Recap: Open Science Shop at the GOSH Roadmap coworking session
The Open Science Shop began brainstorming ways to manufacture and sell open science hardware at a one-hour coworking session led by the GOSH Community last month.
Written by Brianna Johns and Jo Long for the Open Science Shop Newsletter
Last month, the Open Science Shop participated in a coworking session with the broader GOSH Community, where we collaborated on some of the collective's key projects.
On December 14, the GOSH Community hosted a coworking session where various Open Science Hardware (OScH) initiatives were invited to use the meeting as a dedicated space to work together on projects and actions related to making OScH ubiquitous.
The Open Science Shop joined the meeting alongside other important initiatives in the OScH ecosystem, which you can check out here. During the call, the Open Science Shop discussed the history and future plans of the collective, and held a double-diamond brainstorming session on how we could manufacture and sell the Open Flexure Microscope.
Video recording from the GOSH Roadmap session featuring updates from each initiative, including the Open Science Shop.
The Brainstorming Session
Eleven participants joined the 30-minute brainstorming session, led by Open Science Shop members Jo Long and Martin Currie. The session was divided into two "diamonds", where participants wrote down comments on a Miro board and voted on topics of particular importance. The first diamond focused on identifying problems related to manufacturing and selling the Open Flexure Microscope, followed by the second diamond focused on generating solutions.
As part of the first diamond, participants listed problems related to manufacturing and selling of the Open Flexure Microscope. Some of these initial problems included: an unclear market and/or audience for the microscope, low flexibility and modularity, high costs for certain regions, and how to manage marketing and sales. The participants then voted on which problem was the most important to them. Out of the problems listed, having an unclear market and audience for the microscope was voted as the problem statement to be worked on in the second diamond.
Participants then worked on the second diamond, where they listed solutions to the problem statement. Some of the solutions included: listing known applications and applicants of the microscope, determining the customer problem we are trying to solve, marketing through existing microscopy influencers, and creating a clear landing page that is spread across multiple communities.
What's Next?
The Open Science Shop will kick off a series of new meetings dedicated to the distributed manufacturing of the Open Flexure Microscope. We will provide more information on these meetings in the coming weeks, so keep an eye on your inbox!