Keynote: Building an Open Source business around hardware and software

Vortrag

Gordon shares his experience of turning an Open Source project that was becoming hard to support in his free time into a viable business that has supported his full-time work for the last 4 years. He'll include the lessons he's learnt from 3 KickStarter campaigns, preorders on Celery and selling on Tindie, and will discuss some of the difficulties of running a business that combines both Open Source software and hardware.

Vorkenntnisse
No pre-existing knowledge needed, although the idea behind the talk might make more sense if people have some idea what a microcontroller/arduino does and can be used for.

Lernziele
People will leave with some ideas on how to turn their prototype into something they can sell and possibly live off – without having to take funding and go the corporate route, or risk losing their house :) I hope they'll gain some enthusiasm to try it themselves.

Referent

// Gordon Williams Gordon Williams

Gordon has been working on Espruino for the last 4 years, an Open Source (hardware and software) JavaScript interpreter for microcontrollers. He has run three successful KickStarter campaigns, and has been able to fund himself to work on Espruino full-time. Before that he worked in a variety of areas, from compiler design to 3D graphics, and did a degree in Computer Science at Cambridge university.