IMPACT YOUR COMMUNITY.
You’ve taken the first step towards something greater.
Congratulations! If you’re reading this, you’re well on your way to becoming a force for good. If you’re driven by a love for community, education, and open-source, and want a place to flex your skills, you’ve come to the right place. We never discriminate on race, colour, religion, age, sex, national origin, disability status, genetics, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or any other characteristic protected by law. All we ask for is an ambition to equip individuals with essential skills and foster a love for technology and innovation in your local community. If that’s what excites you, read on.
A few rules before we begin:
Everything is FREE.
We work on a zero-money model, no strings attached. Aside from grants and other fundraising activities, all contributions by members are by their own will as mutually agreed with other project members. If members choose to do so, they may donate or lend funds and/or hardware towards any project, if they feel that doing so will help the project succeed.
Everything is OPEN SOURCE.
All projects will be open sourced under strong copyleft licences. We make use of the GNU AGPLv3, CERN-OHL-S-v2, and CC BY-SA 4.0 licences for all our works. While projects will be under our banner, members will be individually credited for their roles in the project. We also encourage collaboration with external entities.
Everything is FOR GOOD.
We will always work towards the greater good. All our projects will aim to satisfy at least one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals, specifically focussing on Quality Education; Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure; and Reduced Inequalities. If there’s a grassroots problem that needs solving, we’re game.
Sounds good? Here’s how we work.
We follow a federated system of Local Student Chapters (LSCs): local groups embedded in different colleges across various geographic locations that serve as hubs to direct grassroots impact in the area. All LSCs are free to collaborate with each other and recruit members to work on locally-relevant projects, thereby building a community of and expanding their reach. Each LSC capitalizes on their inherent advantages and strengths, be it proximity to industries and research centres, connections with changemakers, or being pioneers in a certain field. Each LSC is free to chart their own path under our banner, as long as the three tenets are followed. All LSCs communicate with each other on a common forum where they can trade ideas and seek assistance from other LSCs, supervised by a central core mentor group comprising LSC alumni that directs the overall vision of the organization.
I’m an individual contributor!
Individual members are usually directed to the closest LSC wherever possible (the recommended option). We also welcome contributions to our projects hosted on GitHub and volunteering towards other local initiatives.
I want to form my own LSC!
If you feel that your college or area will benefit from an LSC, reach out to us with a short roadmap of how you intend to grow your community. We’ll help you figure out how you can gather the knowledge and channels to make it happen.
Some frequently-asked questions:
Where do you acquire the funds for your work?
As of this writing, we rely on external grants and other fundraising measures to shoulder a majority of the costs. Individual members also lend hardware they have for the duration of the project they are part of. Most of our operating costs, such as keeping this website up, are paid out of pocket — that’s how committed we are.
Is this a company or a non-profit?
While we’re a registered company, we’re still an open-source group at heart, meaning that we don’t show all the usual trappings of a centralized organization. We aim to sow the seeds of a decentralized community that will exist even without us, forever free, autonomous, and growing towards good.
Do you offer internships/jobs?
Most members move around roles as they work on different ideas and projects, so we don’t follow a fixed personnel structure. However, we do provide students wishing to volunteer their time a way to document their contributions under a more structured internship framework!
How much time do I need to dedicate to this?
As many or as few hours as you want. All we ask for is consistent communication and engagement. We’re students and working professionals with day jobs and personal lives that came together to take time out of our weeks to work towards something that’s greater than the sum of its parts — we need all the help we can get.
Can I work on solo projects?
By all means! As long as you take the first step on the journey to becoming a better engineer, who says you can’t walk this path alone?
Isn’t this very hard?
It is — that’s why we do it. And that’s why we need people like you to carry the mission forward.
Thank you for your response. ✨
Open Horizon Robotics 