Question 7:
You should check out the OSCEdays Future Wishlist thread for details on some of the projects and resources which we would eventually like to see come out of this.
We have started this as an annual event, but the plan is to have more and more events in different places at different times, and ongoing research and development projects, and a transition from ‘event’ to ‘network’ to ‘movement’ to, eventually, ‘normal’.
Basically the long-term goal for all of us is a working circular economy and a more collaborative society that empowers citizens and regenerates our natural ecosystems. But that’s a long way off.
For me, the goal in the mid-term is that the idea of Circular Economy becomes linked to the idea of Open Source - for example, in the field of cryptography, it is generally accepted that open source software is a more secure option, based on a number of theoretical and practical factors. If it’s not open source, you can’t trust it.
Theoretically, it seems that open source should be an extremely valuable methodology for building a circular economy, but we’re still building the practice to test it.
If our hypothesis turns out to be correct, open source should become ‘standard’ for circular economy projects: if a company is claiming it’s developing a circular economy solution, but not making it interoperable with others, not transparently sharing information on its components and supply chain, not allowing others to be involved in the improvement and repair of the production process or the product itself, then we shouldn’t take their ‘circular economy’ claims too seriously.
And if public funding is being awarded for circular economy solutions, then of course it should be a prerequisite that they will be open source. Well, I personally think this about all public funding, not just for circular economy, but that’s just me 