Hello OCLUG: I would like to start an open source single-board-computer (phone, tablet, laptop, watch or other wearable computer) design contest at the University of Ottawa. I have only spoken to one computer science professor about this and she is interested in the proposal. The contest could be hosted by the University of Ottawa Makerspace and prize money could come from sponsors like the university, the Ottawa Canada Linux User Group (up to $500) and possibly some others, if anyone has any other suggestions. I am not sure if the Raspberry Pi Foundation, Intel, Canonical, Redhat or Suse would be interested, but it might be worthwhile asking to them. The goal would be for students to learn about the open source development process and 3D printing. Students could design and print prototypes at the uOttawa Makerspace. This could all be done in preparation for a fair where other students and faculty could try out prototypes and vote. The best designs would then be available for other students to print / buy and the designers could win a monetary prize. The vast majority of students on campus seem to be using Macintosh and Windows based machines, even among the Engineering and Computer S/E students. I think that if we can show them how cool free software and hardware are, then maybe more students will use them. If students design laptops (like the PiTop) and they are a success and we decide to sell them, we could even have students on campus using computers that other students from the university designed and made. Any machine the students design will be able to run GNU/Linux, and of course Windows 10 if they like that... but we can showcase Linux by default. The contest could be run annually and students would be able to improve and modify designs from the previous year. For the first year, the PiTop could be used as a reference laptop design. I actually purchased a PiTop, which I will probably show to the Makerspace to get them interested. Please tell me what you think and thank you for reading my proposal, Bryan Paget About me: I'm a mature math and computer science undergrad (at the U of O). My interests in computing include neural networks, functional programming, free software and hardware and I have been using Ubuntu and Debian for more than three years. I've actually had an interest in free software for much longer, but I had a difficult Macintosh for a number of years that would not play nicely with Linux.