In June 2025, Holger and I were guests at the SRH. We gave students in the Advertising Psychology module an introduction to open source hardware and an assignment where they could apply their knowledge.
Yana, one of the participating students, has already written about it in this post.
In this article, the exchange will be presented from the perspective of Holger and myself, i.e. from the perspective of the OSEG association(Open Source Ecology Germany e.V.).
What was particularly interesting for us about the project was how an outside view coincides or diverges with our own thoughts on increasing the visibility of the movement and the organization. Because the students still know little about open source, they are perfect for taking such an impartial and fresh look at both.
The students had three weeks to familiarise themselves with the topic in seven groups and draw up proposals for us.
They realised relatively quickly what the advantages of open source are: There is a community that works together, and that’s really cool. There is no vendor lock-in, which can be important. You can develop your own projects and products or participate in those of others, and you can learn a lot in the process.
But they also realised how little Wikipedia, Linux or Arduino are associated with open source. While some open source products are well-known, awareness of the concepts behind them does not seem to be very pronounced.
In the presentations of the seven groups and in our discussions, several topics came up again and again. I have distilled the most frequent ones into question form. My first possible brief answers are in brackets behind them:
- „We once did a survey and it came out that hardly anyone knows about OSH and even less about OSEG.“ (We’ve noticed that too. There is a community that is not even small and is well networked, but it is not very well known among the general public).
- „OK, let’s take it step by step: What exactly do you want, what is your core message?“ (Knowledge should be free and accessible, everyone should be able to do something with it. So that, for example, anyone can analyse, rebuild, repair, modify or even produce a device based on open source plans).
- „Who is actually the target group you want to address? It’s mainly men between 35 and 44 who contribute to open source projects. Where are the others?“ (We at OSEG are already more diverse than the general statistics suggest. Making the group of committed people even more diverse is a declared goal that we are working on).
- „How do I find open source projects and products?“ (We can also see that this is not so easy. There are many individual projects. There is a group at OSEG that is tackling the problem with a special search engine, but there is still a lot to do).
- „Do you need technical skills or can you contribute without being a programmer or engineer?“ (Yes, of course! How about communication? Or organising all kinds of projects? We are creative! Just get in touch with us).
- „How do I get in touch with you? How do I find out what I can do with you?“ (You can get a first impression on our website or our wiki, but the best way is to contact us directly by e-mail or Telegram welcome group).
- „What about the finances, is the work paid for?“ (Well, difficult question. There’s a lot of voluntary work involved. Sometimes projects are also subsidised. Or you’re lucky and work for a company that works with open source. But it’s the conviction that keeps us together, not the money).
- „Why can’t I find any good stories? They would be really important if there’s no money for advertising!“ (Doing this is on our to-do lists.)
- „Could you give a really good example so that people can visualise this better?“ (An impressive example is the OSI² ONE MR scanner, a low-field MRI. OSI² stands for Open Source Imaging Initiative. It shows that innovation, high-tech and openness can go very well together. One of our association members is also involved in this).
- „Do you work together with companies?“ (Yes, sometimes. We would like to expand.)
- „You also do research. Will that be published?“ (Some of it is! Partly on our own wiki, but also in various publications, e.g. in the Journal of Open Hardware...)
- „We like the open learning movement! „The freedom to learn, create and develop new things“ is exactly what we want.“ (We do too, we still have some concrete ideas in the pipeline).
The openness of the students was really great and it was nice to get this compilation of ideas for implementation. They have motivated us to do more of what we have been discussing for a long time as „it would be great if…“.
Perhaps we can capture more ideas and perspectives on the points raised so that the individual view is broadened? Would be a topic for another blog post 😉
In any case, we are looking forward to lots of input from a wide range of people and organisations and, above all, to offers to get involved!
