Note: Cross-posting from the ThingsCon blog.
We’re happy to announce that we’re setting up ThingsCon e.V.—a Germany-based membership association—to further promote ThingsCon’s mission: To foster the creation of a human-centric & responsible IoT.
It’s a not-for-profit structure with 7 founding members (as German regulations require) and will be open for new members once the registration process is completed, most likely in April 2017.
A few days ago, we gathered the founding members to kick off the official process (in alphabetical order):
- Prof. Andrea Krajewski (Hochschule Darmstadt)
- Emanuel Schwarz (ThingsCon)
- Max Krüger (ThingsCon, Global Innovation Gathering)
- Michelle Thorne (Mozilla Open IoT Studio)
- Peter Bihr (ThingsCon, The Waving Cat)
- Ricardo Brito (The ThingCast, IoT Service Kit)
- Simon Höher (ThingsCon, Forrrest)
Having this not-for-profit structure will help us interface with other organizations more easily in terms of both advocacy and funding. After all, it’s easier for any organization to interface with another organization rather than a lose network of collaborators backed by a small company as has been the case before.
Simultaneously, our friends in the Netherlands have also set up a foundation for ThingsCon Amsterdam. So we’re very happy that our little rebel alliance for responsible IoT keeps growing and maturing.
It now includes a “core” ThingsCon group made up one association in Germany and the Netherlands plus local organizers, plus (helping out wherever needed) the founders’ companies (The Waving Cat in Germany and The Incredible Machine & info.nl in the Netherlands). And we work very closely and side-by-side with a number of other organizations with aligned values and mission statements including the Just Things Foundation, Mozilla’s Open IoT Studio and others.
With this organically grown, trust-based setup and two associations that make it even easier to join and support our shared cause and mission, we’re in a great position to do what we set out to do: Promote a responsible IoT and make sure that IoT works well for everyone.
