##Open IoT Hub Reporting - H2
| Goal | On-Track/Blocked |
|---|---|
| Exhibit prototypes and process at London V&A, Mozfest and in print publications | ON-TRACK? Yes |
| Inaugurate advisory group to improve membership and processes | ON-TRACK? Yes |
| Secure funding for 2017+. Opportunities and leads with NSF, Netgain, British Council, Creative Scotland, etc. | ON-TRACK? At risk |
- [July] Began wrangling the Dilemmas in Connected Spaces track at Mozfest
- [August] Jon began his role as Senior Research Fellow.
- [August] The Open IoT Studio refined its program design, captured in these documents: Defining the Open IoT Studio, Mapping the Open IoT Studio, and the Briefs for the Briefs.
- [September] Invited and welcomed Alexandra Deschamps-Sonsino and Davide Gomba to the MLN Advisory Group.
- [September] Conducted 48hr Launch event in Chattanooga with Learning program.
- [September] Wrote the NetGain framing document on philanthropy and IoT.
- [September] Exhibition held at the V&A for 25,000 participants. Tested language about the Open IoT Studio, gathered feedback on our research questions and shared several prototypes and publications made this year.
The first half of 2016 focused on conducting design sprints, activating a core group of collaborators and advisors, and using prototypes to forge production-driven relationships. We were finding the voice and methods of the Open IoT Studio.
Now in the second half of 2016, we’re reflecting and documenting the insights and impact of our design sprints. Our intention is to make our research accountable by evidence-based actionable insights. Below we’ve outlined the results of this participatory research, conducted with a diverse professional learning network.
These three thematic insights will inform our work through H2 and into the coming year.
Specific actionable insights:
Insight 1: IoT professionals want to make meaningful things that further stewardship of the open internet.
A focus on the strategic direction of the Open IoT Studio on exploring how we can embed Internet Stewardship into the making of meaningful connected things.
This insight is actionable through the development of an open workbench for how and why IoT is openly developed. This action is evidenced by the development of the Open IoT Studio github presence and will be further explored in H2.
Insight 2: Privacy controls are empowering to the people using them when their IoT experiences are contextually relevant, knowable, and modifiable by them.
IoT will significantly amplify the security and privacy challenges we currently face. One reason for this is because IoT brings computing power much closer to us physically and more pervasive. There are already examples of how this physical proximity and digital control of physical resources can result in life-threatening scenarios, such as a car being hacked or a pacemaker compromised.
IoT also collects more and different data than previous eras of the internet. This includes our physical location, appearance, and even emotional state.
As we build meaningful connected things, we must ensure that these objects don’t compromise people’s agency. People must be able to understand and control their digital lives. And control depends on context. We want to understand how designing for specific contexts can inform privacy best practices broadly.
This insight is actionable through the research and development of understanding of contextualised security and privacy for and and with IoT. Central to this research and development is the understanding of trust and human living with IoT. This action is evidenced by the development of a suite of prototypes (Wayback Machine, Privacy Dimmer, Conductive Contracts); the building of the relationship with the Good Home project (showing up in Milan, London Design Festival and the V&A); the commissioning of Vladan Joler to build research prototypes to explore data and privacy in IoT; the commissioning of Amy Elliott to conduct landscape research on the notions of contextualised privacy, security and trust in IoT.
Currently, several large corporate players are shaping IoT. Their power is quite centralised, even though they compete against each other. Centralised power means there is a single point of failure. And it means that individual agency is limited, especially at the edges of a network.
For this reason, we are committed to making meaningful things in local contexts. Open innovation at the edges can shift centralised power, leading to products that are locally relevant and adapted. We can break horrendously short cradle-to-grave lifecycle that the digital technology industry has artificially generated.
In this way, when the inevitable stresses and shocks occur, local communities are more resilient. They can repair their tools, they can repurpose them, and they will benefit for having meaningful things that last and make sense in their context.
This insight is actionable through the research development of a new form of decentralized IoT structure that harnesses the interaction of people and ‘wifi’ with intermittent internet connectivity to provide new forms community resilience. This action is evidenced through the prototypes ATLIN and BUBBLE; the research by Vladan Joler on internet practices in Cuba; the commissioning of Babitha George to conduct landscape research into the production of open source hardware and locally crafted things; and the commissioning of Rachel Rayns in H2.
We are harnessing the actionable insights from H1 in order to:
- Commission a series of in-depth prototypes and follow-up research to deepen our understanding of the issues and make exemplary projects and tools around them.
- Publicly launch the Open IoT Studio as part of MLN and as a growing program with a website, publication and showcases at Mozfest.
- Apply for funding.
Goal [#3] “Secure funding for 2017+" is at risk in H2. We began H2 with specific bids in mind, i.e. NSF STEM learning, and shfited the strategy after conversations with colleagues and program officers to instead seek deeper, longer term partnerships with these orgs.
Going forward, we would like to expand our search to include EU funding, particularly as we have a number of highly influential EU partners (Arduino, CIID, Share Foundation, IoT Manifesto, University of Dundee). A blocker to this goal is the lack of EU funding expertise within Mozilla Foundation.
- Backgrounder
- [Project description] (https://github.com/openiotstudio/general/blob/master/README.md)
- Publications, reports & resources
| Event | Location | Date | Role |
|---|---|---|---|
| ThingsCon Camp | Berlin, Germany | September 2-4 | Participant |
| 48 Hour Launch | Chattanooga, USA | September 9-11 | Co-Organizer |
| London Design Festival | London, UK | September 24-25 | Co-Organizer |
| Netgain Salon | San Francisco, USA | October 10 | Co-Organizer |
| Mozfest | London, UK | October 28 - 30 | Space Wranglers |
| Open Innovation and Open Hardware | Shenzhen, China | November 5 - 13 | Co-Organizer |
TITLE | LINK | DESCRIPTION ----- | --------- | ---- | ------------ Unbox Caravan in Ahmedabad, India | Book | Reflections on decentralization, craft production and slow convenings. User Research on Control in the Connected Home | Research | Commissioned for the Berlin Design Sprint. Scotland Design Sprint | Book | Screen-printed and hand-bound. Open Prototyping Curriculum | Medium post | Reflections on how to apply the open prototyping skills to education Postcards for the V&A | Exhibit pieces | Research questions and descriptions of prototypes
We met with or made significant connections with the following teams (MoFo and MoCo).
- Chattanooga event included mentors from across Mozilla. From Connected Devices Sam Foster, Tamara Hills and Katie Caldwell, from MoCo Comms Kevin Fann, from MoCo Innovation MIchael Henretty, and from MoFo Learning Chad Sansing, Robert Friedman, Janice, Wait, Katie Hendrix, Lindsey Frost, and Jenn Beard.
- Berlin office events and collaboration with MoCo Innovation and Participation teams: George Roter, Rosana Ardila, and Michael Henretty as well as Connected Devices like Project Vaani.
- Facilitated studio partner Rory Hamilton to participate in MoCo Innovation planning retreat.
- Development support for the V&A design piece SelfReflector from Dietrich Ayala and Michael Henretty. By making something together, we were able to expose privacy and security concerns for online AI services. Highlighting the amplifying effect that AI has IoT. This has led to a further conversation with David Li (SZOIL) in exploring the manufacturing of open IoT that connects to AI services.
- We are currently framing how the Open IoT Studio can support the delivery of a design sprint with the Open Innovation team in India (Bangalore/Pune).
- Project brainstorming with Curriculum team, especially Chad Sansing on connected spaces and libraries.
- Co-editing publications with State of the Web and NetGain paper, in particular Solana Larsen.
(What info would be best to report here - leads? Grants submitted, Grants awarded? Don't want to duplicate if tracked elsewhere, or can link to other doc)
Progress on grants is being captured in the Development team’s pipeline document.
Additional context: We have had several bids to funders since the start of the program in January 2016. These included the EU 2020 Fellows bid, Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, and the Rockefeller Foundation’s Bellagio Conference. Some of these bids were declined, but were quite close to the mark (for example, the EU 2020 bid was just 3 points shy of being funded and we are going to re-apply in January 2017).
In the meantime, we’ve been developing relationships with several partners by inviting them to events and forging shared projects. These include: Creative Scotland, British Council, National Science Foundation, and all the philanthropic members of the NetGain partnership. While a large grant has not been secured so far in 2016, we have more clarity on the purpose and offerings of the program, as well as evidence accumulated this year.
We continue to aggregate leads and workshop them with the Development team as well as scoping cross-program opportunities, such as with the Learning program (Gigabit Cities and libraries) and Science program (STEM education).