The DUB Shorts format focuses on sharing a research paper in a 15 to 20-minute talk, similar to traditional conference presentations of a paper. Speakers will first present the paper, then participate in Q&A.
DUB shorts will be conducted using Zoom, via an invitation distributed to the DUB mailing list. Participants who are logged into Zoom using a UW account will be directly admitted, and participants who are not logged in to a UW account will be admitted using a Zoom waiting room.
Carnegie Mellon University
https://www.megan-hofmann.com/
The Right to Help and the Right Help: Fostering and Regulating Collective Action in a Medical Making Reaction to COVID-19
Medical making intersects opposing value systems of a medical ``do no harm’’ ethos and makers’ drive to innovate. Since March 2020, online maker communities have formed to design, manufacture, and distribute personal protective equipment (PPE) and other medical devices needed to fight the COVID-19 pandemic. We present a participant observation study of 14 maker communities, which have developed differing driving principles for efforts with varied access to interdisciplinary expertise on online platforms that mutually shape collective action. Over time, these communities unintentionally align towards action-oriented or regulated practices because they often lack higher level insight and agency in choosing communication platforms. In response, we recommend: regulatory bodies to build coalitions with makers, online platforms to give communities more control over the presentation of information, and repositories to balance needs to distribute information while limiting the spread of misinformation.
Georgia Tech
Medical Maker Response to COVID-19: Distributed Manufacturing Infrastructure for Stop Gap Protective Equipment
Unprecedented maker efforts arose in response to COVID-19 medical supply gaps worldwide. Makers in the U.S., participated in peer-production activities to manufacture personal protective equipment (PPE). Whereas, medical makers, who innovate exclusively for points of care, pivoted towards safer, reliable PPE. What were their efforts to pivot medical maker infrastructure towards reliable production of safe equipment at higher volumes? We interviewed 13 medical makers as links between institutions, maker communities, and wider regional industry networks. These medical makers organized stopgap manufacturing in institutional spaces to resolve acute shortages (March–May) and chronic shortages (May–July). They act as intermediaries in efforts to prototype and produce devices under regulatory, material, and human constraints of a pandemic. We re-frame their making efforts as repair work to offer an alternate critical view of optimism around making for crisis. We contribute an understanding of these efforts to inform infrastructure design for making with purpose and safety leading to opportunities for community production of safe devices at scale.