Hello, everyone.
And welcome.
I want to start by expressing how amazing it feels to have the opportunity to moderate
the last panel at the main stage at FOSDEM.
Thank you so much to all of the volunteers and the organizers who have made this incredible
weekend happen.
I just want to express that I have seen so much passion, innovativeness, and creativity
from the open source community that we are all a part of and really appreciate it.
For those who don't know me, I'm Dan Brown from Linux Foundation Energy.
I've spent the last 10 years supporting open source communities.
And what keeps me going is the knowledge that open source is not just a software methodology.
It's not just a community, even.
It's a philosophy and one that is having a massive impact on the world for good.
And that's what we're here to talk about today.
I'm privileged to be on stage with some truly intelligent, passionate, generous, hardworking,
creative people.
And I hope that we inspire you to join us in a new initiative that we believe will help
improve the lives of people all around the world.
So to give a little bit of background, it might seem obvious, but without energy and
electricity there wouldn't actually be any technology.
So none of us would have jobs in tech and open source wouldn't exist without stable,
accessible energy systems.
But as much as energy has benefited the world, it's also had unintended consequences.
We're all aware of the challenges and dangers posed by climate change.
And if we do not change the way that we produce and use energy, then the future is bleak.
So we've come here to ask you to help us prevent that worst case outcome.
The panel is going to give you an overview of some of the challenges that we've identified,
that we feel the open source community can help address for the benefit of people all
over the world.
To set the stage, the current state of power systems is not very different than it was
a hundred years ago.
And that's a problem.
It's inefficient.
It's centralized.
It's top down, proprietary for the most part.
These are all things that the open source community can recognize as far from ideal.
So we're going to present a proposal to you that can help us change that not only for
those of us in the developed world, but for individuals, millions of whom, even in 2004,
don't even have access to electricity.
So with that, I'm going to introduce our esteemed panel, who are going to tell you more about
our idea and our proposal to expand on the work that is already being done at Linux Foundation
Energy and other open source initiatives to decarbonize electric systems.
We want this to be interactive, so I'm only going to ask one or two questions to each
panelist and then encourage you all to jump in and ask us questions and also give us your
suggestions on how we can build on this proposal.
So I will start by introducing from nearest to me to furthest Chris Shee, who is head
of open source strategy at FutureWay.
Chris really is kind of the godfather of this initiative.
It's his brainchild, and so we are very thankful to him for bringing this group together.
Next is Hillary Carter, senior VP of research at the Linux Foundation, who actually did
some research reports that she's going to speak about during the panel that really inspired
this initiative.
Next to Hillary is Vivienne Barnier, CEO of the Inaccess Foundation, which is a nonprofit
dedicated to bringing electricity to parts of the world that do not currently have it.
Next is Carl Yang, CEO of Degscent Energy Technology.
Carl has gotten involved to bring us an open hardware perspective because a lot of our
initial discussions were so software focused and we realized that there needs to be a hardware
component in order to make this successful.
And finally, last but not least, is Tony Shannon, the head of digital services at the office
of the CIO of the government of Ireland.
Tony has been instrumental in advising us on how we can better engage with the public
sector and how policy can help influence these topics going forward.
So with that, I'm going to turn to the panel, and we're going to start with Chris.
Chris, you're the one who came up with this idea.
That I just mentioned for an initiative around open renewable energy systems, or OREZ, as
we're calling it for short.
Can you just give us some idea of what OREZ is and how it came about?
Sure.
I just shared earlier today about the history and the motivation of OREZ.
One year ago, exactly this month, I live in San Francisco Bay Area, California.
One year ago, at this time, we had atmospheric river events.
And that flooded the streets and also the cyclones.
My house, the roof was reploped by the cyclones.
And I was lucky enough, I only spent $1,000 to fix it.
My co-worker, probably spent about $200,000 because they live in a hilly area, and they
have maybe 30-meter tall trees that fall down and crush the wall of the house.
And today, as we speak right now in California, there are also strong atmospheric river events
right now.
So at the time, I was thinking, gee, this thing is happening, and what we can do individually
myself, ourselves.
So I'm coming from an ICT background.
So I was thinking what we can do from take the expertise and methodology and thought
process from ICT perspective.
And I think there is a lot of scenery in the energy sector.
So take that over to energy, and I see a lot of opportunities there.
There's a huge gap in terms of open source and energy.
So that's why I was very excited that we joined Lennis Foundation Energy, the open source
energy.
And one of the things what we were thinking about was that we had to really think kind
of somewhat backward.
As I mentioned, right now we have a centralized electrical system, and everybody is so, is
benefiting from that, which is you just plug it in to receive energy, receive electricity,
and you can plug in many different kind of devices.
Now we come to a time we need to rethink how we consume and how we produce electricity
energy.
The idea we had in mind was that why cannot we make it easier to produce energy and to
become energy independence?
And that's the foundation, foundational motivation of our open renewable energy system.
What we're looking to do, I want to say the result, what we envision in the future will
be that everyone will have the opportunity to go to Costco to buy an already compliance
device.
Right now you go to Costco, Walmart, you can buy a device so easy, right?
You buy a laptop, you buy a microwave, you just use it.
Why not the same thing for production of energy?
So that is the foundation of this always project.
That's the motivation.
Eventually we're thinking to have that device always compliant, but you can buy easily and
plug it in at your house.
Then you can create your own energy.
Eventually the goal is to have individual energy independence.
And that's what we're doing.
The way we want to do it is through open source.
And we have done this thing in telecommunication space.
And we will move that kind of thought process and the methodology over to the energy space.
Through building an open source API and a standard that allows manufacturers to freely
adopt those standards and build an equal system of manufacturers, vendors, of those always
compliance devices, and to reach to the masses.
So this is a grassroots effort.
And we are today we're here fortunate to be here to invite everyone to join us in this
new energy independence movement.
Thank you.
Thank you, Chris.
So I'm going to turn to Hillary next.
Hillary, I want you to talk a little bit about the part that research played in the development
of this initiative.
And I know there are two specific reports that you want to touch on.
And just so you know behind you, we've got the microgrids report up.
Thank you so much, Dan.
Hi, everybody.
It's a pleasure to be back at FOSDEN to highlight the role that research has played in the establishment
of open renewable energy systems community building.
It was more than a year ago, about a year and a half ago, that Chris approached Linux
Foundation Research, which is one of the departments that I lead, to test the hypothesis that there
was indeed a viable, valid role for open source to create better, cheaper, faster solutions
in the microgrid space, a nascent space, so that we could have widespread solutions that
enable both clean energy generation and increase access to energy solutions in remote areas
and areas that have been impacted by natural disaster.
And so what we did was create a qualitative study and interviewed 17 subject matter experts
across the energy ecosystem, including people from academia and industry, to pressure test
this idea.
Was this a good idea?
What were the opportunities for the microgrid space leveraging open source?
How could we take a nascent space and make it mainstream so that energy access is truly
democratized and that energy supply is readily available?
And what's incredibly rewarding is that research has served to plant some of the seeds for this
idea and begin to have conversations with stakeholders who then a year and a half later, at the formation
of such a working group today, can become participants.
As well, now that we have a deliverable that comprises the insights from these experts,
we have a document that we can share to say this is the why, this is the how, and here's
how you can get involved.
So I encourage you all to read this report.
You can visit LF Energy or Linux Foundation Research or scan the QR code, but read it,
share it, and get involved.
Because through greater participation and more contributions from developers, we can
indeed create a necessary future to democratizing energy, clean energy generation, as well as
distribution to those who need it most.
Next slide, please, Stan.
Another report that I'm incredibly passionate about, fairly recent, and I think you might
be of interest to all of you because you've come to a discussion about the relationship
between open source and microgrids and clean energy is our sustainability report.
And this piece of work discusses not just open source opportunities within the energy
sector, but across all open source project communities.
And our ability to make the link between open source technical projects and the United Nations
sustainable development goals is a game changer because it is a door opener.
It is a door opener to potential collaborators who have a mandate to achieve economic growth
by sustainable beings, to governments, to regulators, to enterprises, to other partners,
and can inspire new contributors to open source projects that are either intentionally or
through applications and use cases, doing incredible things to advance sustainable development.
And these reports build bridges and they generate conversations and they are a resource for
the whole community.
So I encourage you to explore the energy reports that we have, our sustainability report, microgrids
report, and beyond, and use them to your own interests and advantage.
So with that, Dan, we'll pass it back to you.
Thank you.
And I'm going to move over to Vivian.
Can you tell us a little bit about the challenges of energy access?
I have a feeling that a lot of folks don't realize what a problem it is and exactly how
you envision OREDS helping address them.
Thank you, Dan, and thank you, Chris and Hilary.
You see behind me a picture of strictly, it's like several pictures matched together because
luckily we never have this situation on earth so that everything is in the night.
But it pictures pretty well the situation that without showing you, I think you see
that there are areas where you possibly know there are a lot of people living but you almost
see no light.
This is because there is no electricity.
And that's actually bringing electricity to these areas.
This is like Sustainment Development Goal number seven, which was just mentioned.
And that's where we and access focus on and sorry I have to correct you, Dan.
As an access don't bring directly energy to people, but we want to facilitate the access
to energy through leveraging open source.
And thank you, Hilary, actually, to highlight and for this report because the idea of an
access doing this work is like based on the individual feeling of a few practitioners
of the energy access sector that open source is underexploited there.
And that's where an access was founded.
But we never had a proper research paper or something that supported our vision and mission
and our beliefs and now we have.
So that's great to see this confirmation that we are doing the right thing in the right
direction.
And now I would like to show on the next slide a bit what, oh, that's not the one I was expecting,
but it's all good.
That underlines the need for open source because you can see that there's a lot of electricity,
electrification that has been ongoing about the last decade.
However, now we have a reverse trend.
So we have more people being unelectrified every year instead of less.
And one, surely not the only one, but one of the main reasons is also there is interoperability
missing.
There are too much, there's a lot of stakeholders which is great and there are more stakeholders
emerging.
It's an eastern sector, as you said.
But do stakeholders often develop their own things by their own in parallel, often with
donor money from the same donor developing the same solution or pretty similar solution
to then provide electricity to people instead of having a baseline infrastructure with the
shared which has a common standard and common API, just as Chris said, where then the companies
can build on and build their ecosystem and their business model around by doing little
tweaks here and there where it's necessary.
But I've seen like small utility companies, like many good companies developing smart meters,
like 10 of them.
You don't need to develop a smart meter.
You need to sell electricity and you need somebody to provide you a smart meter.
And maybe your business case is a bit different for each of you, but don't lose your time
developing like another smart meter yet.
So that's just one example.
And this happens all the time.
And that's where we believe the power of open source really needs to be leveraged more in
the energy sector.
And that's where we believe to bring this perspective into the always initiative.
And yeah, I'm happy to pass over to Mike.
All right.
Thank you.
An apology is about the slide.
I thought we got that updated.
Well, next we'll move to Carl, who as I mentioned before is bringing a bit of a hardware perspective
for us.
Carl, can you talk about the state of the overall residential equipment market?
For energy and how you see OREZ playing a part in that?
So this is our POC.
This is our POC for the hardware to integrate with the architecture.
For the device, we have micro-involver, BMI and also we call it AC battery and also the
DC-DC converter.
The goal for the POC is together with the community, with the DINIX Foundation energy
projects.
We provide low voltage.
It's safe.
Higher quality and low price.
So our customer can do it yourself.
For this part, mostly along with the power, energy, specification and regulation.
For this part, we propose a strategy for the implementation for the POC.
The most important thing for current phase is the communication.
Also with the software management integration part, we focus on the energy flexibility based
on the S2 standard integrated with EMS implementation.
Later, we may focus on the open solution with the operation and the bigger data.
Basically, the goal is we try to provide together with the open source community for the hardware
to integrate with the OIS architecture design protocol and API.
Thank you.
Thank you, Carl.
Now to Tony to give us the public sector perspective.
Can you talk about why this initiative is needed from your perspective and what part
of the policy play in advancing it?
Sure.
Thanks, Dan.
I don't need to convince anybody here that whatever level you're looking at, the challenges
that we face as a people, be it a community level or government level, this is decades
in time that really matters.
When I speak, I talk about a moment that really matters.
We're all aware of the challenges that are faced around the world in terms of improving
the lives of people and looking after the planet that we live on.
We all have a challenge ahead of us in terms of people and planet.
This decade towards 2030 is a pivotal moment in time in that sense.
We know the policy frameworks out there talk about the need for digital transition and
a green transition.
That's again widely understood, but there's always an often a challenge in terms of a
gap between a nice and an aspirational policy and its implementation.
And how do you get to solve the problems of people and planet using digital and green
in a scalable and sustainable way?
Those are key questions.
We know that for instance if you look at the energy sector, it is at least in part
way down by the proprietary nature of the systems that are at play.
And Dan already mentioned the top down nature of the way energy is delivered.
So that doesn't really point to how to tackle the problem.
What we know is, and obviously FOSDEM is a living example of that, if you want to tackle
some of the most complex problems in the world, you start from the bottom up.
You innovate from the bottom up.
You have small working groups like you're all made up of that come up with ideas as to how to fix problems
and you scale them and sustain them from the bottom up.
And Dan if you could move to the next slide perhaps.
I might talk to a related pattern.
I talk a lot about the complexity of the challenge ahead of us, but if you're looking at complex
challenges, you need to simply talk about patterns.
And I think we know in the public service that actually the challenges that are required fall down
in terms of patterns around people and process and technology.
And there's a really interesting initiative out there called GovStack, which some of you may or may not be aware of.
But it's about what are the building blocks required to deliver 21st public services
and there are only about 20 that are, if you boil them all down.
And if you can focus on those core building blocks, you can transform the lives of people
using open source and reusable building blocks to change the way the world operates.
I'm pretty sure that the same principle holds true for the power, the energy transition we need to face.
The question, and I think the challenge that Ores is trying to tackle is,
what are the building blocks that are required to accommodate and move on the energy transition from the bottom up?
And that's why this work on micro grids and the Ores project really offered the potential
for a bottom up revolution and innovation in the way energy is delivered
that can be empowered really by people like yourselves to get involved in that effort.
Because all we need to do is solve this at the bottom and take it up from there
and that will transform the way the world operates.
And I'll pause there.
I think that was very well said, so thank you Tony.
So I do have more questions that I can ask the panelists,
but I kind of want to open it and see if there are any thoughts from the audience.
I'm first going to go ahead and put this up in case anyone is interested and wants to learn more.
The QR code on your left is to join our mailing list.
The one on the right is a wiki.
If you go to the wiki, there's not much there.
So this working group is still in the formation stage.
We are not even an official LF energy working group yet,
but we did not want to miss the opportunity to present this idea to a FOSDEM audience
because we really do think that there are a lot of folks here
who would be interested and can help us progress this forward.
It actually speaks to the power of FOSDEM that just since yesterday's energy dev room,
the size of our potential working group has pretty much doubled already
because we met so many great folks here.
I see Luis coming right up here actually and he's one of them
who are interested in getting involved.
For the couple hours before this panel, we actually all got together in the little bar cafe area
and started debating what this is going to look like.
And I'll say it's a debate.
We don't even agree on what this should look like.
We don't agree on how the standards should be structured.
We don't agree what kind of specs there should be.
We don't agree on what the hardware and software components should be,
but that's what working groups are for.
And that's what is great about open source is it provides us the opportunity
to build a community that can debate these issues.
So I'm happy to open it to questions and see if there are comments
and see if the audience has any thoughts.
If you have ideas, if you have suggestions,
or if you have questions for anyone on the panel, please feel free to come forward.
And if not, I do have questions I can ask,
but I want to really give you all the opportunity first.
Which countries in the world do you think are the most fertile ground for these kind of changes?
Or which are the worst?
Which would resist the hardest?
I'll take a stab at that.
And my answer is rooted in one of the contributors to the research report.
Some of the most advanced work in microgrids has come out of the University of Alaska in the United States.
And I can bet everyone here appreciates why that is.
It's a remote state, isolated from the rest of the United States geographically.
And shipping power to remote parts of the world is expensive, it's wasteful, and so on and so forth.
So I'm very encouraged by some of the academic research coming out of the United States
to help proliferate at least the ideas.
There is a lot of motivation from people in remote communities all over the world.
So I think maybe it's not so much the country, but some of the attributes of the leading stakeholders
are you in a remote area of the developed world.
And of course some of the underdeveloped countries just have this deep need for access to power
so that they can plug in and participate in online communities.
And I wonder if Vivian has any thoughts there as well.
I know you're coming from an energy access perspective.
I'm not 100% sure if I got the question.
I got the question about a country, what exactly was the question?
Which country is the most...
It's a fertile ground.
A fertile ground, okay.
Yeah, I mean as Hilary said, surely in the industrialized world, region like Alaska,
or state like Alaska for sure,
me looking into like an industrialized or under-industrialized regions.
For example, you can look at Nigeria, which is a country which actually has a power grid or several power grids,
but they are extremely unstable and there's a very huge community of companies and individuals
working throughout solving it by isolated or interconnected mini grids or micro grids.
So that's definitely a geography and a general setting.
And also Nigeria is relatively good, let's say, excessively to tech.
And so yeah, that's definitely one of the regions in the country,
but I mean there are plenty other regions to just to name one.
Thank you. And it looks like we have another question.
Yes.
Have you thought about looking into the home automation community?
Because I think OpenHAB has a booth over here,
and there are other home automation, open source home automation systems,
which I think already have energy management on their agenda,
or have some partial solutions.
Yes, yeah, okay. So the question looks like there are some organizations, similar organizations,
like the energy organization.
And what I was thinking is that we don't segregate between organizations.
Whoever who are interested, okay, who are interested in this area,
please just scan the QR code, draw on the mailing list, and have that conversation.
And be part of this movement to become a sustainable energy part of the future.
In terms of technical details on is this an energy management system?
Definitely. There are all these EMS, BMS, virtual power plant, macro grid,
all of these terminology will be involved in this project.
So yeah, so that's what I'm thinking.
Just to add quickly on that one, and it actually came up as Dan said,
our working group has like doubled since yesterday,
and one of the inputs from the new members were exactly to looking into this existing home automation,
open source organizations, companies that are already around.
They are not yet part of it, but more than welcome to pull them in in the best way we can,
and makes total sense. That's right.
I see the microphone's up there, so Chris, we'll get you next.
So somewhat related to that past question,
some academic studies show that by far the cheapest way to make reliable grids
which rely heavily on renewable energy is to incorporate a lot of,
what's called demand response, so that consumers can be sent signals
either with or without financial incentives to reduce their demand
as an alternative to employing things like gas power plants or large battery arrays
or indeed expensive transmission systems.
And I think I see this as some of the most important area that it's in to get open source into
because I see lots of closed silos and gatekeepers trying to set up in these areas at the moment
and also huge problems with things like security and privacy on an individual basis.
I mean, this is also great because you will get a lot of western hackers wanting to engage in this
because it solves their own problem as well.
So I mean, is there something that you're sort of paying to focus on heavily
or is this a sort of peripheral goal?
I'll just quickly try to handle that.
I think, Dan, the demand response stuff that you're talking about is acknowledged
as probably part of the overall solution here.
Does related work on LF Energy, do we expect to plug into that?
Is that fair?
Yeah, I didn't catch all of the question, but if you're asking about a generally demand response,
yes, I mean, that's something that's already big utilities are having to deal with that right now
as they onboard renewables because load balancing is becoming more difficult
when you have renewables versus being able to just turn up a gas turbine or not.
And so a lot of that is being driven by new ML tools, AI tools.
These are things that LF Energy is already doing on a utility scale.
I think it probably, some of that, and I'm not the most technically minded person,
so some of that may be scalable down to something like what we're talking about with OREZ,
but there are also maybe new tools that we need to develop as part of this initiative
to meet that sort of use case as well.
Can I do another tying into the previous two?
It's sort of a scoping question.
It seems to me that you have two...
Can you move the microphone closer to your mouth?
Oh, I'm sorry.
We can hear you up here.
I'm usually so loud people are complaining in the next country.
It seems to me you have a scoping issue here.
There's two obvious cohorts you could apply to,
either the underserved moment in the middle of Africa
or it could be the balcony solar crowd.
I propose something to our UK Energy Minister in 2009, which is balcony solar.
Now, if you do the latter, you're not bringing electricity to new people,
but you are helping people contribute to it and you'll get lots of Western hackers, etc.
Do you want to rule out the balcony solar crowd or rule them into your solution?
Because it seems that you've got two very separate targets there.
I hear a statement as opposed to a question that we're dealing with two very different cohorts.
Yep, you've got the underserved and you've got the already well-served,
but balcony solar, you could do some guerrilla generation and you'll get lots of feedback.
Who wants to take that?
Okay, let me add something into that.
I heard several things, demand response and also security from the previous lectures.
These are very important aspects.
First of all, this relates to the utility health and how we can help the utilities.
Our project, at the beginning, we started with a residential level, small grass-root projects,
but eventually we want to have industrial focus applications and maybe utility applications down the road.
We're starting from our human center and then house a residential level in the first place.
In terms of security, it's very important. We want to make sure other devices are secure and secure by design.
What we mean by that is that, for example, we have autonomous mode, which does not connect to the network at all in the first place.
And also we can have federated mode, meaning they join the federation and then they work together in collaboratively.
That's a little bit more on the architecture side of this, that this working group is collectively going to define together.
If you join the group, then you have more exposure and discussion and contribute your thought as well.
Welcome. Thank you.
Next?
Chris.
Hello, Chris Adams, Green Web Foundation. This sounds really cool. I really, really like it.
One of the takeaways I took away was that it seems to be about decoupling future energy access from burning fossil fuels,
which seems to be a really good thing, rather more so than converting existing demand to, like, that's already connected to the grid, right?
You know that when we have a transition, we're switching from burning fuel to having access to finance.
And one of the problems when people talk about energy access is the different ways to pay for it.
Could you talk a little bit about the role of finance and how that would play a role in this?
Because I kind of get how this would make it cheaper, which is good, but there's still a really, really big thing to address there.
I see a Hillary nodding, so maybe if I put it to you first, perhaps?
Finance. So making it affordable and cheap or inaccessible for people.
I'm going to refer to a previous report that I had produced, which was focusing on decentralized energy and incentivizing the establishment of the prosumer energy movement.
And if we look at Brooklyn, New York, there was a project called the Brooklyn Microgrid.
There was no energy access problem in Brooklyn.
There was an experiment to see if we could do better, if we could produce clean energy ourselves on our rooftops, share it, and not be in violation of any regulation.
And these ideals are absolutely possible.
We just have to put in the mechanisms and have favorable regulations so that people can produce their own energy.
If they have an excess energy, sell it to their neighbor and do that within a regulatory framework and a payments framework that is accessible and affordable and universal.
So all of these building blocks need to come together.
It really requires the collaboration of governments and regulators to make microgrids possible, whether they are in Brooklyn or whether they're in Nigeria.
And also giving people the incentive to charge their devices at non-peak hours.
One of the experiments that we, a pilot project that took place in Canada, was with our energy distribution operator, as well as a payments network, and using blockchain technology, giving actual economic incentives to people.
To make green choices.
And until we commercialize green so that it is cheaper and a better, or just more accessible than fossil fuel burning choices, we're just not going to get there as quickly.
We have to work with government incentives and individual incentives.
Did Vivian or maybe Tony or Vivian, or Chris, please?
I think the key word here is finance or affordability.
And this is exactly what Orres is trying to address.
Why?
Look now.
If you want to install your home energy system, at least mine from America, I believe in California.
The company will approach me saying, okay, if you want to install a Tesla system in your house, that costs you about $40,000 to $50,000.
Half of that is going to be labor cost, permitting cost, all the other installation things.
The rest will be equipment.
But if we do it with Orres way, that's why the thing happens.
It's open.
When it's open, what that means is open standard.
That means it drives and tries to build and foster an equal system of vendors and suppliers, installers.
Once you have mass adoption of this, then the prices will go down, both in terms of the labor cost and in terms of the equipment cost.
Especially, that was the reason one of the motivations of Orres design is the plug and play that reduces the labor cost.
That $25,000 right off the bat is gone.
See, that's the open source way.
And that will systematically and dramatically reduce the cost of renewable energy systems.
That was the one, the prime motivation of Orres.
Okay, so that's why. Please join us.
I'm not sure if you were also asking particularly about the finance question for energy access.
In particular, so is this possibly going beyond this panel?
I'm pretty happy to engage with you in the discussion after work in this area quite a lot.
And would say, as Chris said, we are contributing to it, but we can't solve all problems at the same time.
It might drive down the costs, so make it easier, but we are not like a financing mechanism.
We're not inventing a new financing mechanism to it.
It's also needed, and maybe Tony has some ideas on the policy side.
So, I mean, yeah, the finance aspect is reducing costs here, not inventing or developing another finance mechanism.
Great if somebody has ideas and make that open source even better.
Another question?
On the joining part, so can you tell us about the prerequisites for someone to make a meaningful contribution or put another way?
I'm just a software developer. I don't know any about energy distribution hardware stuff.
What can I contribute? What can I bring to the table?
I mean, I can talk a little bit about that and I'll let the panel weigh in as well.
But, you know, this is true of any open source project.
Like, anyone can contribute and get involved.
You don't have to necessarily contribute code.
You can contribute. We will need help with organization.
We will need help with marketing. We will need help with probably doing events and notes keeping and maintaining websites.
And if you're interested in contributing in that sort of way, please still sign up for the mailing list and let us know that.
I'll happily give you tasks to do.
And one thing, if you don't know anything, your question is, if you don't know anything about energy, how do I contribute?
And then everybody in this room, you can help contribute.
Just spread the word. Take the picture of those QR codes.
Send it to your friends. Spread the word.
Not only particularly in this working group, this project is an open renewable energy system.
This project, per se, but spread the concept, the mission of ORES.
We want to get more people involved and think about ways how we can help create renewable energy resources and to live more sustainably.
Just one more addition. And pretty sure from here in a few months down the line, we will have very specific work tasks that need to be addressed
and that can perfectly be addressed by somebody without any energy background.
So, yeah, go on the mailing list. Stay tuned and it will get every time more concrete and also more detached from particular energy or energy access knowledge.
Alright, I see we've got about three minutes left, so I think you'll be the last question.
It's really interesting to hear from you guys and I thought it was also interesting how you said there are so many different ideas about the approach to the problem.
So, I was wondering, like, what are the main conflicting perspectives or ideas about the implementation of this idea?
Sorry, the implementation of...
The conflicting ideas about the implementation of the whole system that you guys were describing.
Oh, I alluded to that. There was some disagreement in our earlier working group meeting.
We have more agreement than disagreement.
This is true. Yes, there's more agreement than disagreement.
Otherwise, we don't have that many people come here.
So, your question is about more implementation. Is that right?
Yeah, like, what are the disagreements, essentially?
What are disagreements?
Yes.
Oh.
I think the disagreement... You know what? I don't really think we have much disagreement.
I think the reason we have a lot of discussion was because there may be some understandings.
Right? It's a very loud room. Sometimes we couldn't communicate clearly.
But eventually, people come together.
Eventually, people come together. That demonstrates a lot of interest, a lot of consensus,
and also a lot of passion.
People now are joining together into this project.
So, with respect to detailed implementation, then you will know that we have joined the mailing list, the working group.
Then we'll have more discussion as to how we're going to do this.
We've got some ideas already.
And just come join us.
Sorry, just a quick word on perspectives on implementation.
For me, the issue is perfection is the enemy of the good, as you all know.
So, I'm here because I believe this mission, but we need to see this in action.
So, we're trying to find the common ground. Where do we get our first implementation?
Kick it around. See how it works. See how it doesn't work. Go from there. It's as simple as that.
Any final word? We've got about one minute left.
I just wanted to say, I think there was more conversation around who should we invite?
How do we get started? What are the priority issues?
This is a big idea, and we want as many people involved as possible.
So, I echo Chris, Dan, and everybody on this panel to say, spread the word, share what you've learned today,
and share the reports if they help bring in new stakeholders.
And we look forward to hearing from you.
Alright, thank you all so much. Feel free to grab any of us afterwards if you have any other questions.
Thank you so much. Is this the...
I want to say one more thing. I'm not sure. Is this seem to be the last?
Is it the last?
No, there's one more after us.
There's one more? Okay, this is the second to the last conversation here.
So, if people stay here at Leislang after these two days of photo, give us a big shout.
Thank you.
And, join us, and we'll all be part of this movement. Thank you guys.