ECSA stakeholder roundtable

[R. Trojok]

Hey Synenergeners,
yesterday I participated at the Do It Together (DITO) Science EU Program stakeholder roundtable.
This is what the website states about the project:

"Doing It Together Science (DITOs) will implement many innovative participatory event formats across Europe focusing on the active involvement of citizens in two critical areas: the cutting edge topic of biodesign and the pressing area of environmental monitoring. The project will advance the EU Responsible Research and Innovation agenda by moving beyond more traditional approaches into direct engagement that builds upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel into policy action at different levels.
The consortium includes a pan-European network (European Citizen Science Association ECSA - linking practitioners, scientists, and supporting policy makers), SMEs (Tekiu; Eutema), universities (UCL; Université Paris Descartes - CRI; Université de Geneve), science galleries, museums and arts organisations (Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova; Medialab-Prado; RBINS) and NGOs (Meritum Association; Waag Society). These organisations cross multiple countries and languages, enabling coverage of much of Europe in its native languages.
Dr Katrin Vohland (Naturkundemuseum Berlin), vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association added: "DITOs provides a great opportunity not only to experiment with different pathways for different persons and communities to engage at different intensities but to enhance mutual learning for lasting effects at the interface of science and society.""

It sounds like smooth language, but in reality, when you meet the people on the spot, it becomes obvious that the only organisations that have any ties and reputation in grassroots citizen science projects are the Waag society and the art people from Kapelica Gallery. The rest of them were classical institutes that understand citizen science in a top down fashion in the style of:
Let the illiterate citizen do the laborous work for the scientists, they will be happy and grateful to make a contribution.
It made the impression as if DITO and ECSA use a lot of not or poorly understood buzzwords like
biomimicry, biodesign, do it together science, mutual learning, Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Science

During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between grassroots and top down citizen science.
Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships for DITO for instance wants citizen science
in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to research institutes. unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work in the field.
Somtimes Naturkundemuseum boss Vogel hovers over the scene like a zeppelin, far away and bloated beyond proportion, not involved in the discussion on citizen science and most likely not even noticing the contradictions in the DITO program. At one time a strange Journalist from the TAZ (communist newspaper in germany) grabbed me and questioned me on the relationship between islamic state terrorists and biohackers, which i never heard of to this point. He bought my book and may feature it in TAZ. (not a nice thought to be put in such a context, but at least it would boot the sales :)
Luckily, Waag society leader Lucas Evers a biohack-promoter and beneficiary was speaking up against attempts to criminalize biohacking.
  
In contrast to this top down attitude, Egle, a biohacker and science communicator from Technarium Hackerspace, Lithuania, came unpaid participant to the event. She told me her perspective:
_What does “responsible research” mean for your project?
including everyone in the research process who wants to be included - by doing citizen science, by helping to build lab tools, by organizing the activities; allowing all "citizens" to play a part, if they want to be a part of it
communicate the research process & the results to a wide audience, as clearly as possible, without jargon (blog)
educate everyone involved (as well as just hearing about the project) about what we're actually doing; all citizens have the right to understand, and to ask as many questions as they like
_How is “open science” relevant to your project?
"open" is at the core of what we do at Technarium. We believe the process of science (not just results) needs to be shared with each other, and with the public
open science allows other people to build upon our ideas & our work. What comes out of Technarium is totally free to grab
-          Where do you see common ground between Citizen Science and DIYScience?
both "communities" believe science can and should be done beyond the walls of academia
some DIY scientists are already citizen scientists - we are doing the same thing; except we are completely grass roots, but that is included in the definition of citizen science
we have the same goals: contribute to knowledge gaining, solve major problems like fossil fuels, disease etc., improve the scientific understanding of the public, push the boundaries of science

Another external visitor in the stakeholder meeting, Eugenio Battaglia, Hackeria member and a frequent participant of my workshops and events in Synenergene and co-creator of the Biocommons concept
complained to me about this unpaid work citizens are asked to do when taking part in RRI processes:

"Yea, I did not "work", like I didn't have a contract whatsoever : ^ ) like many of these consortia is not clear the type of engagement, but even if it were only correcting your text writing application trying to connect some value between the two thing, or neurotically translate the paper to in a night of august to put it online, that's for me working. There's no money nor contract involved, and I know! But I value also other types of currencies, like respect. Ah, yea, besides, traveling (not always reimbursed), organizing at my expense the event in Italy, and pretty much a lot of my time and attention connecting with people, and helping you. Yea, "I didn't worked", in fact I don't claimed to have had a contract. I don't blame it to you, of course. but the type of engagement and crowdsourcing of people's brain in such kind of consortia is not always clear. That's why I got nausea of this public stuff."
This struck me personally, as i was the one doing the RRI in the grassroots community for years, asking my friends, colleagues and citizens to participate in the events for synenergen, making the promise we
can actually influence EU comission politics on Citizen Science. I noted this down and read it during the stakeholder workshop to Ron Dekker, Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation He seemed to understand it and replied something like that we have to build a parallel structure for citizen science, as it is not going to work with this old people
from the institutes (yes, it has something to do with a generational shift in academia!)


In a response to the ECSA show-off in Naturkundemuseum hackteria posted this comment on their facebook page:
"The new schicki-micki scene of citizen science.
As often these days #culturalamnesia Someone yesterday told me: "You pay taxes, and you do citizen science for twenty years or something, then somebody win a grant to understand citizen science, stealing a lot of your concepts, idea and work, apparently ignoring your existence or the existence of what you represent, without respect. But then they know you and they offer you to participate (for free of course!), but only in events organised in the Tuesday morning(!)... because yeah, every citizen science activist is usually free during the week. He/she doesn't have a job. You know? They just go around and do everything for free, that's why we love them, they might think up there". It's a war between poor people, because at the end you cannot even blame any random researcher probably more prekariat than you who ends up doing part of his exploitational PhD or post doc cause the PI happen to be in such kind of consortia #sick #diwym
    https://www.facebook.com/hackteria/?ref=nf


Lucy Patterson, a unemployed grassroots citizen science practitioner (PhD. in moleular Biology and former Science Communicator). She is well known as has a long track record in Citizen Science in Berlin. She founded and leads the Berlin Science Hacking Community (http://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Science-Hacking/), which formed around Science Hack Day Berlin (http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/): a mix of scientists, designers, developers, artists and enthusiasts who hack together in their spare time on interdisciplinary projects that take DIY approaches to scientific ideas, data, or methodologies, repurposing/subverting/celibrating/questioning them for cultural/societal/scientific applications. As a volunteer organisation she says, they are very limited in scope, but their approach, accumulated expertise, and community would offer great potential for knowledge transfer and citizen science. In terms of policy support, their community would request:

_ a way to connect our community to academic science in a more substantial way (i.e. not just PhD students in their limited spare time). I would advocate for funding to support hackspaces, DIY bio labs, or science shops inside universities or (scientific/cultural) institutions that encourage serious collaboration between university/institution researchers at all career levels together with groups/communities from OUTSIDE of those universities/institutions. Good examples are the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace in London (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/) and the Manchester Metropolitan Digital Innovation Space (http://diginnmmu.com/). Both provide support to mixed internal/external communities. Taking full advantage of the potential of these kind of collaborations would make everyone feel like their time was well spent.

_ funded positions for community managers (this work is time-consuming and usually very undervalued), either through grants or as staff positions, perhaps at the kind of hackerspaces mentioned above.

_ instead of only funding new initiatives, offer sustainability funding for pre-existing successful volunteer-run projects that might otherwise die out - rather like funding basic infrastructure for DIY science communities (funding space, personnel, some basic overheads) - this gives such communities the chance to professionalise and start applying for further funding. For example, it is only through this kind of funding that publiclab has become so successful.

_ maker communities bridge the line between citizen science and knowledge transfer - perhaps it makes sense for the two strands to sometimes join forces in terms of policy-making and funding.

_ similarly, DIY science/maker communities have a lot more to offer science than just the development of DIY data collection tools for volunteer data collection. But IMO it's still an open question - is citizen science ONLY about novel empirical research, or does it also include scientific knowledge transfer...?

_ to ensure that DIY science (typically volunteer-run projects/communities, without the resources or capacity to afford conference registration fees or to attend weekday meetings) can expect the same level of representation and support as any other stakeholder in the citizen science movement, if it is claimed that they are part of that movement. (added by Rüdiger: the last event by ECSA cost 380€ entrance fee and there were bodyguards shielding off the public from the venue)

Another person from EU comission level, Dr. Philippe Galiay, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation
told us during the workshop that the EU comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science.
http://opendays2015.lodzkie.pl/dr-philippe-galiay/
       
Taken together, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, DITO and ECSA are showing off as biohackers and DIYbio people, althought they have no clue what they are talking about (with few exceptions).  
Most obviously, the claims of Biodesign is ill guided and most likely unsuccessfull attempt to override the
emancipatory and anti-authoritatian narrative inherent in biohacking culture, while maintaining the fancy aspects of the topic.
The appearance of DITO and ECSA was unprofessional, showed a lack of knowledge of their very topic citizen science and acted disrespectul and
exclusive to grassroots organisations and individuals. DITO seem to me to be a kind of "potemkin village" for EU commission to cash in using fashionable buzzwords.

In general, the concept and outcomes of RRI need to be critically reviwed. If there is no real world impact, RRI means stealing valuable time of volunteering citizens for nothing.

Lessons learned for Synenergene: We need to make sure to feed our insights and experience to the EU comission level so that our work was not in vain.
The citizen science policy must not be implemented in a top down fashion and the needs and potential of grassroots communities
need to be taken into account and adressed adequatly. This means grassroots Citizens Scientists need to be able to influence
where these 480M Euro will be spent. If not, people will understand quickly that they were tricked and then RRI will a dead concept very soon.
Further, a knowledge transfer between Synenergene RRI practices and DITO to prevent or maybe even reverse the ongoing degradation of the RRI idea is an important move.
Mr. Schomburg and the other policy makers we were working for all these years, the ball is in your field now, show us that RRI and citizen involvment in EU politics is a two way road.

Thanks for reading to the end.
Best,
Rüdiger Trojok




      

[Markus Schmidt]

Dear Rüdiger!

Thanks for your insights and thoughts on the workshop, which reveal IMO a wider underlying problem. 

When I saw the announcement of the Workshop it struck me that few active DIYBio or Hackers were on board, and reminded me of similar initiatives here in Austria supporting top-down citizen scientists, that pretty much aim to extend the exploitation of precarious researchers to non-scientists. 

(see: https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/forschungsfoerderung/fwf-programme/foerderinitiative-top-citizen-science/ and of course this is aimed to citizens of both sex regardless of age, sex or social class /‚Dt: Bürgerinnen und Bürger unterschiedlichen Alters, Geschlechts und sozialer Herkunft.. To emulate PC goodie points)

This might be because of ignorance, of other forms of involvement of non-scientists or because the old institutions have no interest in handing over their "sovereignty of interpretation“ /Dt. Deutungshoheit) to the un-initiated citizen scientists. 

A sign of a power struggle between established traditional institutions and grass roots movements?

In the field of astronomy this systems seems to work, but is based on a large enthusiastic group of amateur astronomers, who – by the way – don’t get paid but are at least respected by their professional colleagues and even mentioned when the contribute to important findings.

You mentioned that " the EU comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science“ do you have any source for that claim? The Galley site doesn’t say anything about it!

Best wishes, Markus 

[John Griessen]

On 11/09/2016 07:28 AM, R. Trojok wrote:
> During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between grassroots and top down citizen science.
> Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships for DITO for instance wants citizen science
> in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to research institutes. unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work
> in the field.

Thanks for telling us about this trend. Maybe with reference to TV's Big Bang Theory sitcom, this clueless self important
behavior by the institutional stakeholder scientists can be pointed out to the regulators with the purse-strings of the 480M.

Regulators may be as clueless about official scientist attitudes as science content.

[Markus Schmidt]

CC: "I cannot really believe, however, that in fact 48,000k EUR…“

Rüdiger wrote 480 Mio, not 48 Mio.

That is really hard to believe!

Markus  

[R. Trojok]

fowarding for christopher:

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------

Betreff:	AW: [all] Fwd: ECSA stakeholder roundtable
Datum:	Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:53:59 +0000
Von:	Coenen, Christopher (ITAS) <christoph...@kit.edu>
An:	R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com>, a...@synenergene.eu <a...@synenergene.eu>

Sorry for crossposting as well! 

And here my response to the various lists (-- with Philippe, by the way, I have recently talked about Synenergene when I met our PO --) in which I try to outline (again) some options in Synenergene: 

 Dear all,

My impression is that certain socio-economic and funding-related aspects of citizen science (and of DIY-style grassroots activities in particular) which have been discussed on some of the mailing lists addressed by Rüdiger and in other contexts for quite some time now, are now increasingly gaining relevance in discussions, also against the backdrop of a rather massive funding under the label 'citizen science' taking place not only on EU level but in various EU Member States, in the US, and elsewhere.

I cannot really believe, however, that in fact 480,000k EUR are earmarked for citizen science activities; but this should be easy to find out. With a view to the question of how citizen science in the DIY sense will develop in the future, it will also be important to understand better how the EC plans to frame possible future funding (for example what kind of institutions and stakeholders are expected to be included, and how).

As regards the closing remarks by Rüdiger in which he mentions the Synenergene project in which some of you have been involved, I would recommend not to overestimate the relevance of one single project. And Rene von Schomberg is, as far as I know, not so much involved in the EC's activities on citizen science proper. Moreover -- and please do not see this as arrogant but just as a remark from the perspective of someone with a political science background who is involved in EU projects etc. for quite some time now --, the idea that the "ball is in the field" of "policy makers we were working for all these years" is not reflecting the role of EC staff (who are not policy makers) and also oversimplifies the decision processes within and around complex institutions.

But it was and in fact still is an aim of the Synenergene project to help the DIYBio grassroots community to bring in its perspective on the EU level, also within the context of responsible research and innovation. In the last couple of years, I have learned that this community is very diverse and I have the impression that the stance(s) in this community towards politics and the policy sphere etc. sometimes make it difficult for the community to act as efficiently as other, more established stakeholder groups. I want to point out that it is part of the mandate of our project to support true mutual learning among all stakeholders, also with a view to funding policies. So, if the community, or members of the community will draft a statement, position paper or the like, we will be happy to help create attention for it. The project will end, however, in June 2017, so in order to be able to support the raising of awareness for it effectively, the document would need to be drafted already in Winter.

Best regards Christopher 




________________________________________
Von: all [all-b...@synenergene.eu] im Auftrag von R. Trojok [ruedi...@gmail.com]
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 19:58
An: a...@synenergene.eu
Betreff: [all] Fwd: ECSA stakeholder roundtable

sorry for crossposting!

Hey Synenergeners,
yesterday I participated at the Do It Together (DITO) Science EU Program stakeholder roundtable.
This is what the website states about the project:

"Doing It Together Science (DITOs) will implement many innovative participatory event formats across Europe focusing on the active involvement of citizens in two critical areas: the cutting edge topic of biodesign and the pressing area of environmental monitoring. The project will advance the EU Responsible Research and Innovation agenda by moving beyond more traditional approaches into direct engagement that builds upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel into policy action at different levels.
The consortium includes a pan-European network (European Citizen Science Association ECSA - linking practitioners, scientists, and supporting policy makers), SMEs (Tekiu; Eutema), universities (UCL; Université Paris Descartes - CRI; Université de Geneve), science galleries, museums and arts organisations (Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova; Medialab-Prado; RBINS) and NGOs (Meritum Association; Waag Society). These organisations cross multiple countries and languages, enabling coverage of much of Europe in its native languages.
Dr. Katrin Vohland (Naturkundemuseum Berlin), vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association added: "DITOs provides a great opportunity not only to experiment with different pathways for different persons and communities to engage at different intensities but to enhance mutual learning for lasting effects at the interface of science and society.""

It sounds like smooth language, but in reality, when you meet the people on the spot, it becomes obvious that the only organisations that have any ties and reputation in grassroots citizen science projects are the Waag society and the artist from Kapelica Gallery. The rest of them were classical institutes that understand citizen science in a top down fashion in the style of:
Let the illiterate citizen do the laborous work for the scientists, they will be happy and grateful to make a contribution.
It made the impression as if DITO and ECSA use a lot of not - or poorly - understood buzzwords like:
biomimicry, biodesign, do it together science, mutual learning, Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Science

During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between grassroots and top down citizen science.
Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships for DITO, for instance wants citizen science
in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to research institutes - unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work in the field.
Somtimes Naturkundemuseum boss Vogel hovered over the scene like a zeppelin, far away and bloated beyond proportion, not involved in the discussion on citizen science and most likely not even noticing the contradictions in the DITO program. At one time a strange Journalist from the TAZ (a small green-left newspaper in Germany) grabbed me and questioned me on the relationship between islamic state terrorists and biohackers, which i never heard of to this point. He bought my book and may feature it in TAZ. (not a nice thought to be put in such a context, but at least it would boot the sales :)
Luckily, Waag society leader Lucas Evers, a biohack-promoter and beneficiary was speaking up against attempts to criminalize biohacking.

In contrast to this top down attitude, Egle, a biohacker and science communicator from Technarium Hackerspace, Lithuania, came as a unpaid participant to the event. She told me her perspective:
_What does “responsible research” mean for your project?
including everyone in the research process who wants to be included - by doing citizen science, by helping to build lab tools, by organizing the activities; allowing all "citizens" to play a part, if they want to be a part of it
communicate the research process & the results to a wide audience, as clearly as possible, without jargon (blog)
educate everyone involved (as well as just hearing about the project) about what we're actually doing; all citizens have the right to understand, and to ask as many questions as they like
_How is “open science” relevant to your project?
"open" is at the core of what we do at Technarium. We believe the process of science (not just results) needs to be shared with each other, and with the public
open science allows other people to build upon our ideas & our work. What comes out of Technarium is totally free to grab
-          Where do you see common ground between Citizen Science and DIYScience?
both "communities" believe science can and should be done beyond the walls of academia
some DIY scientists are already citizen scientists - we are doing the same thing; except we are completely grass roots, but that is included in the definition of citizen science
we have the same goals: contribute to knowledge gaining, solve major problems like fossil fuels, disease etc., improve the scientific understanding of the public, push the boundaries of science

Another external visitor in the stakeholder meeting, Eugenio Battaglia, Hackeria member and a frequent participant of my workshops and events in Synenergene and co-creator of the Biocommons concept
complained to me about this unpaid work citizens are asked to do when taking part in RRI processes:

"Yea, I did not "work", like I didn't have a contract whatsoever : ^ ) like many of these consortia is not clear the type of engagement, but even if it were only correcting your text writing application trying to connect some value between the two thing, or neurotically translate the paper to in a night of august to put it online, that's for me working. There's no money nor contract involved, and I know! But I value also other types of currencies, like respect. Ah, yea, besides, traveling (not always reimbursed), organizing at my expense the event in Italy, and pretty much a lot of my time and attention connecting with people, and helping you. Yea, "I didn't worked", in fact I don't claimed to have had a contract. I don't blame it to you, of course. but the type of engagement and crowdsourcing of people's brain in such kind of consortia is not always clear. That's why I got nausea of this public stuff."

This struck me personally, as i was the one doing the RRI in the grassroots community for years, asking my friends, colleagues and citizens to participate in the events for synenergene, making the promise we
can actually influence EU comission politics on Citizen Science. I noted this down and read it during the stakeholder workshop to Ron Dekker, Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation He seemed to understand it and replied something like that we have to build a parallel structure for citizen science, as it is not going to work with this old people
from the institutes (yes, it has something to do with a generational shift in academia!)


In a response to the ECSA show-off in Naturkundemuseum hackteria posted this comment on their facebook page:
"The new schicki-micki scene of citizen science.
As often these days #culturalamnesia Someone yesterday told me: "You pay taxes, and you do citizen science for twenty years or something, then somebody win a grant to understand citizen science, stealing a lot of your concepts, idea and work, apparently ignoring your existence or the existence of what you represent, without respect. But then they know you and they offer you to participate (for free of course!), but only in events organised in the Tuesday morning(!)... because yeah, every citizen science activist is usually free during the week. He/she doesn't have a job. You know? They just go around and do everything for free, that's why we love them, they might think up there". It's a war between poor people, because at the end you cannot even blame any random researcher probably more prekariat than you who ends up doing part of his exploitational PhD or post doc cause the PI happen to be in such kind of consortia #sick #diwym
    

https://www.facebook.com/hackteria/?ref=nf


Lucy Patterson, a unemployed grassroots citizen science practitioner (PhD. in moleular Biology and former Science Communicator). She is well known as has a long track record in Citizen Science in Berlin. She founded and leads the Berlin Science Hacking Community (http://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Science-Hacking/), which formed around Science Hack Day Berlin (http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/): a mix of scientists, designers, developers, artists and enthusiasts who hack together in their spare time on interdisciplinary projects that take DIY approaches to scientific ideas, data, or methodologies, repurposing/subverting/celibrating/questioning them for cultural/societal/scientific applications. As a volunteer organisation she says, they are very limited in scope, but their approach, accumulated expertise, and community would offer great potential for knowledge transfer and citizen science. In terms of policy support, their community would request:

_ a way to connect our community to academic science in a more substantial way (i.e. not just PhD students in their limited spare time). I would advocate for funding to support hackspaces, DIY bio labs, or science shops inside universities or (scientific/cultural) institutions that encourage serious collaboration between university/institution researchers at all career levels together with groups/communities from OUTSIDE of those universities/institutions. Good examples are the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace in London (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/) and the Manchester Metropolitan Digital Innovation Space (http://diginnmmu.com/). Both provide support to mixed internal/external communities. Taking full advantage of the potential of these kind of collaborations would make everyone feel like their time was well spent.

_ funded positions for community managers (this work is time-consuming and usually very undervalued), either through grants or as staff positions, perhaps at the kind of hackerspaces mentioned above.

_ instead of only funding new initiatives, offer sustainability funding for pre-existing successful volunteer-run projects that might otherwise die out - rather like funding basic infrastructure for DIY science communities (funding space, personnel, some basic overheads) - this gives such communities the chance to professionalise and start applying for further funding. For example, it is only through this kind of funding that publiclab has become so successful.

_ maker communities bridge the line between citizen science and knowledge transfer - perhaps it makes sense for the two strands to sometimes join forces in terms of policy-making and funding.

_ similarly, DIY science/maker communities have a lot more to offer science than just the development of DIY data collection tools for volunteer data collection. But IMO it's still an open question - is citizen science ONLY about novel empirical research, or does it also include scientific knowledge transfer...?

_ to ensure that DIY science (typically volunteer-run projects/communities, without the resources or capacity to afford conference registration fees or to attend weekday meetings) can expect the same level of representation and support as any other stakeholder in the citizen science movement, if it is claimed that they are part of that movement. (added by Rüdiger: the last event by ECSA cost 380€ entrance fee and there were bodyguards shielding off the public from the venue)

Another person from EU comission level, Dr. Philippe Galiay, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation
told us during the workshop that the EU comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science.
http://opendays2015.lodzkie.pl/dr-philippe-galiay/

Taken together, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, DITO and ECSA are showing off as biohackers and DIYbio people, althought they have no clue what they are talking about (with few exceptions).
Obviously, the claims of Biodesign is ill guided and most likely unsuccessfull attempt to override the
emancipatory and anti-authoritatian narrative inherent in biohacking culture, while maintaining the fancy aspects of the topic.
The appearance of DITO and ECSA was unprofessional, showed a lack of knowledge of their very topic citizen science and acted disrespectul and
exclusive to grassroots organisations and individuals. DITO seem to me to be a kind of "potemkin village" for EU commission to cash in using fashionable buzzwords.

In general, the concept and outcomes of RRI need to be critically reviwed. If there is no real world impact, RRI means stealing valuable time of volunteering citizens for nothing.

Lessons learned for Synenergene: We need to make sure to feed our insights and experience to the EU comission level so that our work was not in vain.
The citizen science policy must not be implemented in a top down fashion and the needs and potential of grassroots communities
need to be taken into account and adressed adequatly. This means grassroots Citizens Scientists need to be able to influence
where these 480M Euro will be spent. If not, people will understand quickly that they were tricked and then RRI will a dead concept very soon.
Further, a knowledge transfer between Synenergene RRI practices and DITO to prevent or maybe even reverse the ongoing degradation of the RRI idea is an important move.
Mr. Schomburg and the other policy makers we were working for all these years, the ball is in your field now. Show us that RRI and citizen involvment in EU politics is a two way road.

Thanks for reading to the end.
Best,
Rüdiger Trojok

[R. Trojok]

forwarding for steffen:

-------- Weitergeleitete Nachricht --------

Betreff:	Re: [itas-synbio] ECSA stakeholder roundtable
Datum:	Thu, 10 Nov 2016 10:32:00 +0100
Von:	Steffen Albrecht <steffen....@kit.edu>
Antwort an:	steffen....@kit.edu
An:	Coenen, Christopher (ITAS) <christoph...@kit.edu>, ma...@dusseiller.ch <ma...@dusseiller.ch>, R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com>
Kopie (CC):	Markus Schmidt <sch...@biofaction.com>, itas-...@lists.kit.edu <itas-...@lists.kit.edu>, FOR-synenergene <synen...@for.kit.edu>, bioco...@bioartsociety.fi <bioco...@bioartsociety.fi>, Kit...@hackteria.org <Kit...@hackteria.org>, Digest Recipients <diy...@googlegroups.com>

Dear all,

Sorry to step into this discussion with just two brief remarks (the 
whole issue would merit a more extensive debate, of course):

- the EC mentions four current funding opportunities for citizen science 
here (plus some running / finished projects): 
https://ec.europa.eu/digital-single-market/en/citizen-science

The overall budget for these specific calls is 25 millions Euro, so the 
43 m. seem not too far away. BUT: typically, these programmes include 
all different kinds of activities, so we should not take this figure as 
the amount that is spent on citizen science projects directly, but 
rather it could be the sum that the EC spents in total for various 
activities related to citizen science.

- That leads us to the question about the role of the EC with regard to 
citizen science and how funding yould be organised to better support 
bottom up projects such as in DIYbiology. There is currently a survey 
runnig to evaluate Horizon 2020:
https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/bb3fb8f9-8a14-476a-81ae-f6212bee7feb
I'm not sure how much the views expressed in that survey count in 
designing future funding programmes, but at least it's one opportunity!

The EC website on citizen science mentioned above also links to the 
Digital4science platform, saying "Have your say on Citizen Science and 
any Open Science topic on the Digital4science platform" 
(https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/digital4science/tags/e-infrastructures).

But I don't really see how you can have a say on that platform...

Best regards,
Steffen


https://ec.europa.eu/eusurvey/runner/bb3fb8f9-8a14-476a-81ae-f6212bee7feb

Am 10.11.2016 um 04:46 schrieb Coenen, Christopher (ITAS):
> Dear all,
>
>
>
> My impression is that certain socio-economic and funding-related aspects
> of citizen science (and of DIY-style grassroots activities in
> particular) which have been discussed on some of the mailing lists
> addressed by Rüdiger and in other contexts for quite some time now, are
> now increasingly gaining relevance in discussions, also against the
> backdrop of a rather massive funding under the label 'citizen science'
> taking place not only on EU level but in various EU Member States, in
> the US, and elsewhere.
>
>
>
> I cannot really believe, however, that in fact 48,000k EUR are earmarked
> for citizen science activities; but this should be easy to find out.
> With a view to the question of how citizen science in the DIY sense will
> develop in the future, it will also be important to understand better
> how the EC plans to frame possible future funding (for example what kind
> of institutions and stakeholders are expected to be included, and how).
>
>
>
> As regards the closing remarks by Rüdiger in which he mentions the
> Synenergene project in which some of you have been involved, I would
> recommend not to overestimate the relevance of one single project. And
> Rene von Schomberg is, as far as I know, not so much involved in the
> EC's activities on citizen science proper. Moreover -- and please do not
> see this as arrogant but just as a remark from the perspective of
> someone with a political science background who is involved in EU
> projects etc. for quite some time now --, the idea that the "ball is in
> the field" of "policy makers we were working for all these years" is not
> reflecting the role of EC staff (who are not policy makers) and also
> oversimplifies the decision processes within and around complex
> institutions.
>
>
>
> But it was and in fact still is an aim of the Synenergene project to
> help the DIYBio grassroots community to bring in its perspective on the
> EU level, also within the context of responsible research and
> innovation. In the last couple of years, I have learned that this
> community is very diverse and I have the impression that the stance(s)
> in this community towards politics and the policy sphere etc. sometimes
> make it difficult for the community to act as efficiently as other, more
> established stakeholder groups. I want to point out that it is part of
> the mandate of our project to support true mutual learning among all
> stakeholders, also with a view to funding policies. So, if the
> community, or members of the community will draft a statement, position
> paper or the like, we will be happy to help create attention for it. The
> project will end, however, in June 2017, so in order to be able to
> support the raising of awareness for it effectively, the document would
> need to be drafted already in Winter.
>
>
>
> Best regards
>
> Christopher
>
>
>
> *Von:*dus...@gmail.com [mailto:dus...@gmail.com] *Im Auftrag von *Marc
> Dusseiller
> *Gesendet:* Donnerstag, 10. November 2016 03:50
> *An:* R. Trojok
> *Cc:* Coenen, Christopher (ITAS); Markus Schmidt;
> itas-...@lists.kit.edu; FOR-synenergene; bioco...@bioartsociety.fi;
> Kit...@hackteria.org; Digest Recipients
> *Betreff:* Re: ECSA stakeholder roundtable
>
>
>
> Good morning and greetings from Seoul,
>
>
>
> not so surprised by reading these words. thx Rüdiger for "speaking out"...
>
> i have been observing various similar projects, DITOs aswell as others,
> and also seeing the same patterns.
>
> also we started to analyse budgets / rethorics and defined some points
> of action in these circumstances. see our notes:
>
> https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrOuW6UkLd8-1DPab7XYFPIyGSy2LEdmv8w0M_YGh7U/edit#heading=h.6kvxltu19xhe
>
>
>
> a similar top-down approach is growing also in switzerland. the original
> idea of the "Zurich Standard for Citizen Science" to be exclusively
> going towards "all funding for CS must go to established universitites"
> seems to be filed into some drawer.
>
> http://www.citizenscience.ch
>
>
>
> but rumours go that in Zurich we will soon see the rise of a "Center for
> Citizen Science"... how contradictory is that :-) you can guess who will
> host that "Center".
>
>
>
> greetings,
>
> marc
>
>
>
> On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:34 AM, R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com
> <mailto:ruedi...@gmail.com>> wrote:
>
> Hey all,
>
> @Christopher, thanks for correcting the TAZ comment.
>
> @Markus, Chris de Lutz from Artlaboratory Berlin verified the 480M Euro
> for citizen science. We both heard it, he even
>
> asked a second time to make sure we heard it right and he reconfirmed
> the number to me by email later
>
> me: "who was the guy who mentioned the 480m euro thing?"
>
> Chris: "Dr. Philippe Galiayin the keynote - his slides may be viewable
> ask Claudia..."
>
> Please ask Claudia Göbel for more info:
> http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/about-us/contact
>
> Best,
>
> Rüdiger
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> Am 09.11.2016 um 17:15 schrieb Coenen, Christopher (ITAS):
>
>     Many thanks, dear Rüdiger, for the impressions, points of views and
>     analysis. There are certainly many things to discuss and think about
>     in this context. At this stage, only one comment, mainly for those
>     members of the various lists you have addressed who are not so
>     familiar with German politics: TAZ is of course not a "communist"
>     newspaper, but a center-left newspaper of the Green movement with
>     roots in the (largely anti-communist) left-wing alternative culture
>     of West Germany and West Berlin. Best wishes, Christopher
>
>
>
>     *Von:*itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu
>     <mailto:itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu>
>     [mailto:itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu] *Im Auftrag von *Markus
>     Schmidt
>     *Gesendet:* Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 15:44
>     *An:* R. Trojok; itas-...@lists.kit.edu
>     <mailto:itas-...@lists.kit.edu>; FOR-synenergene;
>     bioco...@bioartsociety.fi <mailto:bioco...@bioartsociety.fi>;
>     Kit...@hackteria.org <mailto:Kit...@hackteria.org>; Digest Recipients
>     *Betreff:* Re: [itas-synbio] ECSA stakeholder roundtable
>
>
>
>     Dear Rüdiger!
>
>
>
>     Thanks for your insights and thoughts on the workshop, which reveal
>     IMO a wider underlying problem.
>
>     When I saw the announcement of the Workshop it struck me that few
>     active DIYBio or Hackers were on board, and reminded me of similar
>     initiatives here in Austria supporting top-down citizen scientists,
>     that pretty much aim to extend the exploitation of precarious
>     researchers to non-scientists.
>
>     (see: https://www.fwf.ac.at/de/forschungsfoerderung/fwf-programme/foerderinitiative-top-citizen-science/
>     and of course this is aimed to citizens of both sex regardless of
>     age, sex or social class /‚Dt: Bürgerinnen und Bürger
>     unterschiedlichen Alters, Geschlechts und sozialer Herkunft.. To
>     emulate PC goodie points)
>
>
>
>     This might be because of ignorance, of other forms of involvement
>     of non-scientists or because the old institutions have no interest
>     in handing over their "/sovereignty of interpretation“ /Dt.
>     Deutungshoheit) to the un-initiated citizen scientists./
>
>
>
>     A sign of a power struggle between established traditional
>     institutions and grass roots movements?
>
>
>
>     In the field of astronomy this systems seems to work, but is based
>     on a large enthusiastic group of amateur astronomers, who – by the
>     way – don’t get paid but are at least respected by their
>     professional colleagues and even mentioned when the contribute to
>     important findings.
>
>
>
>     You mentioned that " *the EU* *comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro
>     to Citizen Science“ do you have any source for that claim? The
>     Galley site doesn’t say anything about it!*
>
>
>
>     Best wishes, Markus
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>     *Von: *"R. Trojok" <ruedi...@gmail.com <mailto:ruedi...@gmail.com>>
>     *Datum: *Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 um 14:28
>     *An: *"itas-...@lists.kit.edu <mailto:itas-...@lists.kit.edu>"
>     <itas-...@lists.kit.edu <mailto:itas-...@lists.kit.edu>>,
>     FOR-synenergene <synen...@for.kit.edu
>     <mailto:synen...@for.kit.edu>>, Biocommons
>     <bioco...@bioartsociety.fi <mailto:bioco...@bioartsociety.fi>>,
>     <Kit...@hackteria.org <mailto:Kit...@hackteria.org>>, Digest
>     Recipients <diy...@googlegroups.com <mailto:diy...@googlegroups.com>>
>     *Betreff: *ECSA stakeholder roundtable
>
>
>
>     Hey Synenergeners,
>     yesterday I participated at the Do It Together (DITO) Science EU
>     Program stakeholder roundtable.
>     This is what the website states about the project:
>
>     "Doing It Together Science (DITOs) will implement many innovative
>     participatory event formats across Europe focusing on the active
>     involvement of citizens in two critical areas: the cutting edge
>     topic of biodesign and the pressing area of environmental
>     monitoring. *The project will advance the EU Responsible Research
>     and Innovation agenda by moving beyond more traditional approaches
>     into direct engagement that builds upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal
>     innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we
>     sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects
>     of these grassroots efforts channel into policy action at different
>     levels.*
>     The consortium includes a pan-European network (European Citizen
>     Science Association ECSA - linking practitioners, scientists, and
>     supporting policy makers), SMEs (Tekiu; Eutema), universities (UCL;
>     Université Paris Descartes - CRI; Université de Geneve), science
>     galleries, museums and arts organisations (Kapelica Gallery /
>     Kersnikova; Medialab-Prado; RBINS) and NGOs (Meritum Association;
>     Waag Society). These organisations cross multiple countries and
>     languages, enabling coverage of much of Europe in its native languages.
>     Dr Katrin Vohland (Naturkundemuseum Berlin), vice-chair of the
>     European Citizen Science Association added: "*DITOs provides a great
>     opportunity not only to experiment with different pathways for
>     different persons and communities to engage at different intensities
>     but to enhance mutual learning for lasting effects at the interface
>     of science and society.*""
>
>     It sounds like smooth language, but in reality, when you meet the
>     people on the spot, it becomes obvious that the only organisations
>     that have any ties and reputation in grassroots citizen science
>     projects are the Waag society and the art people from Kapelica
>     Gallery. The rest of them were classical institutes that understand
>     citizen science in a top down fashion in the style of:
>     *Let the illiterate citizen do the laborous work for the scientists,
>     they will be happy and grateful to make a contribution.*
>     It made the impression as if DITO and ECSA use a lot of not or
>     poorly understood buzzwords like
>     biomimicry, biodesign, do it together science, mutual learning,
>     Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Science
>
>     During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between
>     grassroots and top down citizen science.
>     Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships
>     for DITO for instance wants citizen science
>     in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to
>     research institutes. unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work in
>     the field.
>     Somtimes Naturkundemuseum boss Vogel hovers over the scene like a
>     zeppelin, far away and bloated beyond proportion, not involved in
>     the discussion on citizen science and most likely not even noticing
>     the contradictions in the DITO program. At one time a strange
>     Journalist from the TAZ (communist newspaper in germany) grabbed me
>     and questioned me on the relationship between islamic state
>     terrorists and biohackers, which i never heard of to this point. He
>     bought my book and may feature it in TAZ. (not a nice thought to be
>     put in such a context, but at least it would boot the sales :)
>     Luckily, Waag society leader Lucas Evers a biohack-promoter and
>     beneficiary was speaking up against attempts to criminalize biohacking.
>
>     In contrast to this top down attitude, Egle, a biohacker and science
>     communicator from Technarium Hackerspace, Lithuania, came unpaid
>     participant to the event. She told me her perspective:
>     _What does “responsible research” mean for your project?
>     including everyone in the research process who wants to be included
>     - by doing citizen science, by helping to build lab tools, by
>     organizing the activities; allowing all "citizens" to play a part,
>     if they want to be a part of it
>     communicate the research process & the results to a wide audience,
>     as clearly as possible, without jargon (blog)
>     educate everyone involved (as well as just hearing about the
>     project) about what we're actually doing; all citizens have the
>     right to understand, and to ask as many questions as they like
>     _How is “open science” relevant to your project?
>     "open" is at the core of what we do at Technarium. *We believe the
>     process of science (not just results) needs to be shared with each
>     other, and with the public*
>     open science allows other people to build upon our ideas & our work.
>     What comes out of Technarium is totally free to grab
>     -          Where do you see common ground between Citizen Science
>     and DIYScience?
>     *both "communities" believe science can and should be done beyond
>     the walls of academia
>     some DIY scientists are already citizen scientists - we are doing
>     the same thing; except we are completely grass roots*, but that is
>     included in the definition of citizen science
>     *we have the same goals: contribute to knowledge gaining, solve
>     major problems like fossil fuels, disease etc., improve the
>     scientific understanding of the public, push the boundaries of science*
>
>     Another external visitor in the stakeholder meeting, Eugenio
>     Battaglia, Hackeria member and a frequent participant of my
>     workshops and events in Synenergene and co-creator of the Biocommons
>     concept
>     complained to me about this unpaid work citizens are asked to do
>     when taking part in RRI processes:
>
>     "Yea, I did not "work", like I didn't have a contract whatsoever : ^
>     )*like many of these consortia is not clear the type of engagement*,
>     but even if it were only correcting your text writing application
>     trying to connect some value between the two thing, or neurotically
>     translate the paper to in a night of august to put it online,
>     *that's for me working. There's no money nor contract involved, and
>     I know! *But I value also other types of currencies, like respect.
>     Ah, yea, besides, traveling (not always reimbursed), organizing at
>     my expense the event in Italy, and pretty much a lot of my time and
>     attention connecting with people, and helping you. Y*ea, "I didn't
>     worked", in fact I don't claimed to have had a contract. I don't
>     blame it to you, of course. but the type of engagement and
>     crowdsourcing of people's brain in such kind of consortia is not
>     always clear. That's why I got nausea of this public stuff.*"
>     This struck me personally, as i was the one doing the RRI in the
>     grassroots community for years, asking my friends, colleagues and
>     citizens to participate in the events for synenergen, making the
>     promise we
>     can actually influence EU comission politics on Citizen Science. I
>     noted this down and read it during the stakeholder workshop to *Ron
>     Dekker, Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission, DG
>     Research and Innovation *He seemed to understand it and replied
>     something like that we have to build a parallel structure for
>     citizen science, as it is not going to work with this old people
>     from the institutes (yes, it has something to do with a generational
>     shift in academia!)
>
>
>     In a response to the ECSA show-off in Naturkundemuseum hackteria
>     posted this comment on their facebook page:
>     "*The new schicki-micki scene of citizen science.*
>     As often these days #culturalamnesia Someone yesterday told me:
>     "*You pay taxes, and you do citizen science for twenty years or
>     something, then somebody win a grant to understand citizen science,
>     stealing a lot of your concepts, idea and work, apparently ignoring
>     your existence or the existence of what you represent, without
>     respect.* But then they know you and they offer you to participate
>     (for free of course!), but only in events organised in the Tuesday
>     morning(!)... because yeah, every citizen science activist is
>     usually free during the week. He/she doesn't have a job. You know?
>     They just go around and do everything for free, that's why we love
>     them, they might think up there". It's a war between poor people,
>     because at the end you cannot even blame any random researcher
>     probably more prekariat than you who ends up doing part of his
>     exploitational PhD or post doc cause the PI happen to be in such
>     kind of consortia #sick #diwym
>         https://www.facebook.com/hackteria/?ref=nf
>
>
>     *Lucy Patterson*, a unemployed grassroots citizen science
>     practitioner (PhD. in moleular Biology and former Science
>     Communicator). She is well known as has a long track record in
>     Citizen Science in Berlin. She founded and leads the *Berlin Science
>     Hacking Community *(http://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Science-Hacking/),
>     which formed around Science Hack Day Berlin
>     (http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/): a mix of scientists, designers,
>     developers, artists and enthusiasts who hack together in their spare
>     time on interdisciplinary projects that take DIY approaches to
>     scientific ideas, data, or methodologies,
>     repurposing/subverting/celibrating/questioning them for
>     cultural/societal/scientific applications. As a volunteer
>     organisation she says, they are very limited in scope, but their
>     approach, accumulated expertise, and community would offer great
>     potential for knowledge transfer and citizen science. In terms of
>     policy support, their community would request:
>
>     _ a way to connect our community to academic science in a more
>     substantial way (i.e. not just PhD students in their limited spare
>     time). *I would advocate for funding to support hackspaces, DIY bio
>     labs, or science shops inside universities or (scientific/cultural)
>     institutions *that encourage serious collaboration between
>     university/institution researchers at all career levels together
>     with groups/communities from OUTSIDE of those
>     universities/institutions. Good examples are the Imperial College
>     Advanced Hackspace in London
>     (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/) and the Manchester
>     Metropolitan Digital Innovation Space (http://diginnmmu.com/). Both
>     provide support to mixed internal/external communities. Taking full
>     advantage of the potential of these kind of collaborations would
>     make everyone feel like their time was well spent.
>
>     _*funded positions for community managers (this work is
>     time-consuming and usually very undervalued)*, either through grants
>     or as staff positions, perhaps at the kind of hackerspaces mentioned
>     above.
>
>     _ *instead of only funding new initiatives, offer sustainability
>     funding for pre-existing successful volunteer-run projects *that
>     might otherwise die out - rather like funding basic infrastructure
>     for DIY science communities (funding space, personnel, some basic
>     overheads) - this gives such communities the chance to
>     professionalise and start applying for further funding. For example,
>     it is only through this kind of funding that publiclab has become so
>     successful.
>
>     _ maker communities bridge the line between citizen science and
>     knowledge transfer - perhaps it makes sense for the two strands to
>     sometimes *join forces in terms of policy-making and funding.*
>
>     _ similarly, DIY science/maker communities have a lot more to offer
>     science than just the development of DIY data collection tools for
>     volunteer data collection. But IMO it's still an open question - is
>     citizen science ONLY about novel empirical research, or does it also
>     include scientific knowledge transfer...?
>
>     _ to*ensure that DIY science *(typically volunteer-run
>     projects/communities, without the resources or capacity to afford
>     conference registration fees or to attend weekday meetings) can
>     expect the same level of representation and support as any other
>     stakeholder in the citizen science movement, if it is claimed that
>     they are part of that movement. (added by Rüdiger: the last event by
>     ECSA cost 380€ entrance fee and there were bodyguards shielding off
>     the public from the venue)
>
>     Another person from EU comission level, Dr. Philippe Galiay,
>     European Commission, DG Research and Innovation
>     told us during the workshop that *the EU* *comission allocated
>     480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science.*
>     http://opendays2015.lodzkie.pl/dr-philippe-galiay/
>             *
>     *Taken together, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, DITO and ECSA are showing
>     off as biohackers and DIYbio people, althought they have no clue
>     what they are talking about (with few exceptions).
>     Most obviously, the claims of Biodesign is ill guided and most
>     likely unsuccessfull attempt to override the
>     emancipatory and anti-authoritatian narrative inherent in biohacking
>     culture, while maintaining the fancy aspects of the topic.
>     The appearance of DITO and ECSA was unprofessional, showed a lack of
>     knowledge of their very topic citizen science and acted disrespectul
>     and
>     exclusive to grassroots organisations and individuals. *DITO seem to
>     me to be a kind of "potemkin village" for EU commission to cash in
>     using fashionable buzzwords. *
>
>     In general, the concept and outcomes of RRI need to be critically
>     reviwed. If there is no real world impact, RRI means stealing
>     valuable time of volunteering citizens for nothing.
>
>     *Lessons learned for Synenergene: *We need to make sure to feed our
>     insights and experience to the EU comission level so that our work
>     was not in vain.
>     The citizen science policy must not be implemented in a top down
>     fashion and the needs and potential of grassroots communities
>     need to be taken into account and adressed adequatly. This means
>     grassroots Citizens Scientists need to be able to influence
>     where these 480M Euro will be spent. If not, people will understand
>     quickly that they were tricked and then RRI will a dead concept very
>     soon.
>     Further, a knowledge transfer between Synenergene RRI practices and
>     DITO to prevent or maybe even reverse the ongoing degradation of the
>     RRI idea is an important move.
>     Mr. Schomburg and the other policy makers we were working for all
>     these years, the ball is in your field now, show us that RRI and
>     citizen involvment in EU politics is a two way road.
>
>     Thanks for reading to the end.
>     Best,
>     Rüdiger Trojok
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
> --
>
> *******************************************************
>
> !!NOTICE: new phone nr:  tel: +41 77 9930877
>
> *******************************************************
> //////dusjagr labs/////////////////////////////////////////
> Dr. Marc Dusseiller
> Schöneggstr. 34 | CH-8004 Zürich | tel: +41 77 9930877 | skype: dusjagr
> www.dusseiller.ch/labs <http://www.dusseiller.ch/labs>
> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
> SGMK | Schweizerische Gesellschaft für Mechatronische Kunst
> Postfach 2161 | CH-8031 Zürich
> www.mechatronicart.ch <http://www.mechatronicart.ch>
> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
> hackteria | Open Source Biological Art
> www.hackteria.org <http://www.hackteria.org>
> //////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
>

-- 
--
Steffen Albrecht

Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)
Institute for Technology Assessment and Systems Analysis (ITAS)
Karlstr. 11
76133 Karlsruhe, Germany

Phone: +49 171 6290421
Email: steffen....@kit.edu
Web: www.itas.kit.edu
          www.itas.kit.edu/synbio.php

KIT – University of the State of Baden-Wuerttemberg and National 
Research Center of the Helmholtz Association

[Cathal Garvey]

This is reminding me of a feature I'd like to add to listless* whereby
anyone CC'd by a member of a mailing list into a conversation, is then
allowed to post to and receive messages from that conversation. It's a
surprisingly common occurrence!

Also folks, when replying or forwarding on this conversation in
particular, trimming out the initial messages might help keep things
sane. Something about the multi-regional nature of this conversation is
breaking the normal reply-hiding behaviour of my email client, at least.

Rudiger; thanks for starting this conversation, perhaps we should work
on an easily-consumed public summary of your thoughts, that we can put
somewhere?


* github.com/cathalgarvey/listless

--
@onetruecathal / @cat...@quitter.is


On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 11:25 AM, R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com>
wrote:

[R. Trojok]

Hey all,

thanks for the kind responses and encouragements. I have a simple proposition to deal with DITO and ECSA.

As we saw in switzerland and elsewhere, the push to override the emancipatory narrative in citizen science is strong. ECSA was founded to accomplish that, do lobbying on EU level and direct the vast funding towards the institutes and always the same old people.

HOWEVER, ECSA is a german Verein (non profit) and has a democratic underlying organisational structure.

It may be possible to simply get enough people to join the organisation and change the agenda from within through democratic influence.

The board has too much power, it can kick out members or deny membership as they please, though, so i am not sure if its a viable way to go on.

I heard their next election of the board will be in january in paris - i will double check that info.

http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/documents

What do you think? Alternative ideas?

Best,

Rüdiger

Am 10.11.2016 um 10:20 schrieb Steen Rasmussen:

Thanks for the honest rant, Rudiger - and welcome to the long fight against and within our failing institutions from the industrial era. 

We need alternative ways to do things incl. different/changed institutions to support our activities because of the rapid and critical technological changes including those within synthetic biology.  Rudiger, keep pushing and show us new ways by being constructive. That’s how real change happens although it usually takes a very long time to change culture (world views) and thus institutions. 

I propose Synenergen dedicate some of our final workshop to highlight/addressing these critical issues. Art, incl. movies, novels and theater are important for catalyzing these changes, but so are pinpointing the institutional, organizational and policy roadblocks for a better society. These issues are already included in WP1 within Synenergene. 

If Klaus Schwab (head of World Economic Forum, e.g. see https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/01/the-fourth-industrial-revolution-what-it-means-and-how-to-respond/) is correct, then we’ll still be within the industrial paradigma at the end of his 4th Industrial Revolution. However, a big part of my community believes we might be heading toward more radical changes akin to the changes we experienced going from the agricultural to the industrial society (e.g. see https://theconversation.com/tomorrows-technology-will-lead-to-sweeping-changes-in-society-it-must-for-all-our-sakes-36023, ). In any event, we need to update our current - or invent new - institutions to support us as humans in our changing reality. 

I propose pinpointing and addressing some of these critical issues from a synbio perspective should be included as part of our final deliverable. It could be one of Synenergene’s most important long term contributions. 

Best, 

Steen 

Steen Rasmussen 

Professor in Physics & Center Director

Center for Fundamental Living Technology (FLinT)

University of Southeren Denmark (SDU)

External Research Professor 

Santa Fe Institute (SFI)

New Mexico USA

st...@sdu.dk | http://flint.sdu.dk 

+45-6550-2507 lab | +45-6550-3627 sec

On 09 Nov 2016, at 19:58, R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com> wrote:

sorry for crossposting!

Hey Synenergeners,
yesterday I participated at the Do It Together (DITO) Science EU Program stakeholder roundtable.
This is what the website states about the project:

"Doing It Together Science (DITOs) will implement many innovative participatory event formats across Europe focusing on the active involvement of citizens in two critical areas: the cutting edge topic of biodesign and the pressing area of environmental monitoring. The project will advance the EU Responsible Research and Innovation agenda by moving beyond more traditional approaches into direct engagement that builds upon DIY, grassroots, and frugal innovation initiatives so that in the short and medium term we sustain localised capacity building and in the long term the effects of these grassroots efforts channel into policy action at different levels.
The consortium includes a pan-European network (European Citizen Science Association ECSA - linking practitioners, scientists, and supporting policy makers), SMEs (Tekiu; Eutema), universities (UCL; Université Paris Descartes - CRI; Université de Geneve), science galleries, museums and arts organisations (Kapelica Gallery / Kersnikova; Medialab-Prado; RBINS) and NGOs (Meritum Association; Waag Society). These organisations cross multiple countries and languages, enabling coverage of much of Europe in its native languages.

Dr. Katrin Vohland (Naturkundemuseum Berlin), vice-chair of the European Citizen Science Association added: "DITOs provides a great opportunity not only to experiment with different pathways for different persons and communities to engage at different intensities but to enhance mutual learning for lasting effects at the interface of science and society.""

It sounds like smooth language, but in reality, when you meet the people on the spot, it becomes obvious that the only organisations that have any ties and reputation in grassroots citizen science projects are the Waag society and the artist from Kapelica Gallery. The rest of them were classical institutes that understand citizen science in a top down fashion in the style of:

Let the illiterate citizen do the laborous work for the scientists, they will be happy and grateful to make a contribution.

It made the impression as if DITO and ECSA use a lot of not - or poorly - understood buzzwords like:

biomimicry, biodesign, do it together science, mutual learning, Responsible Research and Innovation, Open Science

During the event it got obvious that there is a schizm between grassroots and top down citizen science.

Martin Brocklehurst, Policy, Strategy, Governance and Partnerships for DITO, for instance wants citizen science

in a strict top down fashion, citizens as mere data providers to research institutes - unpaid, of course, doing the laborous work in the field.

Somtimes Naturkundemuseum boss Vogel hovered over the scene like a zeppelin, far away and bloated beyond proportion, not involved in the discussion on citizen science and most likely not even noticing the contradictions in the DITO program. At one time a strange Journalist from the TAZ (a small green-left newspaper in Germany) grabbed me and questioned me on the relationship between islamic state terrorists and biohackers, which i never heard of to this point. He bought my book and may feature it in TAZ. (not a nice thought to be put in such a context, but at least it would boot the sales :)
Luckily, Waag society leader Lucas Evers, a biohack-promoter and beneficiary was speaking up against attempts to criminalize biohacking.
  
In contrast to this top down attitude, Egle, a biohacker and science communicator from Technarium Hackerspace, Lithuania, came as a unpaid participant to the event. She told me her perspective:

_What does “responsible research” mean for your project?
including everyone in the research process who wants to be included - by doing citizen science, by helping to build lab tools, by organizing the activities; allowing all "citizens" to play a part, if they want to be a part of it
communicate the research process & the results to a wide audience, as clearly as possible, without jargon (blog)
educate everyone involved (as well as just hearing about the project) about what we're actually doing; all citizens have the right to understand, and to ask as many questions as they like
_How is “open science” relevant to your project?
"open" is at the core of what we do at Technarium. We believe the process of science (not just results) needs to be shared with each other, and with the public
open science allows other people to build upon our ideas & our work. What comes out of Technarium is totally free to grab
-          Where do you see common ground between Citizen Science and DIYScience?
both "communities" believe science can and should be done beyond the walls of academia
some DIY scientists are already citizen scientists - we are doing the same thing; except we are completely grass roots, but that is included in the definition of citizen science
we have the same goals: contribute to knowledge gaining, solve major problems like fossil fuels, disease etc., improve the scientific understanding of the public, push the boundaries of science

Another external visitor in the stakeholder meeting, Eugenio Battaglia, Hackeria member and a frequent participant of my workshops and events in Synenergene and co-creator of the Biocommons concept
complained to me about this unpaid work citizens are asked to do when taking part in RRI processes:

"Yea, I did not "work", like I didn't have a contract whatsoever : ^ ) like many of these consortia is not clear the type of engagement, but even if it were only correcting your text writing application trying to connect some value between the two thing, or neurotically translate the paper to in a night of august to put it online, that's for me working. There's no money nor contract involved, and I know! But I value also other types of currencies, like respect. Ah, yea, besides, traveling (not always reimbursed), organizing at my expense the event in Italy, and pretty much a lot of my time and attention connecting with people, and helping you. Yea, "I didn't worked", in fact I don't claimed to have had a contract. I don't blame it to you, of course. but the type of engagement and crowdsourcing of people's brain in such kind of consortia is not always clear. That's why I got nausea of this public stuff."

This struck me personally, as i was the one doing the RRI in the grassroots community for years, asking my friends, colleagues and citizens to participate in the events for synenergene, making the promise we

can actually influence EU comission politics on Citizen Science. I noted this down and read it during the stakeholder workshop to Ron Dekker, Open Science Policy Platform, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation He seemed to understand it and replied something like that we have to build a parallel structure for citizen science, as it is not going to work with this old people
from the institutes (yes, it has something to do with a generational shift in academia!)


In a response to the ECSA show-off in Naturkundemuseum hackteria posted this comment on their facebook page:
"The new schicki-micki scene of citizen science.
As often these days #culturalamnesia Someone yesterday told me: "You pay taxes, and you do citizen science for twenty years or something, then somebody win a grant to understand citizen science, stealing a lot of your concepts, idea and work, apparently ignoring your existence or the existence of what you represent, without respect. But then they know you and they offer you to participate (for free of course!), but only in events organised in the Tuesday morning(!)... because yeah, every citizen science activist is usually free during the week. He/she doesn't have a job. You know? They just go around and do everything for free, that's why we love them, they might think up there". It's a war between poor people, because at the end you cannot even blame any random researcher probably more prekariat than you who ends up doing part of his exploitational PhD or post doc cause the PI happen to be in such kind of consortia #sick #diwym
    https://www.facebook.com/hackteria/?ref=nf


Lucy Patterson, a unemployed grassroots citizen science practitioner (PhD. in moleular Biology and former Science Communicator). She is well known as has a long track record in Citizen Science in Berlin. She founded and leads the Berlin Science Hacking Community (http://www.meetup.com/Berlin-Science-Hacking/), which formed around Science Hack Day Berlin (http://berlin.sciencehackday.org/): a mix of scientists, designers, developers, artists and enthusiasts who hack together in their spare time on interdisciplinary projects that take DIY approaches to scientific ideas, data, or methodologies, repurposing/subverting/celibrating/questioning them for cultural/societal/scientific applications. As a volunteer organisation she says, they are very limited in scope, but their approach, accumulated expertise, and community would offer great potential for knowledge transfer and citizen science. In terms of policy support, their community would request:

_ a way to connect our community to academic science in a more substantial way (i.e. not just PhD students in their limited spare time). I would advocate for funding to support hackspaces, DIY bio labs, or science shops inside universities or (scientific/cultural) institutions that encourage serious collaboration between university/institution researchers at all career levels together with groups/communities from OUTSIDE of those universities/institutions. Good examples are the Imperial College Advanced Hackspace in London (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/advanced-hackspace/) and the Manchester Metropolitan Digital Innovation Space (http://diginnmmu.com/). Both provide support to mixed internal/external communities. Taking full advantage of the potential of these kind of collaborations would make everyone feel like their time was well spent.

_ funded positions for community managers (this work is time-consuming and usually very undervalued), either through grants or as staff positions, perhaps at the kind of hackerspaces mentioned above.

_ instead of only funding new initiatives, offer sustainability funding for pre-existing successful volunteer-run projects that might otherwise die out - rather like funding basic infrastructure for DIY science communities (funding space, personnel, some basic overheads) - this gives such communities the chance to professionalise and start applying for further funding. For example, it is only through this kind of funding that publiclab has become so successful.

_ maker communities bridge the line between citizen science and knowledge transfer - perhaps it makes sense for the two strands to sometimes join forces in terms of policy-making and funding.

_ similarly, DIY science/maker communities have a lot more to offer science than just the development of DIY data collection tools for volunteer data collection. But IMO it's still an open question - is citizen science ONLY about novel empirical research, or does it also include scientific knowledge transfer...?

_ to ensure that DIY science (typically volunteer-run projects/communities, without the resources or capacity to afford conference registration fees or to attend weekday meetings) can expect the same level of representation and support as any other stakeholder in the citizen science movement, if it is claimed that they are part of that movement. (added by Rüdiger: the last event by ECSA cost 380€ entrance fee and there were bodyguards shielding off the public from the venue)

Another person from EU comission level, Dr. Philippe Galiay, European Commission, DG Research and Innovation
told us during the workshop that the EU comission allocated 480.000.000 Euro to Citizen Science.
http://opendays2015.lodzkie.pl/dr-philippe-galiay/
       
Taken together, Naturkundemuseum Berlin, DITO and ECSA are showing off as biohackers and DIYbio people, althought they have no clue what they are talking about (with few exceptions).  

Obviously, the claims of Biodesign is ill guided and most likely unsuccessfull attempt to override the

emancipatory and anti-authoritatian narrative inherent in biohacking culture, while maintaining the fancy aspects of the topic.
The appearance of DITO and ECSA was unprofessional, showed a lack of knowledge of their very topic citizen science and acted disrespectul and
exclusive to grassroots organisations and individuals. DITO seem to me to be a kind of "potemkin village" for EU commission to cash in using fashionable buzzwords.

In general, the concept and outcomes of RRI need to be critically reviwed. If there is no real world impact, RRI means stealing valuable time of volunteering citizens for nothing.

Lessons learned for Synenergene: We need to make sure to feed our insights and experience to the EU comission level so that our work was not in vain.
The citizen science policy must not be implemented in a top down fashion and the needs and potential of grassroots communities
need to be taken into account and adressed adequatly. This means grassroots Citizens Scientists need to be able to influence
where these 480M Euro will be spent. If not, people will understand quickly that they were tricked and then RRI will a dead concept very soon.
Further, a knowledge transfer between Synenergene RRI practices and DITO to prevent or maybe even reverse the ongoing degradation of the RRI idea is an important move.

Mr. Schomburg and the other policy makers we were working for all these years, the ball is in your field now. Show us that RRI and citizen involvment in EU politics is a two way road.

Thanks for reading to the end.
Best,
Rüdiger Trojok




      

_______________________________________________
This is the mailing list for all partners in the Synenergene project
a...@synenergene.eu
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[R. Trojok]

About one month ago I was advising the German Parliament on Citizen Science for the technology assessment office by the German Parliament (TAB).

The topic was the antibiotic crisis. In the last 3 decades, neither academic institution nor industry

was able to provide a solution to the well known and increasingly dangerous spread of antiobiotic resistance patterns. Sure, some notable approaches were there, but they did not stop or solve the crisis.

I believe that we

1) have the knowledge and technology to solve the problem

2) we have the people who are able and free (unemployed) to do it

3) we (western societies) have the money to afford a program that solves the crisis

In my eyes it was mainly a failure of institutional organisation patterns and a poor allocation of our ressources which prevented a solution of the problem. I agree with Steens analysis here and i heard similar arguments from e.g. Carl Djerassi (RIP), also predicing another 20 years of misery until institutes will change their ways / disappear.

However, my generation (i am 30 now) and the ones to follow cant wait for antibiotics for another 20 years. It will shorten our lifespan in average about 10 years if we dont act immediately.

Thus, i challenge the system:

Solve this problem or get out of the way for people that actually do meaningful work.

A citizen science program of the EU, funded with 480 Million Euro should be able to solve this crisis, or at least start the process of solving it.

I want this to be the touchstone for ANY institutional campaign that claims it is doing citizen science:

Do you actually solve any societal problems? Is what you do more / comparably relevant than solving the antibiotics crisis? No? Then you dont deserve the funding nor the tag citizen science.

Best,

Rüdiger

[Marc Dusseiller]

hoi zäme,

only slowing reading through these mails... (and greetings from Guangzhou).

it coincides with that "swiss" story i mentioned above, who just informed us about these "guidelines":

http://www.leru.org/index.php/public/calendar/citizen-science-at-leru-universities-trends-guidelines-and-recommendations/

from my memory last year, i think at least the we managed to clarify in the title that these guidelines are not "standards" and are only applicable for universities.

but there are some strong commentaries about future funding... read for yourself.

greets,

marc

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[Marc Dusseiller]

Good morning and greetings from Seoul,

not so surprised by reading these words. thx Rüdiger for "speaking out"...

i have been observing various similar projects, DITOs aswell as others, and also seeing the same patterns.

also we started to analyse budgets / rethorics and defined some points of action in these circumstances. see our notes:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ZrOuW6UkLd8-1DPab7XYFPIyGSy2LEdmv8w0M_YGh7U/edit#heading=h.6kvxltu19xhe

a similar top-down approach is growing also in switzerland. the original idea of the "Zurich Standard for Citizen Science" to be exclusively going towards "all funding for CS must go to established universitites" seems to be filed into some drawer.

http://www.citizenscience.ch

but rumours go that in Zurich we will soon see the rise of a "Center for Citizen Science"... how contradictory is that :-) you can guess who will host that "Center".

greetings,

marc

On Thu, Nov 10, 2016 at 2:34 AM, R. Trojok <ruedi...@gmail.com> wrote:

Hey all,

@Christopher, thanks for correcting the TAZ comment.

@Markus, Chris de Lutz from Artlaboratory Berlin verified the 480M Euro for citizen science. We both heard it, he even

asked a second time to make sure we heard it right and he reconfirmed the number to me by email later

me: "who was the guy who mentioned the 480m euro thing?"

Chris: "Dr. Philippe Galiayin the keynote - his slides may be viewable ask Claudia..."

Please ask Claudia Göbel for more info: http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/about-us/contact

Best,

Rüdiger

Am 09.11.2016 um 17:15 schrieb Coenen, Christopher (ITAS):

Many thanks, dear Rüdiger, for the impressions, points of views and analysis. There are certainly many things to discuss and think about in this context. At this stage, only one comment, mainly for those members of the various lists you have addressed who are not so familiar with German politics: TAZ is of course not a "communist" newspaper, but a center-left newspaper of the Green movement with roots in the (largely anti-communist) left-wing alternative culture of West Germany and West Berlin. Best wishes, Christopher

 

Von: itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu [mailto:itas-synbio-request@lists.kit.edu] Im Auftrag von Markus Schmidt
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 15:44
An: R. Trojok; itas-...@lists.kit.edu; FOR-synenergene; bioco...@bioartsociety.fi; Kit...@hackteria.org; Digest Recipients
Betreff: Re: [itas-synbio] ECSA stakeholder roundtable

 

Dear Rüdiger!

[Egle Marija Ramanauskaite]

Hi all,

Sorry for cross-posting - but I think this group has a wider readership (as opposed to DIYscience for now), and the message bellow is in part a reaction to this thread, so I am posting this message here too:

On Friday, 11 November 2016 03:00:33 UTC+1, Egle Marija Ramanauskaite wrote:

Dear all,

Just a note from me. I have had a dream to connect the two communities for a while now, so I see this group as an opportunity to finally open up the communication channels. It is therefore a little unsettling for me that as we go on, there seems to be more of placing the blame, rather than working together to see how the two communities can benefit from each other, and help each other. Although I do recognize many of the points made so far as valid – perhaps we should just approach them more constructively.

As I have already said on my blog, I was very happy to have a chance to participate at the roundtable on Tuesday, and that the DITOs project invited me & flew me in. Frankly, I don’t need any other reward than being able to share our work at Technarium & highlight what kind of problems and expectations we have. I am, of course, very disappointed that not more DIY stakeholders were invited/able to attend. However, other than the organizational and financial aspects, we should also realize it is each of our responsibility to invite groups that we know of, to such events – no single event organizer can be expected to know the entire list of people who might be interested. That’s why I also reached out to my hacker community at home, which couldn’t/wouldn’t have wanted to come in person, but had thoughts and ideas to share.

I’d also like to suggest that we consider DIY communities way beyond Berlin and Vilnius – it is our responsibility to reach out to them, and let them have they say, as they might all have very different views. For example, even though at Technarium we are true hackers at heart, who defy any kind of authority, we are more than happy to be part of ECSA and working together to ensure more funding and other opportunities.  We see it as a two-way partnership, not a way to control or exploit us. However flawed *the system* may be (which it is), it's what we have. 

This is just our take on the matter though – and I am sure other communities would have their own. I am really looking to hearing those on this thread.

I also really hope that all members of this group can contribute to finding those diverse DIY communities from all the corners of the world and looping them in, as this is what I think “responsible” is in this context :) In addition to making links in Eastern Europe, I also collaborate closely with the US citizen science community who in turn have started engaging their local DIY groups in the dialogue, which I think should be merged with ours too, and invite your opinions on this.

Back to the original roundtable, I'd like to emphasize that IMO the meeting participants were a lot more receptive than it might seem. Indeed the problems we highlighted were brought up again and again during the day by different people, albeit with some shot-downs. How much of these problems are solved and/or end up in policy (as appropriate) now is entirely in our hands – we should work together to work them out (where "together" is DIY + DITOs + other relevant stakeholders).

Besides, there are also plenty of people within DITOs who appreciate & support the DIY movement, and were/are happy to talk about it. So despite some misunderstandings, and weird buzzword use at times (I personally hate that kind of practice in principle, and "biodesign" in particular gives me the creeps, but whatever; buzzwords also serve their purpose at times), it is not all that bad. Let's make it better through communication?

Make love, not war A :p

Egle

 

[R. Trojok]

Hey all,

@Christopher, thanks for correcting the TAZ comment.

@Markus, Chris de Lutz from Artlaboratory Berlin verified the 480M Euro for citizen science. We both heard it, he even

asked a second time to make sure we heard it right and he reconfirmed the number to me by email later

me: "who was the guy who mentioned the 480m euro thing?"

Chris: "Dr. Philippe Galiayin the keynote - his slides may be viewable ask Claudia..."

Please ask Claudia Göbel for more info: http://ecsa.citizen-science.net/about-us/contact

Best,

Rüdiger

Am 09.11.2016 um 17:15 schrieb Coenen, Christopher (ITAS):

Many thanks, dear Rüdiger, for the impressions, points of views and analysis. There are certainly many things to discuss and think about in this context. At this stage, only one comment, mainly for those members of the various lists you have addressed who are not so familiar with German politics: TAZ is of course not a "communist" newspaper, but a center-left newspaper of the Green movement with roots in the (largely anti-communist) left-wing alternative culture of West Germany and West Berlin. Best wishes, Christopher

 

Von: itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu [mailto:itas-synb...@lists.kit.edu] Im Auftrag von Markus Schmidt
Gesendet: Mittwoch, 9. November 2016 15:44
An: R. Trojok; itas-...@lists.kit.edu; FOR-synenergene; bioco...@bioartsociety.fi; Kit...@hackteria.org; Digest Recipients
Betreff: Re: [itas-synbio] ECSA stakeholder roundtable

 

Dear Rüdiger!

[ukitel]

Thank you Rüdiger for this report.
It is indeed very sad that there are some people trying to exploit the citizen- and DIY-science movements to get some funding.
Nothing new or unexpected, but I am surprised that this started already on a relatively young movement.

The DIY communities are fragmented and do not communicate efficiently with one another.
I agree that we need to speak with one voice and maybe have a virtual place where to meet and discuss about a common direction.

Is anyone interested in writing a manifesto?