[DIYbio] Re: Advice on biohacker space growth/sustainability please!

You pose some good questions that we at Open Science Network in Vancouver are working to answer and, no doubt, many on this list are also facing. We are a registered non-profit (since June 2015) and everyone is a volunteer. All of our board members have been working really hard (when each of our times permits) to give our small community biolab a stable foundation for long term prosperity. People are fickle in this modern world but I do believe there are people in our city who can become deeply-engaged as members. We are starting to see them. The issue is what is the value proposition to attract those people and their energies. Certainly you can do a lot of free events and the dabblers will come and go but some of them will hang on for the ride. We are just starting to see that. Each organization has to work to figure out what their value propositions are and those may change over time. We are the first DIY biolab in the city. It takes time for people to find us. I think in the early phase of setting up a DIYbio one has to try as many things as possible to get the word out.  Meetup.com has been essential and we have been using MailChimp.com for our newsletters. Facebook is important to. All of this social media stuff takes time so it is important to distribute the work. 

Each city and country has their own issues and challenges. Vancouver, as I suspect is true for Sydney and I know is true for Melbourne where I grew up, is an expensive city to rent space in. People in this city pay a huge amount just to put a roof over their heads. That sucks money out of the economy. In this early stage we have the challenge of paying the rent by charging for workshops but the more we charge the less people are willing to participate. The initial phase is always the challenge. You want to look good to potential sponsors and patron but you don't have all the time to finesse things. 

We have been trying have a diversity of interesting events from free to paid to get our name out there - talks, workshops, journal clubs, etc. We have been limited by the number of pipettes which limits the number of participants in our workshops. Fortunately, a fellow who just moved here and who works for a company that calibrates pipettes for academia and industry donated a couple more sets all cobbled together form spare parts. People like this do come out of the wood work and over time your community builds. 

We have also but up a crowdfunding campaign on our WordPress website using the IgnitionDeck plugin. It has just launched but it is not Kickstarter with their instant crowd of members. Kickstarter campaigns do take a lot of effort up front and our group is tapped out at this stage. I do think the global DIYbio community, as represented on this list, can help each other with ideas and even crowdfunding support (hint hint). I'd love people on this list to look at our website and let us know how we can improve things. Feedback is essential.

There are valuable lessons in Erik Reis' Lean Startup ideas (http://theleanstartup.com/principles). You have to get out there and iterate. Keep your cost down and just move forward. I also believe there are parallels to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours concepts. I hope it won't take that long but I think you have to just keep moving forward as best you can and eventually you will get to a tipping point where you can become stable. I know there are funding bodies in Vancouver and federally in Canada but in order to access those funds we need to have some street creds. 

Also, keep an eye on local media events to see how you can leverage their news events to bring new people to the lab.

I'd love to hear what other's experiences and working ideas are in there communities.

Good luck,

Scott

Co-founder, Open Science Network, http://www.opensciencenet.org