Future of Biomaker Meetup: hosts needed

[Jenny Molloy]

Hi All

As many of you know, I am stepping down from my volunteer roles with (Bio)Makespace at the end of October and that includes organising the Biomaker meetups. After seven fun years of organising many, many bio and maker events in all forms and combinations, they are no longer compatible with my work commitments.

If you're keen for Biomaker Meetup to continue and have 1-2 hours per month to organise (plus being there on the night!), let me know and I can send full info on how to go about it. If 2-3 people are keen, even better as you're then looking at 1-2 hours every other month :)

We have funding from the university Engineering Biology IRC for catering every month (currently from Aromi!) and the IRC Coordinator Steph Norwood will attend whenever she can for Biomaker training, so the need is for Makespace members to take the reins on hosting and thinking up interesting projects. 

If no-one steps forward then sadly the event on 19 Oct will be the last.

Looking forward to hearing from you :) 

Jenny

[Richard Hopper]

I can help with hosting and am interested in the technical side, although I am not a biologist and do not particularly want to spend time doing preparation in advance, or running the group on my own. Tasks like preparing the optical sensor, whilst appearing simple on paper, took up quite a lot of preparation time (a few failed prints did not help!).

A lot of what we have been doing has been repairing / dissecting bioscience equipment. A good thing here is that we do not need to prepare in advance. However, I am not sure if Jenny can still support, or needs this doing?

An alternative format is to leave it to individuals to bring whatever project they want to work on and perhaps some of us can give technical advice. The only preparation needed for this would be occasional publicity through the forum.

Having a few of us doing the organising, including some biologists, would be better.

Just my thoughts.

Richard

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[Jenny Molloy]

Thanks Richard!

My initial vision for Biomaker Meetup was for it to be informal with minimal prep required, apart from the Meetup event and a monthly reminder on the google groups. This does mean it will stay small, reaching a wider audience in Cambridge means rising above the noise and can take a lot of effort!

The optical sensor was a departure from that, it was intended to be a biology club session but scheduling proved challenging so I suggested we merge with Biomaker Meetup, I think it has proven that for the current level of time commitment in the Biomaker Meetup group, low key is best!

In terms of repairing lab equipment, I can definitely supply things from time to time! I probably won't be able to attend meetups for 3 months or so because I have further travel for work coming up.

Let's discuss tomorrow and schedule November's session and see how it goes with locating a biology-inclined co-host!

Jenny

[Jenny Molloy]

Hi All

Richard and I chatted at the last Biomaker Meetup and decided that he will host in November and see how it goes with the original informal meeting style of "turn up and work on some cool things together".

Here is the next Meetup for Wed 16 Nov if you want to RSVP now! https://www.meetup.com/makespace/events/286561807/

I haven't added any for 2023 yet so let's see how it goes :)

It would be really helpful to have a co-host for Richard to help ensure the Meetup is posted, reminders are sent to the Makespace mailing lists and someone is around to help collect the catering.

If you think you could help with this - please shout! It's a small time commitment and you'd be doing a great favour for the Makespace community :)

It's been a pleasure organising these meetups and their predecessors for the last few years and I hope you all continue to have a lot of fun meeting like-minded people interested in biology and technology.

Hopefully see you around Makespace soon, even though I won't be attending events for a few months!

Jenny