For the next month, the Summit Chairs will be featuring information about our accepted speakers, demos, sponsors and posters.  If you wish to be featured please email or tweet Addie

Tom Jenkins and Ian Bogost created the “tiny tinkering” platform to help people solve small-scale problems in their everyday lives. In their systems, gratification comes not from making something new and remarkable to show off to the world, but in making something unremarkable that still feels important to an individual or small group. When to water a particular plant, when hot coffee has reached the right temperature, when the mail has been delivered, if it’s cold enough outside to warrant wearing a jacket, or a trigger to automatically lower the blinds when the sun is hitting a room in a certain way.

Their aim is to create an ecosystem that reduces hardware engineering complexity for small-scale, ubiquitous problems like these. It allows novices to prototype solutions quickly and straightforwardly. Today’s electronic platforms are priced for enthusiasts rather than ordinary people. As a contrast, their platform needs to be as inexpensive as possible in order to encourage applications that are never meant to be precious. Systems should be constructed and left in place doing their job instead of needing to be disassembled for a new project down the line. Developing electronics that has a focus on getting it done rather than on doing it.

More information and great documentation can be found on their website or in person at this years Summit.

Want to come? It’s not too late to purchase tickets or even to support Open Culture and become a Sponsor. We hope to see you in Cambridge in September. It’s going to be an event filled with a community of awesome!