The days from 13 to 15 March were all about ten years of Open Source Ecology Germany e.V..
Day one, 13 March 2026, anniversary of the foundation
The anniversary itself, 13 March, was celebrated in a relaxed atmosphere with drinks, food and conversations with friends. Members who hadn’t seen each other for a while travelled all the way.
OSE Germany e.V. has achieved a lot in these ten years! A brief look back:
It all started as a network in which ideas of an open ecological economy were discussed, projects were carried out and contacts were made in order to build an OSE community in Germany. The role model was Open Source Ecology, founded in the USA in 2003. A few years later, the network in Germany was supplemented by a registered association: Open Source Ecology Germany e.V. The association has now been supporting the vision of the movement for 10 years and we celebrated this for three days.
The association has a wide range of activities. It conducts research and publishes, works on projects, organises events and intensifies networking. It is both a network and a tool. We are currently gaining experience with citizen science projects such as ZAC+. Our projects can be large or small, and we carry out many of them with external partners. Some work within a narrower framework, others harbour opportunities for the entire open source hardware community. These include DIN SPEC 3105 and CAB, the Conformity Assessment Body for the development and operation of quality assurance. Standardisation is an important topic at OSH, which is why we are also working on it. Networking is also continuing. In the field of renewable energies, we have also initiated important projects with OpenNanoGrid and LibreSolarBox and developed them with people from the network.
The holistic work is recognised and has received awards.
All of this is communicated transparently in the spirit of openness and the association wants to publicise open technologies and their possibilities in many ways and invite people to get involved.
We were ahead of our time and that’s a good thing. Now the importance of open source hardware for technological sovereignty is being recognised and we can contribute with our experience.
Day two, 14 March 2026, General Meeting
Many of our approximately 60 active association members came to our hybrid Annual General Meeting, the focus of the second day. Online or in person, they actively participated in the votes, especially the new elections. The focus was on the current activities of our members and the formal aspects of our work.
This was followed by the election of the new Executive Board. This is all about the anniversary.
With Sara, the initiator of the open source hardware project HILO, OSEG e.V. has a chairperson for the first time this year. Sara brings exactly the perspective we were hoping for to the new Board.
With his re-election, the Deputy Chairman, Alex, sets the record as the longest-serving member of the Board of Directors.
Our treasurer, Sebastian, was already active before OSE Germany e.V. was founded and knows the association like the back of his hand (previously as auditor), so for the first time in 10 years a founding member is rejoining the board.
For an overview, members presented their current projects and collaborations: In addition to CAB and ZAC+ (see above), the Faire Maus and Fairdevices, the Period Cup project, the cooperation with SRH University, NGI Search, OSI² and a plan for a robot for working on a farm. In this way, we are building a bridge to the original idea of OSE, the Global Village Construction Set (GVCS), while at the same time taking an independent path.
There was also a brief outlook for this year. Three projects by OSEG members will be presenting at the OSHWA Summit 2026. There will also be another OSH conference of the OSHOP project together with the Just Transition Centres, a summer camp of the Open Workshops in Frankfurt am Main, 27 August – 30 August 2026, as well as other events.
Day three, 15 March 2026, Barcamp
The third day was dedicated to the future: What lies ahead, what issues are we dealing with and what else should we tackle in the near future.
To this end, a barcamp was organised as an open space in which no topics were predetermined, but were brought in from the circle of participants on the day. These topics were collected on the “marketplace” and anyone who was interested in discussing a topic could sign up for it. It quickly became clear which topics were considered to be the most important.
Among the topics discussed were very practical ones such as the design of a sticker with the OSEG logo and a revision of the flyer.
Other topics were larger and more general, e.g. whether and how AI should be used for association purposes or what it takes for communities to thrive, keyword “community engineering”.
Unfortunately, many topics could not be dealt with on the day due to time constraints, but we are determined to organise such meetings more regularly from now on. We realise that we can get a lot going in a short space of time through intensive discussions. For example, the sticker idea has already been turned into an adhesive tape in the OSEG design, e.g. for trade fair appearances. And we can get in touch even better this way. We’ll let everyone know when the time comes.
It goes on and we still have a lot planned! Feel free to get involved, we look forward to seeing new faces.
