[DIYbio] Re: Status/purpose of biohacklabs.org?

Hello everyone, 

I am honoured that you picked up synbio.info in your discussion, that means a lot to me - thanks! : ) 

It started out as my personal notebook in the beginning of 2015 and when I met my first SynBio friends in April this year, they asked me if I could make it public - that's how it happend and now I am spending 100% of my work time on it. My background is software dev, business and engineering - so I had to learn everything biological, and basically all I know is on there. 

In the beginning of next year, we will set up a non-profit organisation and it's mission is to bring more people into SynBio. How? 

1) First, you need to learn the (scientific) language of biology. That's why we build this Browser Extention a few days ago, it highlights words and when you click them you get the definition, see a video and can ask questions (ok, that doesnt work yet really, will take a few more days). 

2) Then you need to learn the basics of genetics, engineering concepts, etc. - that's what www.synbio.info is about 

3) Now its time to get involved, either find a job or - and I would love to work with you guys on this - find the next biohackspace and get involved there (I am often in contact with the guys from London's https://biohackspace.org, here in Berlin and Munich, we are still in the very early days).

Anyone interested in joining the mission? 

Wiki Tech

Synbio.info is based on confluence.atlassian.com, pretty much market leader in knowledge management systems. I've been working with it for 8 years and it's capabilities and user friendliness are amazing. Sure, it's not open source but I trust these guys. It's the company behind JIRA, and they have built a very special kind of company. I haven't been working a lot with Media Wiki, but from my perspective its too nerdy for the audience that we have in mind - everyone should (and is) able to edit every page, you see the edit button everywhere and no signup is required. However, people that signed up will stay updated on every page's change so that's the feedback mechanism to ensure content quality.

@Cathal: You got the domains, i got the software. When anyone wants to use them together, let us know. It took us about an hour to set up this subdomain: art.synbio.info - it has the same features as synbio.info, but its kinda standalone. We could do the same for a Biohackers wiki, if anyone is interested on working on this together.

 

@Ilya: What content are you talking about? I guess the sort of content will tell you where to put it. Also, try creating a new page on synbio.info. You will be shown a list of templates, let me know if we should add a template for protocols and stuff. 

The nice thing about using this proprietary software is that it has a huge market place: marketplace.atlassian.com. So far, we wrote 45 Apps for customizing Confluence to what we need. We will sell those apps / macros to companies that want to have the same features for their intranet (non-profits, universities, etc. will get everything for free - which is also the reason why we can use it for free). So if that works, we might even have a business model that ensures that we can persue that mission until the whole world is involved in SynBio ;-) 

OpenWet Ware

OpenWet Ware is pretty cool, but in my opinion addresses actual users & researchers in synbio, telling you what protocols do use etc. (what else can you do there?). Funny enough, just noticed that its from the BioBricks Foundation - we are currently working on another project with them.Learn "currently" now

Best, 

Jérôme

Am Samstag, 19. Dezember 2015 17:55:56 UTC+1 schrieb Ilya Levantis:

Hi all,
At some point in the past, at some DIYBio meeting or other, it was mooted that a general biohacker's wiki would be useful.
Thus, I believe, http://www.biohacklabs.org was set up.

I have some content that I would like to put up there since it is content that would benefit from edits and additions from anyone involved in DIYBio.
Is biohacklabs.org a good place to put this and are there others that would like to add content to the site?

It currently seems a bit dead - presumably because the signup is broken and you never get sent the password for an account you create.

If whoever is in charge of the site is able to fix this, should the community start putting information up there about protocols, projects etc that is useful outside each particular space's own wiki or should we just be putting things on openwetware?

I say this because lots of useful information about particular DIY protocols, equipment, etc seems to be spread across the internet with very little effort at collation. I think collation in the form of a community wide wiki (i.e. biohacklabs.org) could be a great asset, especially for those new to DIYBio.

Note: I'm not saying that everyone needs to use a centralised wiki for everything, but a page about different protocols for homemade/cheap growth media production which links to the various blog posts and instructables could be a valuable starting point for people.

Ilya