"Chicago Bioscience Cooperative" meet-ups for DIYbio: Chicago

[Ben Hyink]

All,

Stephanie Levi and me decided we needed a name before we created a
website and meet-up.com group so we could identify our group in the
URL. Based on
some suggestions I made, input from Edward Miller (suggesting we not
use the name "B.I.O.S. Chicago" - Biotech Innovation for Open Science,
as the acronym was taken by a project called "BiOS" - Biological
Innovation for an Open Society
[http://www.bios.net/daisy/bios/home.html ]), and a term selected by
Stephanie ("bioscience" as opposed to "biotech"), we decided on the
name "Chicago Bioscience Cooperative."

Our current website URL is: http://chicagobioscience.wordpress.com . I
will be developing the site over the coming weeks and months.

Since we both have limited time (and I likely will have even less time
once I start grad school this fall or next) and since we don't yet
have a base of active participants, we decided that for the next
several years, maybe five unless some leaders with more time come
along, we only will manage a monthly meet-up group that alternates
between discussion of biology papers (probably somewhere on the north
side, as that is where most people interested in participating so far
are located) and performing simple experiments and skill training
sessions that take three hours or less at a University of Chicago lab.
Joseph Jackson, who is working on BioCurious in California and worked
on the BiOS project, has been generous in offering suggestions
including that we should expect to spend at least six months building
a base of active participants through a meet-up group and a year
advertising our plans before trying to establish a lab of our own (a
huge step).

We hope to see most of you at future meet-ups and please tell people
you know about us. We will share more information with you, including
meet-up information, when it is available. The one time we will not be
holding our meet-ups is the first Saturday afternoon of the month, as
we don't want to be in conflict with Chicago's "Transhumanism"
meet-ups (http://www.meetup.com/transhumanism-81/ ).

Best,

Ben Hyink
708.990.3990

[Bryan Bishop]

On Sat, Feb 5, 2011 at 7:58 PM, Ben Hyink wrote:

Joseph Jackson, who is working on BioCurious in California and worked
on the BiOS project, has been generous in offering suggestions
including that we should expect to spend at least six months building
a base of active participants through a meet-up group and a year
advertising our plans before trying to establish a lab of our own (a
huge step).

If you already have the space or money to pay for rent, you should just go for it. You could also potentially implement something other than membership dues revenue.

- Bryan
http://heybryan.org/
1 512 203 0507

[Ben Hyink]

We haven't even started looking for a space to rent and have very
little money to work with at this point (we will need to fundraise).
Also, while Stephanie could assume a leadership position and I'm
willing to help as I can, we will need more people to complete the
1000+ man hours of work it may take to coordinate everything,
including a Kickstarter fundraiser, and we would need people to help
run the lab. A meet-up group is a start for gathering more people, and
we can begin researching and planning now (we are looking forward to
getting more advice from Joseph and other DIYbio folks over time).

Ben Hyink