[open-science] Advice for starting an open community lab/biomakespace?

Mon Nov 30 16:33:17 UTC 2015

Hi Jenny,

While you will have lots of places and people to talk with (I do suggest La Paillasse in Paris and Forma Labs in Cork), I can share a bit from my current experience. I am spending the next few months in residence at CUBE, a tiny biohacker space at the Centre for Science Education in Mumbai that you too visited last year with me. Since I am here for a lot longer time now, I am getting a chance to see it on a daily basis. 

There is no code-of-ethics, instructions, membership fee or any bureaucratic hurdles. Pretty much the only requirement is a desire to learn, tinker, and help out. They do have a mandate to focus on young kids, particularly those from otherwise less-privileged backgrounds (India has a ton of those). There is no right or wrong, everyone is encouraged to ask questions, make stuff hands-on, try out. A few of those young kids stick around, and as they gain experience and put in time, they rise up in their responsibility and things they can do. It has been fascinating to see the process first-hand.

So, here is what I am getting at. Definitely talk to as many biohackerspace folks as you can, do things the right way, but more than any thing, focus on the user. Eliminate as many hurdles as possible, be they legal, money, regulatory, etc., and try and make it as easy as possible for the user to use the space, for that is the reason you are gonna exist.

Then you too will experience joy like I felt today when I saw this https://twitter.com/punkish/status/671239925476540416

> On Nov 30, 2015, at 7:29 PM, Laura James <lbjames at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> Hi Jenny, 
> 
> We can certainly talk about Makespace Cambridge (which I cofounded) but perhaps you are looking for something more focussed on biolabs?  The hackerspaces.org wiki has some guidance https://wiki.hackerspaces.org/ and of course FabLabs, one model, are pretty well documented. There's a definite lack of written help out there, mostly because community spaces are often run on volunteer labour and/or are stretched in resource just to get open and keep operating, and writing up is dull :)  
> 
> The RSA is doing some work on this eg https://www.thersa.org/discover/videos/rsa-insights/rsa-insights-makerspaces/ and there's an event this Wednesday with livestream https://www.thersa.org/events/2015/12/rsa-makers-summit-2015/  Following the Maker Assembly earlier this autumn I hope there will be some further activity on UK makerspace processes/admin etc... 
> 
> Nesta has a dataset about existing spaces which might have useful pointers to further info if you can find relevant spaces to draw upon: http://www.nesta.org.uk/uk-makerspaces-data and there's the UK hackspaces list too: http://www.hackspace.org.uk/wiki/Main_Page
> 
> Finally, the classic advice for creating community workshop spaces in creating the right framework is to start from your community, work out what you all need, and then fit something to that. There's almost as many ways of running a space as there are spaces, and one size does not fit all. Best to find some spaces that feel like they have similar communities, and get inspiration from them. 
> 
> Best of luck!
> 
> Laura
> 
> On 30 November 2015 at 07:19, Jenny Molloy <jenny.molloy at okfn.org> wrote:
> Dear All
> 
> I have an exciting opportunity to start a community biology lab here in Cambridge (UK), which would be fantastic for several local projects we've got going around open technologies (which I should definitely share in more detail soon!).
> 
> Has anyone set up a biohackspace/makespace/community lab and could you send me any examples of governance documents, figures for number of members, information on how you keep such a space sustainable financially and anything else you have that could feed into our deliberations on how to run the space?
> 
> I've found one site from GenSpace which is really useful http://openlab-blueprint.org/ but it'd be good to see if their solutions have worked elsewhere.
> 
> Things are moving quite quickly so apologies for the rushed email! I'd be delighted to talk to anyone who can offer advice so while publicly posted documents would be best and most helpful for others, if it's more convenient to chat then just get in touch!
> 
> Jenny
> 
> 