That would have been technically possible with StreamYard (probably…), but it seemed like an unnecessary logistical complication for the organizers. One option would have been to try and integrate video questions from the audience into the live stream. We also decided to use discord for a version of Q&A for the speakers. Many community members were already comfortable with discord, which was also a bonus. Discord allowed us to open the space to anyone who wanted to join, while at the same time giving us moderation control over the discussion (huge thank you for Lenore Edman from Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories for jumping in as a moderator). We decided that a discord server would be the best option for the open source hardware community. One of the members of the Summit team was able to easily add and remove people (and their screens) to the live feed, along with stills and slides for introductions, sponsors, and everything else.Ĭommunity SpaceWe also looked at a number of options for online discussions.
![ft230xs eagle library ft230xs eagle library](https://docs.particle.io/assets/images/app-notes/AN015/board-layout.png)
Speakers could join a virtual green room before their talk and our technical testing the day before the Summit made it clear that it was easy for them to share their slide presentations as well. StreamYard made it easy to manage the backend.
![ft230xs eagle library ft230xs eagle library](http://fablabkamakura.fabcloud.io/FabAcademy/support-documents/microcontrollers/images/tinyavr/attiny3216-4.jpg)
That meant that just about everyone would be able to see the Summit from wherever they were. YouTube worked for our community because it is easily accessible on a wide range of platforms in most of the world. After considering some options and consulting with experts in our community (huge thank you to Phil Torrone at Adafruit for the guidance), we concluded that a combination of YouTube and StreamYard would be the best option. VideoThe live stream of the Summit had to be both accessible to our viewers and easy to join for our speakers and panelists.
![ft230xs eagle library ft230xs eagle library](https://longhornengineer.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/Layout_2.png)
This year OSHWA partnered with the Engelberg Center on Innovation Law & Policy at NYU Law to host the event in New York City. Quick ContextThe Open Hardware Summit is an annual gathering of the open source hardware community held by the Open Source Hardware Association (OSHWA). In the hopes of helping event organizers struggling with the same challenges, this blog post outlines the decisions we made and the steps we took to make it happen. Unfortunately it looks like it is unlikely to be the last. Thanks to the timing of the Summit, the 10th anniversary Summit ended up being many people’s first virtual summit of the Covid-19 era (that includes the organizers). We knew the 10th anniversary Summit would be one for the ages, although we didn’t quite expect it to be because it became the first virtual Summit. How We Made the Open Hardware Summit All Virtual in Less Than a Week First, thank you again to everyone – speakers, participants, and sponsors – for a fantastic 10th anniversary Open Hardware Summit.