I really wish I could go to this conference in December… it sounds amazing!

The first Exceptionally Hard & Soft Meeting (EHSM) will feature presentations of the brightest DIY achievements. But we do not want to stop at DIY. In fact, we should not, because teamwork is the only way to get the big things done.

The open source ethos is about keeping the freedom and openness of DIY when many people are involved. At a time when thousands of developers from hundreds of companies contribute to Linux and the world’s largest physics laboratories share openly licensed hardware designs on OHWR, we will explore the cutting-edge open source hardware and software practices.

This premiere of the EHSM will be held in Berlin on December 28-30 2012. Everyone is welcome to attend it. Curiosity is enough to qualify, and we have kept the minimal entrance fee affordable.

Speaking of which, if you’re interested in attending you should buy your ticket now, because pre-sales will help ensure the success of the conference. Here are three additional speakers who have signed on!

Harald Welte will present the Osmocom project he founded. In particular, there will be OsmocomBB, a free software GSM stack evolved enough to actually make phone calls and send SMS (plus all the possible explorations of the GSM system), and OsmoSDR, a small-size, low-cost software defined radio device.

Last year, CERN launched a new open hardware license. Evangelia Gousiou will tell you about this endeavour which was created to govern the use, copying, modification and distribution of hardware design documentation and the manufacture and distribution of products in the spirit of knowledge and technology dissemination. For the more technically-minded, she will also present the White Rabbit, an open hardware and software Ethernet-based system to synchronize ~1000 nodes with sub-nanosecond accuracy over fiber and copper lengths of up to 10 km.

Nadania Idriss is a California transplant who founded Berlin Glas e.V. in 2009. The studio is the first in Berlin to offer hot glass for artists and the general public. Check out her short presentation to learn how you too can work with this material!

[photo credit: Jasper Nance]