Small is Beautiful Empowering Local Communities with Open Hardware
summary
Argues that small towns gain practical civic tech by shipping hardware not just apps, claiming open vehicle tracker units (GPS GPRS MicroSD, OpenWRT backend) and a cigarette-butt adopt a Butler collector actually deploy in Bangor and Portland; cites ~50 hackathon participants and real builds rather than prototypes. Shows a librarian’s working scanner made from a lobster trap (scanon lobster-trap scanner), explains legal procurement and maintenance hurdles that block scaling despite low-cost Arduino/Raspberry Pi solutions.
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chapters (30)
- 0:00Introduction
- 1:52Code for America
- 5:11Super Mayor Emanuel
- 11:41The Clown
- 13:43The Numbers
- 14:34Participatory Democracy
- 16:21Town Meeting Day
- 17:28Bean Supper
- 18:11Code for America Brigade
- 19:07Town Warrants
- 22:34Traditional Forums
- 23:01Charitable Mechanics Association
- 24:21Local Fridge
- 24:59The Maker Anthem
- 28:16Physical Hacking
- 29:06Documentation
- 31:54GitHub
- 32:46Industrial Design
- 34:27Adoptive Butler
- 35:20Other Applications
- 35:37School Buses
- 36:03Automatic Vehicle Location
- 36:31Mesh Network
- 40:05GitHub for Procurement
- 40:34Presidential Innovation Fellows
- 41:35Government on our side
- 43:07GitHub for Open Hardware
- 44:23The Role of GitHub
- 44:53Hardware Summit 2012
- 45:14Open Hardware Inclusion
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