Please Introduce Yourself!

[urra]

Hi everyone!

I am Pedro Urra from Cuba and I became connected with this community through my son that is studying his MD in industrial design in TU Delft. He is connected with the Circular Economy vision and he is also working to move this theme in our country.

I worked in the creation and development of a national health information network named Infomed for more that 20 years. The open source paradigm was crucial to the building of the network. I work now as professor in Havana University and I want to dedicate my time and efforts to promote the principles of Open Source and Circular Economy in my country.

We are organizing a workshop that by coincidence (or not) is very close to the principles and motivations of OSCE. We named it Open Technologies for Life(OT4L) . I met recently Sharon Prendeville in TU Delft and she shared the goals and information about this project. She also invite us to became part of the event.

We will try to connect our workshop with the Global OSCE Days and work to connect our efforts with this global initiative.

Cuba is a very special place to promote and to work with the principles of open circular economy. There is a lot of work to do but there is also much work done and many opportunities.

[Silvia]

Hi Pedro,

Great to see you and the Cuba team joining our community. Bienvenido!

I would like to put you in touch with two French circular economy enthusiasts who will be in Havana starting May 10th and are looking for circular economy local initiatives, such as sustainable agriculture, recycling, etc. They are support our OSCEdays and I would like us to help them. You can see their world tour here http://www.circul-r.com/

Please send me your contact information. If you have other contacts to share, please do.

Thank you/Gracias, Silvia

@sharmarval please try to get the message to Pedro, through his son. I don’t think Pedro received the message I sent last week and I would like to make the connection with circul-r. Thank you.

[sharmarval]

Sorry for the slow reply. I will send @urra an email but I’m not sure he will get it in time.

[dax]

Hi I’m Dax,

I’m interested in Permacultre, zero-waste, mycology and all the other as of yet unbuzz-worded things that you all seem to be interested in as well

I’ll participate in the Berlin OSCE days in mycology, possibly in the aquaponics challange and another that I hope to introduce after I write this about making a pedal-powered plant mulcher for the community garden I belong to.

[Kasper_Holm]

Hello I’m Kasper,

My background is mainly visual art, art activism and hacktivism - I want to create projects that engage the public in issues such as ecology, open source, free networks, virtual space, environmentalism etc. My art is political, since everything is political.

I will be participating in OSCE Days in Berlin 10.-13. June and hopefully participating in a residency in Berlin later in 2017, where I will be working on a free network-project, called Infinity Sign.

I can’t wait to work with the people at OSCE Days on our project “Raw Materials” - which I have created a challenge for here :

[CHALLENGE] What are the Critical Raw Materials of today and tomorrow?

If a cyclical economy is to be realised, we need to not only look at common and relatively ubiquitous materials such as wood, plastic or various wastes but also at what the European Commission calls "Critical Raw Materials". These include rare earths such as Yttrium (used for making phosphors in the production of TV-screens and LED) or the mineral Fluorite which is a major source for hydrogen fluoride used to produce a whole range of materials. In short these are the scarce backbones of most mat…

http://www.kasperholm.net/

[elaine]

Hi all,

I’m a marine biologist who is passionate about conservation and sustainability. I’m part of the team organizing OSCE Days in Vancouver, Canada.

I’m helping to facilitate a challenge on eliminating single-use, disposable products. Here is the link to the thread on this challenge.

[CHALLENGE] Breaking down barriers to eliminate single-use, disposable products

As part of the Vancouver, Canada OSCE days challenge, we are brainstorming: how do we break down barriers to eliminate single-use, disposable products? The production of single-use, disposable products has reached epidemic proportions within the past decade. Consumers flock to their use due to perceptions that these products make life simpler, faster, cleaner, and cheaper…but at what cost to the environment? Many of these products cannot be recycled and are not designed to be reused, so they e…

All the best, Elaine

[puishi]

Hi, My name is Pambana or PB. I am an e-STEAM (entrepreneurship, science, technology, engineering, art and math) Program Coordinator at the Kheprw Institute. We are a non-profit organization that focuses on youth development in the areas of critical thinking, mentoring, leadership and self-mastery. We also support and encourage community empowerment and sustainability through community-directed forums and initiatives designed to address community concerns. We recently received a grant from MakerEd to add a makerspace lab for youth and families. On June 13, we are hosting an OSCEdays event in Indiana to talk about using 3D Printers in sustainable ways. We are using biodegradable filaments and focusing on using the printer to produce useful products. If anyone has any ideas for the day of the event about how to provide youth with a challenge that gets them to think about, create and design 3D objects that can be used by families, communities, etc to address real-world needs, please let me know. I am looking forward to learning from members of the community how they are approaching teaching and engaging youth in e-STEAM emphasizing sustainability.

[sharmarval]

Hi Pambana @puishi! Sounds really great, welcome! In London we ran a challenge on a related topic last year and we are also building on this again this year. It would be great to connect at some point during the event to share insights. Maybe during one of the reporting sessions.

[kyliek]

Hello all!

I’m Kylie, I’m apart of the OSCEdays in Vancouver, volunteering with a hackathon facilitating a challenge on methods to market bug protein in an appealing way.

I am currently studying environmental engineering, and am taking advantages of all opportunities presented to me. I want to learn about the initiative communities all around the world are taking in striving for a circular economy. I am also engaging in my current community to aid in the current initiatives being put forward.

Looking forward to the coming days!

[CHALLENGE] Marketing insect protein to help people see the nutritional and environmental benefits of insects as a sustainable food source

INTRODUCTION As a part of the OSCEdays challenges in Vancouver, Canada, one of the topics we are brainstorming was of getting people to eat nutrition products made by upcycling food processing runoff using insects. It comes down to a simple equation. On the left side is people’s unease with eating insects. On the right side is people’s desire to make a difference, help the environment, and be perceived as challengers of the status quo. The question lies in how do we tip the balance in our favo…

[Jutta-Visionautik]

I am Jutta from Berlin. I lead the Visionautik Akademie which supports social entrepreneurs and other movers in making their dreams happen.
Lately I am running an EU project „Hosting eco-social innovation“ with partners from Italy, Poland and Austria. We are researching on how to best facilitate innovation and create an open source platform with best practice methods and tools.

The OSCEdays are interesting in many ways for me:
-Meeting inspiring people involved in ecological and/or social innovation and hear about their experiences with innovation processes.
-Experiencing what works good in this worldwide connected open ideation process?
-Finding out what are needs for successful open ideation, what are barriers?
-Learning about open source business models to be able to keep our method platform alive when the EU funding is over.

Beyond that I am curious to think together about sustainable festival design. We are organizing the „Transformation Festival“ in August in Berlin. I’ve seen in the forum that several organizations like the Baumhaus Berlin or unMonastery try to make their festival (even more) circular
Looking forward to the real-life and virtual encounters the coming days. Thanks to all initiators, organizers and helpers for making this event happen !

[sharmarval]

Lately I am running an EU project „Hosting eco-social innovation“ with partners from Italy, Poland and Austria. We are researching on how to best facilitate innovation and create an open source platform with best practice methods and tools.

Hi Jutta, welcome! Your project sounds really interesting. Do you have some more information about it?

[puishi]

Hi Sharon @sharmarval,
I would love to connect. As I am new to community forums and OSCEDays, I don’t know anything about the reporting sessions and how they are handled. We were introduced to OSCE and OSCE Days by silvia @Silvia. She is the organizer here in Indiana. We are one of the hosts. I will defer to her expertise on whether or not to use the reporting sessions on the day of the event to connect. I look forward to talking with you more. I am especially interested in hearing how youth and makerspaces are being engaged in the circular economy. Thanks for reaching out to us!

[kumaranmani]

Hello Everyone,

I am Kumaran Mani, from Chennai, India.
I love open source. In the tech industry for 20+ years.
I run a small beautiful open source IT company named Tenth Planet since 2002.
After 7+ years, in 2009, launched Tenth Planet Open Source Foundation.
Wanted to contribute to society, community back with open source.

Started www.firstplanet.in to provide free training for unemployed job seekers.
Trained 20000+, aim to reach 100000 by 2020. 1200+ employers [small companies] hire them.

Realized NGOs need technology to reach/grow/serve. IT for Society.
Started contributing to them at free / low cost wordpress, drupal, android, elgg to enable great NGOs which are already serving the society for environment, education, disabilities, energy, health related causes to have the best social platform powered by open source to promote their cause, raise donations, spread the goodness.

I love experimenting, launched a small startup club for open source startups which has social impact with internet/mobile. Have been learning, having fun working with many local startups and actively participating, contributing to startup communities here in chennai.

Now, Seeking open minded people to build a true open source co-working space, which will bring people from all over the world to unite, create, contribute to open source, circular economy and all other beautiful things that really matter.

However, the thing I would like to do now in this community is to work with like minded people to really solve some key challenges here in place like chennai and other parts with design thinking, basic thinking and come out with real solutions.

Two challenges I am talking up with my colleagues this year at OSCE

1. In chennai, there are open drainage in so many places. People throw their waste, things get locked. This dirty water also merges into the ocean. Recent floods just brought all these water to everyone’s home. I am really looking for simple solutions to clean this water and avoid/remove the garbage out and may be a low cost thing to close the open drainage areas. It is my biggest ambition to close a long drainage canal in my home town before I die

2. In chennai, the traffic is heavy at all times. Everyone horn each other, it is a big noise pollution. How to solve this and yet give the people some other way to let each other get out of their way? It is an addiction, even at RED signal, they horn each other.

NOTE: also I will be documenting a wonderful case study about a house here in which everything is recycled - “two cows, gets fed, gives milk, cow dung taken to vegetable garden, the house lady cooks using those vegetables, drinks the milk, the shower/drainage water all looped, gets cleaned with a tablet, becomes good water, poured in for the garden, there is no A/C in that home, but very cool temperature” … This story we are going to capture and may be figure out a way to scale this model for many other homes with all your inputs…

Sorry lengthy intro Your feedback is welcome.

[awambawamb]

Hello!

I’m Massimiliano Cavallin, Systemic Designer from Politecnico di Torino. At this moment working abroad in Spain but I never stopped learning new things!
I’ve been introduced in the world of OS quite a lot of time ago when I first heard about OpenSUSE, and I’ve discovered there’s much more behind corner. I’ve been involved multiple times in Linux Days in my city (Torino, Italy), Hackspaces (Nottingham, UK and popped in at Noisebridge in San Francisco, CA) and online communities.
I’m looking to be involved more and more in the community and contribute actively; my interests are sustainability, systems (from a systemic design perspective), and research.
I love research but I have do most of my research on my own; getting reviewed is very difficult and often you can’t get feedback ontil the very end when you try to produce final results. I apologize beforehand for some incorrectness, and thank you already for future inputs - looking forward to work more in this field!

Max

[nicustasia]

Hello everyone!
nice to meet you!
I’m Stasia from St. Petersburg, Russia, currently I live and teach English in a middle school in a small town Yangxin, China. I am in the projects of non-formal education and environmental education, social entrepreneurship. Also I am a mentor in a language challenge and in the non-formal educational program Bridge it! . I have an experience in collaborating with ngo in NGO Development center in my hometown.

I would like to be a multipassionate learner. Now I can’t stand still and I keep making small projects in the school. I would like to make a learning place where school children may join projects and make their own initiatives, provide their ideas on circular economy and smart design.

See you!

[chrisreuter]

Hi, I’m Christian, edupreneur, edumaker, author and language trainer for German as a foreign language, founder of Linguacamp.com living in Hanover and Berlin, left my heart in Paris. I have a background in economics.

I’m designing

• open blended learning solutions, especially in language learning

I’m an expert in

• Open Educational Resources (OER)

I’m interested in:

• building and sharing knowledge and skills
• open structures, open design
• open hardware (Arduino etc.)
• open software
• meeting open minded people

Find more about me on http://creuter.pro

[Duygu]

Hello,
I am Duygu. I am an academic and fashion and textile designer from Istanbul. I have been working on sustainable fashion and circular design since 2010. After completing my PhD focusing on craft centred design in developing countries, now I work on collaborative design, and experiment it with my students at Beykent University. As far as I know there haven’t been any events in Turkey yet. I hope I can be a part of it in the future. I would like to thank Sharon Prendeville @sharmarval for informing me about this forum whom I met at a conference held at TU Delft
Best!

[sharmarval]

Hi Duygu,

…fantastic to see you on here! Welcome!

As I mentioned before it would be great if you would like to write a short blog about your work to-date in Turkey. We can post it on our blog and I think it would be a great way to learn and share about what is happening in Turkey! I think the open source aspect is really interesting!

[mariaester]

Hi, My name is Ester and I live in Montevideo and work in a proyect that aims to generate value with agroindustrial waste called Biovalor (www.biovalor.gub.uy).
We are launching a call to finance local entreprenuers and businesses that want to go more circular and hosting 5 events to map opportunities.(www.oportunidadescirculares.org)
I am looking forward to learn more about circular economy in general and about initiatives happening around the world.

[AndreaDewhurst]

Hi everyone
I’m new to the forums and to OSCE.
I’m an independent professional proofreader, technical writer and French to English translator, as well as volunteering with local animal and wildlife conservation organisations.
I’m looking forward to meeting like-minded people and learning more about the open source circular economy. I’d love to contribute by offering my skills in proofreading, translating and writing.
Bye for now
Andrea