How big is the DIYBio community? #OPENBIOTECH vlog series

[Pieter Waag]

We just published the third episode of our #OPENBIOTECH vlog series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpVp9YH8Znc

This time I am trying to do a sensible estimate of the size of the DIYBio community. I really wonder what your best estimate would be. 

There are nearly 6000 people on this mailing list, but are these really all active DIYBiologists? The mailing list of our lab in Amsterdam alone already contains over 1000 people, so I guess that's not a great way to make an estimate.

On the "local" lab page of the diybio.org site there are about 100 labs listed. Does every lab have at least 10, 50 or perhaps 100 active members?

And how about the DIY neuro/brain, (animal) breeders, nutrition/foodhackers, grinders/bodyhackers (just check #biohacking on instagram)? Do you think these should be considered as part of the DIYBio movement as well? The vlog also contains an interview with Christine Marizzi of the DNA Barcoding project. In think it is fair to include their participants as well. Do you agree?

For the vlog I assumed it was safe to say there are about 5,000 people in Europe involved in this scene. That's my best guess for now. 500 feels like a too small number to me, while 50,000 is way too much. So I suppose the order of magnitude is right. 

[Kermit Henson]

I feel that this number is not real. For example, a local research center has 1.000 people working on biology stuff. Just 2 of them are related to diybio. 

Those 5.000 are like "facebook friends" or are more like "real friends"?

50 or 100 active members per group? No way man xD but, believe me, I really would like it. Counting 10 it's generous, but it depends on the groups. 

So, how I would approach this problem? Let's start counting groups perfoming workshops or whatever, but they must be active and do real things (meetups to talk about science don't count, sorry). You may guess that those groups are formed by 3-4 active people (which is the usual core number in any kind of organization). You can do a simple poll asking the group of reference and what do they do, at a personal level, related to DIYBio scene. In fact, I feel we need more real data if we want to approach to EU to get grants or a coherent legislation. 

Should we start a real market research about DIYBio? The only real data available is from ¿2007? I can check if anyone is interested

[Jason Bobe]

AFAIK, i think one of the first/last formal surveys published was the 2013 Wilson Center report. I think it would be good to do a solid survey every 5 years. by chance i'm speaking to daniel tomorrow, who wrote-up much of the report. will get his feedback. 

Here are the survey results:

http://www.synbioproject.org/publications/diybio_survey_results/

And the publication:

http://www.synbioproject.org/publications/6676/

i played a small role in helping to edit the initial draft of survey questions way back when. It is definitely a good idea for people to look and see if the questions in that survey are relevant today, or need updating...

jason

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[Sebastian S Cocioba]

I wonder how many plant people are on the list. Show of hands? 

Sebastian S. Cocioba

CEO & Founder

New York Botanics, LLC

Blog: ATinyGreenCell.com

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[Kermit Henson]

that was the report i was refereing to.

El jueves, 2 de marzo de 2017, 23:27:01 (UTC+1), Jason Bobe escribió:

AFAIK, i think one of the first/last formal surveys published was the 2013 Wilson Center report. I think it would be good to do a solid survey every 5 years. by chance i'm speaking to daniel tomorrow, who wrote-up much of the report. will get his feedback. 

Here are the survey results:

http://www.synbioproject.org/publications/diybio_survey_results/

And the publication:

http://www.synbioproject.org/publications/6676/

i played a small role in helping to edit the initial draft of survey questions way back when. It is definitely a good idea for people to look and see if the questions in that survey are relevant today, or need updating...

jason

On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 12:18 PM, Kermit Henson <kerm...@gmail.com> wrote:

I feel that this number is not real. For example, a local research center has 1.000 people working on biology stuff. Just 2 of them are related to diybio. 

Those 5.000 are like "facebook friends" or are more like "real friends"?

50 or 100 active members per group? No way man xD but, believe me, I really would like it. Counting 10 it's generous, but it depends on the groups. 

So, how I would approach this problem? Let's start counting groups perfoming workshops or whatever, but they must be active and do real things (meetups to talk about science don't count, sorry). You may guess that those groups are formed by 3-4 active people (which is the usual core number in any kind of organization). You can do a simple poll asking the group of reference and what do they do, at a personal level, related to DIYBio scene. In fact, I feel we need more real data if we want to approach to EU to get grants or a coherent legislation. 

Should we start a real market research about DIYBio? The only real data available is from ¿2007? I can check if anyone is interested

El jueves, 2 de marzo de 2017, 17:47:50 (UTC+1), Pieter Waag escribió:

We just published the third episode of our #OPENBIOTECH vlog series: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WpVp9YH8Znc

This time I am trying to do a sensible estimate of the size of the DIYBio community. I really wonder what your best estimate would be. 

There are nearly 6000 people on this mailing list, but are these really all active DIYBiologists? The mailing list of our lab in Amsterdam alone already contains over 1000 people, so I guess that's not a great way to make an estimate.

On the "local" lab page of the diybio.org site there are about 100 labs listed. Does every lab have at least 10, 50 or perhaps 100 active members?

And how about the DIY neuro/brain, (animal) breeders, nutrition/foodhackers, grinders/bodyhackers (just check #biohacking on instagram)? Do you think these should be considered as part of the DIYBio movement as well? The vlog also contains an interview with Christine Marizzi of the DNA Barcoding project. In think it is fair to include their participants as well. Do you agree?

For the vlog I assumed it was safe to say there are about 5,000 people in Europe involved in this scene. That's my best guess for now. 500 feels like a too small number to me, while 50,000 is way too much. So I suppose the order of magnitude is right. 

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[Pieter]

The thing with statistics is of course the problem of scope definition. I'd very interested in setting up a new survey!

@Sebastian, once we start including the home growers in the definition, 5.000 is all of sudden a very conservative estimate. On itself http://www.wietforum.nl has already 32.000 members. Although there is not much molecular stuff going on over there. The bulb flower breeding community is more active on that front.

[Marc Dusseiller]

interesting discussion...

from my side, having visited many places that are doings stuff around DIYbio, i would also reduce the numbers a lot.

for now it doesnt make sense to include the foodies and growers, cos your policy work is more specific i think.

if you also not count a random person that once joined a "strawberry DNA extraction" at a booth in a makerfaire...

talking for europe i would but the number even below 500.

looking at who is active in the various maillists... i' even go down to 100.

sorry pieter... why you even want to put a number like 5000 in Europe?

so, globally we can still stand for something like 2000?

greets,

marc

[Pieter]

Thanks for sharing your estimates. I am also unsure about the numbers. 5000 seemed like a decent estimate at first. Some, not all, growers are doing pretty advanced molecular stuff. Also, I remember deriving my first design of a laminar flow hood from a description on a orchid amateur website: http://www.orchideenvermehrung.at/english/lfh/use.htm

Anyhow, I just returned from Warsaw and Bucharest where I met with people active in DIYBio stuff around there. Even though these people never popup on the mail lists it is pretty cool stuff they are up to. I will show the footage of a Warsaw basement lab in the next vlog

[ukitel]

I guess at this point it depends what "activity threshold" you would put for the definition of biohacker, which is an interesting question per se.