Kickstarter

OSLOOMers,

We are a day late with our October progress report. My apologies, but I was away at the International Textiles and Apparel Association Conference this weekend. We have a few updates since the last report. I attended the Open Hardware Summit at the end of September. It was incredibly inspiring! It was amazing to see so many folks involved in creating hardware with the mindset of open knowledge and access. The Open Hardware license that is being developed by the group that put together the conference is almost at version 1. I hope to use this license for the OSLOOM.

Additionally, a very exciting turn of events! Upon my arrival at Kent, I applied for a fellowship, the Farris Family Innovation Fellowship which if awarded was to be up to $8,000 (renewable up to a total of 3 years). The exciting turn of events is that the provost has nominated OSLOOM to receive the award. This means, not only will we have enough funding for an initial prototype, but possibly to help put together the initial kits, resources, and be able to attend events like Maker Faire where folks can see and weave on the prototype. Since it is up to a 3 year fellowship, the time and funding also allows for feedback from users and further development and refining of the initial loom model. I still have yet to receive word as to when and how the funding gets exchanged but it certainly is exciting that there is more funding to work with for testing and building.

I leave you with a few things to look forward to.
Cheers,
~margarita

Development Blog
We have setup a private development blog as an area where the team can discuss and focus solely on the development of the loom.

Website ETA: January 1, 2011
We are hoping to launch the new website with the start of the new year. We had narrowed the content management system to drupal (with a slight thought of mura and wordpress). After a few emails came in about the simplicity of wordpress, we decided to take another look at it. We have since begun development on wordpress for the site. We will have a forum and wiki portion on the site for the loom(s). Thank you all for your wonderful feedback.

It is our intention to make OSLOOM.org a repository for free loom plans in general – not just our loom(s). With the launch of the new site, we will be putting a call in for any open source loom plans folks may have. I think by putting plans online for various looms aids in not just informing the public at large that there are many different types of weaving possible, but also serves the weaving community to access such information easily. I’d like to know your thoughts on this.

Scarf rewards
I am hoping that the first set of scarves arrive in my hands by the end of this week.
In addition, a post will go online and emailed out about fabric care for the textiles and scarves. Again, my apologies for the delay on this!!!

Upcoming event: Artist Talk @ ASU on Nov 17
I will be giving an artist talk at Arizona State University on November 17th. I will post the specifics once I receive the information. If you are in the area please come by and introduce yourself.