Dear All, I just wanted to confirm that we are indeed still meeting this Friday at 6pm if that still works for everyone. At the moment I'm still trying to get us access to the Berkeley space that we discussed before for the possible East Bay DIY Bio hacker space but no word yet. So we have a choice 1. Meet at a Cafe/Bar/Restaurant (possibly Saturn Cafe) in Berkeley at 6pm 2. Alternatively, we could meet back at Sudo room at 6pm just before the hacker happy hour and talk for a while as people arrive until about 7/7.30pm? My preference (for simplicity) would probably be Sudo Room Let me and our fellow Biohacker members know if you have a preference? Please also see the agenda below compiled by Ron: 1) How to build a self-sustaining community? What sorts of organization, resources, people, physical requirements would there be to get a space off the ground? Who will be in the community and what are their goals? How might membership work? What are our self sustaining budget numbers? How will the lease and other such legal obligations work? How can we collaborate with biocurious and nextgen? Who can be our allies to build this momentum? Other topics related: legal, regulatory, fiscal requirements, organization, volunteers, building momentum, lab rules 2) Projects. Everyone loves talking about projects. Given some idea of what the community needs, how can projects build that community? Because it takes at least 6 months of focused experience to get up to speed in actual biological hacking, team projects will probably be the mainstay of the lab for a while. Team projects should probably be focused and supported by vote, but how can we gauge what is too ambitious for a first round? For example: - open benchtop* - the bioprinter project is an experience to learn from - bio Informatics support for the lab or diyBio - open source bioreagent design. 3) Appendix: Lessons learned: - Biologists involved in the core of the startup process have been pretty useful. - getting members up to speed can take months and they need mentorship to get to a level of creative practice. - projects build enthusiasm as well as get people experience - classes are important - the community is made of people all of whom are needed to build the community successfully (e.g. members, volunteers, class attendees, board members (or something like board members anyway). * BTW - This is the gogofuge link I mentioned - really a niceified dremel centrifuge. http://diybio.org/2012/06/12/gogofuge/ All the best, Ryan On Sun, Feb 17, 2013 at 9:09 AM, Ron Shigeta <rtshigeta(a)yahoo.com> wrote: -- Ryan Bethencourt Tel: (415) 794 6463 ryan.bethencourt(a)gmail.com www.bamh1.com www.linkedin.com/in/bethencourt www.logos-press.com/books/biotechnology_business_development.php