Hi!

Thanks for checking out this project - It’d be great if you could help us out!

‘DIY Science’ is a broad term that includes any initiative that tries to engage with science from a grassroots, non-institutional position: diybio community labs, civic environmental monitoring projects, patient activism groups, bioart collectives, interdisciplinary science hacking communities… Central to these projects is the belief that science should be accessible to and for the benefit of everyone in society, not just the privileged few.

The DIY Science project is about networking these different initiatives in order to better understand the challenges we face, sharing experience and advice, and supporting each other. You don’t need to be part of such an initiative to take part (though it’s great if you are!) - we have a few different ways to get involved...

We want this project to be a safe and welcoming space for everyone, and as such ask that anyone contributing respect the Mozilla Community Participation Guidelines. Please report unacceptable behavior to [email protected]. Thank you!

This project more about networking and gathering resources than developing code (with the exception of developing our website), using github as an open project management tool. It’s still rather early days in this project. Right now we are working on 3 different projects:

In this project we are researching the different funding strategies available to DIY Science projects - public funding, private foundations, crowdfunding, corporate sponsorship/partnership, own business models etc

Who can help? Anyone - DIY scientists with personal experience or anyone willing to do a little bit of internet research.
How long will this take? 15+ mins
How to contribute: Take a look at our ‘How to get funding’ project. Each issue represents a different source/mode of funding - pick one you know, choose one to research, or add one that’s missing (you can follow our template). Comment the issue with your own experience or information you can gather by researching DIY Science initiatives. For inspiration we are collecting a list of DIY Science initiatives and funding sources - please also feel free to add to this list.

Many of us have the experience that, since we often run our projects and communities on a voluntary basis, others often expect us to also work (consultation, workshops, demos etc) for very low fees if not for free. This is a project to develop guidelines for fair compensation for DIY scientists. We’re working on a co-authored guidelines text for sharing with those who might like to hire a DIY scientist, as well as a collection of resources on the topic for DIY scientists

Who can help? This one’s more for the DIY scientists, but if you have experience with freelance creative work you might also be able to contribute.
How long will this take? 30+ mins
How to contribute: We’re collecting thoughts and resources in this github issue, 'Fair Pay for DIY Science'. Once we have good texts we’ll put them up on our new website (see below)!

Our network and our content could really use a home! We’d also like to work on developing a DIY Science github page.

Who can help? If you have design or github/jekyll development skills we’d love to hear from you.
How long will this take? 30+ mins
How to contribute: We’re planning the site in this github project, 'DIY Science website'. Please take a look at the issues and see how you can help.

Have questions? Come chat with us in our Riot channel, #DIYscience_github:matrix.org