I have been to every summit, and have watched the organization grow toward a definition, and I’m excited to see and be a part of a successful implementation of the new certification.

I do not serve on any other boards at this time.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Katherine Scott

I believe Open Source Hardware can rapidly accelerate the development of art, science and technology, improve the education of engineers and lay people, and empower individuals to solve the world’s most pressing issues. We are quickly approaching the point where Open Source hardware designs are becoming much like their software counterparts; this is to say that smaller Open Source hardware projects often become the building blocks of much grander systems. I believe that the free, easy, and repeatable exchange of these designs, along with a distributed means of production, can dramatically improve the life of every person on the planet.

I believe these goals are ambitious, important, and revolutionary. I want to get into the nuts and bolts of making them happen; and I want to do it in a way that is bigger than what I can achieve on my own. In particular, I want to figure out how to make Open Source hardware projects, developers, and manufacturing easier to find and use. I also want to develop a pool of financial, legal, and practical resources that directly and actively promote the creation of great Open Source hardware. Finally, I want to work with a bunch of other awesome people who want to do the same thing.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

* I started an electronics manufacturing company / contractor manufacturer called Tempo Automation that uses both Open Source hardware and software. This means I am intimately involved with a large number of hardware projects (both open and closed). I have a pretty good view of where Open Source hardware presently fits in the world, and what strategic actions OSHWA can take to encourage wider adoption.

* In the course of my life I’ve been been a student, an autodidact, a researcher, a business woman, and an educator. I believe I can be an advocate for all of these groups and effectively articulate their needs.

* I’ve taken a few start-ups from nascent ideas on the back of a napkin to working businesses rather quickly. I want to use these same skills to increase OSHWA’s budget and further the adoption of Open Source hardware.

* I used to run a pacifist co-op while working as a research engineer for a defense contractor. I have a great deal of experience mediating between disparate views to find consensus.

* I’ve reached the point in my personal growth where I feel my time is best used helping others realize their own projects rather than working on my own.

I do not serve on any other boards at this time.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Dan Grigsby

If the messages at this year’s Open Hardware Summit from Joshua Pearce on making open hardware the new standard in science and Tom Igoe on expanding open hardware from “for us by us” to the mainstream are themes you’d worked on by the Association then I’m the board member for you.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

Making open hardware the new standard is science is largely a matter of policy. My work to influence public policy includes Federal issues such as defeating SOPA/PIPA, patent reform and net neutrality. At the state level, I was appointed to terms on the E-Government Advisory Council by the Speaker of the Minnesota House and to the Advisory Commission to the Minnesota Science and Technology Authority by the Commissioner of the Minnesota Department of Employment and Economic Development.

Mainstreaming open hardware is an initiative for businesses. I have a twenty-year track record of building successful businesses using — and having those businesses contributing to — Open Source Software. I’m a business guy that shares your values.

What’s more, I’ve given back to my communities as a mentor and advisor; by teaching a tech-startup class that I authored at the University of Minnesota; and by co-founding what’s become a thousand member strong community of developers and entrepreneurs with Minnesota’s BarCamp and DemoCamp.

Plus, I sent a balloon with my kids picture to the edge of space and retrieved it. A selfie in space! How cool is that? Picture or it didn’t happen: https://www.dropbox.com/s/3jcdyvdn3x8h1qh/IMG_3731.jpg?dl=0

I currently serve on the Board of Directors for the Minnesota High Tech Association.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Tim Shepherd

To make sure that Open Source hardware gets the recognition that it deserves. I’m passionate about hardware development and feel lucky to be able to try and be apart of the Open Source Hardware community.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

Years of hardware development experience, both in industry and at home. This will be a key issue in making sure we all can access open source hardware.

I do not serve on any other boards at this time.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Alex (acme) D’Elia

To provide support for discussions, organisation, proposals and development of new Open Standards regarding Hardware.

Specially in relation to Future Internet Technologies and IoT arguments,

and in particular related to the layers of Network and Energy Infrastructures. We have started a Technical Table on IoT and we are open to suggestions and exchange of knowledge and work: http://www.cetri-tires.org/press/technical-tables/r-i-o-t-rifkins-internet-of-things/?lang=en

What qualifies you to be a board member?

The work I am doing every day, the projects I’ve started and the partners I am working with and which are involved in the projects are also really operative in the Open Hardware and Open Source Initiatives, in some cases, the groups are already actively working since decades for FLOSS. We are all actively involved in promoting an Open IoT Infrastructure to protect freedom and knowledge sharing, specially in respect to our future generation taking the burden of developing a more open society. For a short BIO consider http://root.acme.com

Regarding the commitment I believe I can devote 10+ hours from January 2016, while at the moment I don’t know how much time I have, depending on the tasks requested I can get organized, but now I select NO to the following box.

I am “Smart Grid director” for the CETRI-TIRES No-Profit Organisation and member of the IoT Council.

No, I will not be able to commit 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Michael Knowles

In my personal life I’m a “maker” and sculptor and frequently making use of open hardware to create new works, many of which simply wouldn’t be possible without some of the great open source works I’ve been able to leverage.

Professionally, I’m the IT Director of Fulcrum Technologies, an enterprise software company based in Seattle. I continue to see the IT industry being transformed by the advances of open source, both hardware and software, and find it genuinely exciting to be a part of.

Joining the board of OSHWA is an opportunity to take my twenty years of IT experience and use it to give back to an organization that is poised to advance an underutilized piece of the larger open source movement.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I feel specifically qualified to be a successful board member of OSHWA for three main reasons:

* Having served on non-profit boards in the past, I understand the varied responsibilities that board membership requires in addition to having experience organizing, advocating and fund-raising.

* Working in the IT industry with both open and closed source products for more than 20 years, I understand the business impact that open source platforms can provide.

* I have personally benefitted from open source hardware in my art and feel I can appreciate the difference in advocating benefits between what works well for a business and what works well for non-business work. Being able to work with both of those audiences is a strength.

I served two years on the board of the Seattle Fringe Theater Festival, and participated on both their outreach and volunteer organizing committees.

Later I served two years on the board of Circus Contraption, and worked with their fund-raising committee though I am not participating on the boards of any organizations currently.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Jeffrey Warren

I’ve involved in many discussions at OSHWA about the open hardware community and open hardware intellectual property and legal matters — most recently in the discussions around an Open Hardware Certification model. I feel that my perspective on open source hardware strikes a balance between the functional argument that open hardware is a better way to create hardware, and the ethical position that we should have the right to examine/copy/modify/distribute designs — that open collaboration is a better model for our society. I believe deeply in community-driven processes, while also believing that for-profit organizations can — and stand to benefit greatly from — being “good open hardware citizens.”

Most of all, I believe strongly that the key to a healthy open source hardware movement is culture. We must continue and improve upon our open, discursive approach to open hardware, and to build strong norms to guide our work, so that we can continue to invent, collaborate, and benefit from one anothers’ work. This spans from good documentation to standards of design file publication, to refining the pace and practices of the actual collaboration in online forums, publication platforms, and even in-person meetings.

What qualifies you to be a board member?

I’ve served on the OSHWA board for 2 years, and have been deeply interested in open hardware both through my work at Public Lab, and as part of the broader free/libre/open source movement. Public Lab, a community of thousands of people engaged in collaboratively developing affordable and accessible environmental testing techniques and equipment, has been using the CERN Open Hardware License for several years, and I participated in the discussions and comment period which led to version 1.2 of that license. I am a producer and consumer of open source hardware and free/libre/open source software, notably as a lead developer of Public Lab’s DIY Spectrometer and associated SpectralWorkbench.org software suite (http://publiclab.org/wiki/spectrometer), as well as the Infragram multispectral camera (http://publiclab.org/wiki/infragram) and associated Infragram.org image compositing system. Since 2011, using our published designs and kits, over six thousand people have constructed their own spectrometers, and many have contributed back their refinements and additions. The size and scope of this project gives me key insight into how a diverse community of contributors can collaboratively tackle complex hardware design, and into the challenges of scaling such a model.

I’ve also served as the secretary of OSHWA, taking minutes on board meetings, and have missed almost none of the meetings over the past two years — making mine one of the best attendance records among current board members. I would be excited to continue to represent the interests of community-based open hardware contributors everywhere during an additional two years of service.

I am on the board of Parts & Crafts, a makerspace for kids in Somerville, MA, and on the advisory board of Personal Democracy Media’s WeGov project.

I will you be able to commit at least 10 hours a month to being on the board.

Members, please be on the lookout for the link to vote in your inbox today!