Open Call : DIY Collab Teams

I'm working on my MFA for Design & Tech at Parsons in New York, and my thesis is on DIY collaboration teams. I propose a set of open source knowledge collaborations. The benefit will show when our innovations make it to the products we use daily. I envision the forum section as a discussion area, with the instruction set side being more of a workspace. I will also create a wiki to act as a collection of the innovations / knowledge gained from these projects. Why is this interesting? This community has a ton of potential, with users that have specialized skills in almost any industrial field. We already modify or create things as we see necessary, and teach each other what we learned in the process. I believe that if we could collaborate on focused topics there is no limit to the innovation we could produce. It doesn't make sense for product users to be left out of the design process. This is not a new idea, some of the best innovations and discoveries were made by users, not corporations. One of the benefits is that nobody would own the rights to any portion of the project, so it leaves open the possibility for further innovation from interested parties. The main theme here is interest; innovation comes from a community like ours where people are actually interested in what they do. The focus of my research is about the nature of participation within these mini-communities, however you probably know that I will not be able to just sit aside and observe. So within the next week I will be jumping in on a topic that I can contribute to. As for other topics that are proposed, I am more than happy to do whatever I can to help, and I will hook up with the teams to observe the collaborations. Anyone interested, and if so, what topic would you like to collaborate on?