Advice on biohacker space growth/sustainability please!

[Michael Strack]

G'day all,

I'm just getting involved with the Sydney group (BioHackSyd and BioFoundry) - there's a wicked space, some cool gear, a small core team, and a slightly larger semi-regular community.

Here's the challenge: how do we grow this sustainably?

I mean more than just keeping the lights on. One immediate and core goal is to have a reliable and sufficient revenue stream that we can employ at least one member of staff to really push this thing. I have a lot of ideas, but I wanted to throw this out to the community.

When it comes to growing a sustainable community of deeply-engaged members, what advice can you offer? Does anyone successfully run a biohacker space as a full-time job? How did that happen?

We have a lot going on and a lot of ideas, but all perspectives welcome. At some point, I'd also love to organize some kind of growth-hack Skype call at some point so we can brainstorm/workshop this up, after some discussion in the forums/mailing lists.

Cheers!

[Scott]

Hi Micheal,

You pose some good questions that we at Open Science Network in Vancouver are working to answer and, no doubt, many on this list are also facing. We are a registered non-profit (since June 2015) and everyone is a volunteer. All of our board members have been working really hard (when each of our times permits) to give our small community biolab a stable foundation for long term prosperity. People are fickle in this modern world but I do believe there are people in our city who can become deeply-engaged as members. We are starting to see them. The issue is what is the value proposition to attract those people and their energies. Certainly you can do a lot of free events and the dabblers will come and go but some of them will hang on for the ride. We are just starting to see that. Each organization has to work to figure out what their value propositions are and those may change over time. We are the first DIY biolab in the city. It takes time for people to find us. I think in the early phase of setting up a DIYbio one has to try as many things as possible to get the word out.  Meetup.com has been essential and we have been using MailChimp.com for our newsletters. Facebook is important to. All of this social media stuff takes time so it is important to distribute the work. 

Each city and country has their own issues and challenges. Vancouver, as I suspect is true for Sydney and I know is true for Melbourne where I grew up, is an expensive city to rent space in. People in this city pay a huge amount just to put a roof over their heads. That sucks money out of the economy. In this early stage we have the challenge of paying the rent by charging for workshops but the more we charge the less people are willing to participate. The initial phase is always the challenge. You want to look good to potential sponsors and patron but you don't have all the time to finesse things. 

We have been trying have a diversity of interesting events from free to paid to get our name out there - talks, workshops, journal clubs, etc. We have been limited by the number of pipettes which limits the number of participants in our workshops. Fortunately, a fellow who just moved here and who works for a company that calibrates pipettes for academia and industry donated a couple more sets all cobbled together form spare parts. People like this do come out of the wood work and over time your community builds. 

We have also but up a crowdfunding campaign on our WordPress website using the IgnitionDeck plugin. It has just launched but it is not Kickstarter with their instant crowd of members. Kickstarter campaigns do take a lot of effort up front and our group is tapped out at this stage. I do think the global DIYbio community, as represented on this list, can help each other with ideas and even crowdfunding support (hint hint). I'd love people on this list to look at our website and let us know how we can improve things. Feedback is essential.

There are valuable lessons in Erik Reis' Lean Startup ideas (http://theleanstartup.com/principles). You have to get out there and iterate. Keep your cost down and just move forward. I also believe there are parallels to Malcolm Gladwell's 10,000 hours concepts. I hope it won't take that long but I think you have to just keep moving forward as best you can and eventually you will get to a tipping point where you can become stable. I know there are funding bodies in Vancouver and federally in Canada but in order to access those funds we need to have some street creds. 

Also, keep an eye on local media events to see how you can leverage their news events to bring new people to the lab.

I'd love to hear what other's experiences and working ideas are in there communities.

Good luck,

Scott

Co-founder, Open Science Network, http://www.opensciencenet.org

[Michael Strack]

Thanks so much Scott. I knew I couldn't be the only one thinking about this.

I feel like the DIYbio movement desperately needs to focus on this right now. The projects are wicked cool but without a large, diverse, engaged and sustainable community we're not going to achieve our multifaceted goals. We have the technology, the web platforms, the cultural ecosystem, but fundamentally we don't have the business model.

Some kind of shared knowledge-base is probably a good start. I have a vision about how this might work but I just arrived on the scene so I'm a little hesitant to begin shouting "YOU'RE DOING IT WRONG!" just yet.

Anyway I'm meeting and talking with people in Sydney over the next month or so and will try to get this a little more hammered out before sharing. I have a thesis to finish at some point, too =p

[Josiah Zayner]

Working alot with and at Biocurious there are a few main things Biohackerspaces can do to become sustainable.

1) Have ongoing projects. Most members initially will have little skills in the biosciences. You need to provide a reason to keep them coming back and learning more. At Biocurious we have a group of people that meet every Tues. night and have on going projects and mentors who teach people new skills and techniques. There are also nights for specific projects.

2) Run classes. Classes are not only a source of income but they inspire people to become members. People at Biocurious also reach out to corporations and businesses which you can charge alot more for the experience(corporate events bring in alot of money at Biocurious). Class ideas can be as simple as Testing plants for antibiotic activity(http://www.the-odin.com/the-iliad-project-kit-find-new-antibiotics-at-home/) or more molecular biology based like genotyping yourself(http://www.the-odin.com/human-dna-cheek-swab-and-genotyping-primers-basic-kit/)

3) Events. A Monthly Beer and Science chat where you charge people $10 or finding speakers on interesting topics and charging is a great way to get people to your space and raise money. These often require very little work and are alot of fun.

4) Have people there(volunteers, you, discount memberships). When I am not teaching or cleaning at Biocurious I usually stop by to hangout because there are some interesting folks I know who are going to be there. If I know no one is going to be there my chance of being there are small. Biohackerspaces tend to be 80% hangout 20% work in my experience.

5) Crowdfunding. Alot of spaces have raised initial support through crowdfunding though I wouldn't expect to raise as much money as the Bay Area hackerspaces($30k) you still might be able to raise $10k-$15k to provide an initial cushion. *Bay Area hackerspaces seem to have the most support and attendance out of any I know of. This doesn't mean it's not possible just less likely. I would set the goal low on kickstarter and attempt to overshoot it to make sure you receive your money.


Josiah

[Michael Strack]

Thanks for all that Josiah, that's really cool to hear. Yeah the income from events and educational workshops etc. had crossed my mind, glad to hear it's a model that's working for some people.

[Andrew Gray]

Hi Michael,

I'm Andrew and I'm at BioQuisitive in Melbourne. Are you working on behalf of the board at BioFoundry? 

[Michael Strack]

G'day Andrew,

I am - Meow asked me to look into how other biohacker spaces are developing sustainable business models. Funny story, because independently I developed this whole business model and business plan, then went to chat with him about BioFoundry only to discover that they're already working on most of the things I'd thought about.

Sent from mobile

---

From: Andrew Gray
Sent: ‎22/‎10/‎2015 22:50
To: DIYbio
Subject: [DIYbio] Re: Advice on biohacker space growth/sustainability please!

Hi Michael,

I'm Andrew and I'm at BioQuisitive in Melbourne. Are you working on behalf of the board at BioFoundry? 

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[Andrew Gray]

Yeah right on!

Well i'd love to skype with you at some point on this. I think there are a lot of different ways to go about this but each one will take a few iterations to get right. Would be great to mind map this stuff out and see which to focus on short term vs long term. Obviously there will need to be a few iterations of every scenario to iron out the kinks, but once we get up and going, it should be sweet! I'm actually in the midst of writing BioQuisitive's business plan so it's perfect timing as its in the front of my mind. add me on Skype andrewyay8

[Michael Strack]

Wicked! Yeah Skype would be fantastic. Drop me a line whenever to tee that up. I'm also going to the joint BioFoundry/BioCurious event next Thursday, so it'll be another great opportunity to talk about this stuff.