no t-shirts?
tja… rubberboots?
Here is the feedback from WeMakeIt.
GENERAL
Your campaign is in English only. We recommend you translate the final version into German and/or French to reach a broader audience. Most of the wemakeit crowd is Swiss and therefore speaking one or the other.
DURATION
45 days is rather long. We usually recommend 30 days.
INTRO
The short text will be visible on the wemakeit main page (together with a picture). It is important that it catchy! Your decision entirely, but we have the following suggestion:
No more waste in science! We want to recycle old DNA sequencing machines and turn them into useful instruments for cutting-edge scientific research. Help us develop free and open source software so everyone can repurpose them!
TEXT
We strongly suggest you add a short introductory paragraph on top of the rest of the text. Maybe something that explain your philosophy to neophytes, or researchers not familiar with repurposing/hacking. Some motivational elements (why you want to do this) with a catchy title will make people not directly aware of the problem and the technology wish to help you.
The following paragraph is not clear and not really necessary:
Urs Gaudenz managed to get a hold of a machine and document large parts of the hardware and the internal communication protocols in detail on the Hackteria Wiki. A group of us, having been connected through the GOSH and Hackteria networks, got together and established that we have enough information to write open source software to replace the original instrument control software provided by the vendor.
We recommend you keep the most important aspects and keep the details (who is Urs Gaudenz and gaudi labs? what about the Hackteria wiki and GOSH? No information at this stage. These are details that can be left to the end of the text, or to the links).
REWARDS
Be aware that the average donation is around 100.- We recommend you add a couple of options between 100 and 500. In particular, we strongly encourage campaigns to offer some “in real life” experiences. Can you offer hands-on workshops, visits to your space, guided tour of the machine, Skype conversation, etc? These are typically items local people will be willing to pay for (or even other scientists curious to learn more), as they offer a unique and exciting experience (and a chance to meet you!).
In any case, we recommend you start at (at least) 10.- Your smallest reward does not bring much to the total, and will distract people form donating more.
25 -> Replace A link to your website - by Your name on our website and suggest a link to their website in the description. Most people will not have anywhere to link to, but they will like to be named on your website.
Quite detailed feedback - that means they accept the campaign, great.
I agree with most of the points.
- I offer to do the translation to German.
- Would keep the 45 days
- Yes, to the catchy INTRO
- Rework the text, bring the GOSH and Hackteria description from the FAQ to the main page and reduce the “Urs Gaudenz” part
- we are community - Rewards: Thank you for 15.- , Link for 35.-, top level 150.- Logo 500.-, Certificate 1000.-
remember it’s Swiss Francs not Euro…
Let’s make this happen.
Urs
yeah, they do usually reflect with good things to think about.
specifically all our previous and also this one are on the other hand “not your typical” crowd-funding. talking about what kinda audience we are adressing, eg. hacking friends to hack them etc… or approaching a much more international scene of seq-hackers, researchers.
especially cos there is no stress. keep 45 days, yes, urs! if you manage another “hackaday-like” promo in the meantime it’s worth to wait to take the chance.
and in the end… you just want those 3-4 peeps that throw in 1000 or more.
think mostly about them. and that means, fuck whatever wemakeit. go into direct contact with potential peeps.
m
Alrighty I have:
- Adjusted the intro and translated that into German
- Adjusted the first paragraph of the text and took out the wrong text about rewards
- Adjusted the pricing of the rewards
@gaudi the main text is ready for German translation too.
By the way @jmarkham found an updated Omicsmaps called Enseqlopedia. You can search your area there for institutions that have HiSeqs.
Below the translation of the main text and the rewards to German.
- Please read through for any mistakes
- I made more clear the logo in the About screen for the highest reward (please adapt English version if ok with you).
Urs
Die Illumina HiSeq 2000 und 2500 sind DNA-Sequenziermaschinen welche von einer neuen, schnelleren und kostengünstigeren Generation abgelöst wurden. Institute und Unternehmen auf der ganzen Welt nehmen sie derzeit außer Betrieb und so sind die Maschinen für einen Bruchteil der ursprünglichen Kosten oder gar kostenlos verfügbar.
Ziel dieser Kampagne ist die Entwicklung einer neuen Software, welche Anwendungen wie Fluoreszenz-Mikroskopie und Hochdurchsatz-Screening auf bestehenden Maschine ermöglicht. Damit lassen sich die ausgemusterten Maschinen zu wertvollen Geräten für die Lehre und für Citizen Science Projekte umnutzen.
Programmiert wird die Software von Kaspar Emanuel und Bengt Sjölén. Unterstützt durch John Markham bei der Entwicklung der Anwendungen. Wir sind Teil des Netzwerks Global Open Science Hardware (GOSH, http://openhwardware.science) und Hackteria, Open Source Biological Art, DIY Biology and Generic Lab Equipement (https://hackteria.org)
Ein großes Dankeschön
Du erhältst unseren aufrichtigen Dank und das warme, kuschelige Gefühl, das freie Streben nach Wissen und den wissenschaftlichen Fortschritt zu unterstützen.
CHF 35.-0
Dein Name auf der Projekt-Website
Unseren Dank und Dein Name auf der Projekt-Website mit einem optionalen Link zu 'Deiner Website.
CHF 150.-0/15
Danksagung in der Software
Unseren Dank in Form Deines Namens mit einem optionalen Link auf unserer Website und eingebettet in das “About” -Fenster der Software.
CHF 500.-0/5
Ein Logo auf der Website
Ein Logo Deines Unternehmens oder Deiner Institution auf der Projekt-Website sowie Dein Name mit einem optionalen Link eingebettet in das “About” -Fenster der Software.
CHF1’000.-0/5
Ein gedrucktes Zertifikat und Logo
Ein schönes gedrucktes Sponsor Zertifikat sowie ein grosses Logo Deines Unternehmens oder Deiner Institution mit einem Link auf der Projekt-Website und eingebettet in das “About” -Fenster der Software.
Looks good to me Urs. Should wait to launch till someone translates the rest of the text?
no. technical stoff can be in english only. go ahead and launch it.
urs
Has anyone tried putting it through Google translate? Would a link to the Google translate version suffice? Or would that be considered poor form and deter potential donors?
J.
Ok, @gaudi the reward titles have a character limit so I couldn’t fit the amendment but otherwise everything is added.
I have asked Wemakeit to launch on Tuesday the 19th at 8.00 am!
Juhuu, the 19th it is - a Tuesday, prefect.
Urs
Ok, looks like we are launching tomorrow morning!
Hallo Kaspar
Bist du bereit? Wir haben dein Projekt «ReSeq: Reuse DNA Sequencers» freigegeben, und du kannst es jetzt auf deine Crowd loslassen – sie ist bestimmt schon ganz wild darauf.
BELOHNUNGEN: Während der Laufzeit der Kampagne ist es möglich weitere Belohnungen aufzuschalten. Wir empfehlen dir, diese Option unbedingt zu nutzen. So bleibt die Kampagne spannend und du hast einen Grund sie noch einmal zu kommunizieren.
Start: 20. März 2019 um 08:00
Dauer: 45 Tage
Hey everybody!
I’m following this project passively since some time and I’m amazed by the work you do!
I just had a look at the wemakeit page and it seems like you have a typo in the openhardware.science link.
I wish you a lot of success!
Alex
Thanks @vektor, fixed that. We are now live. If you are sharing the link in English speaking circles I recommend you append ?locale=en to the link so that it doesn’t give the German preview text (as it did in my tweet here).
Here is the link!
The campaign is running and we are now featured on the main page of wemakeit.com
We have already reached 36% but only 5 backer 
My post on Facebook was shared 44 times! - people are promoting - now the campaign needs to find the people that are ready to support us financially. What can we do?
Urs
1 Like
I already emailed everyone that had signed up to the email list through reseq.hackteria.org. We should also reach out to Micromanager developers, has somebody done this already?
I think we should look at http://enseqlopedia.com/ngs-mapped/ and see if we can find some people that way that have HiSeqs and will be interested.
Having some more press articles would be good of course but I exhausted my ideas before the campaign to get people onto the email list. I don’t think HaD is likely to write about the same project again. Who has ideas of where an article or post would be good?
We are half way there with 1/3rd of the time to go. Not bad at all. Thanks to all the supporters!
Planning to send out another email. Did those that signed up to the email list receive the first email titled “ReSeq Crowdfunding is Live!” sent out on the 20th of March? Bit worried it just ended in people’s spam. @dusjagr @mamaya @bengtsjolen (I already know @tamberg didn’t get it but should have).
I am considering announcing that I will be live streaming the development. I think it will be a good way for people to know things are happening and to help me stick to a schedule, remain motivated and help with rubber duck debugging (doesn’t matter if no one is actually watching). I have been thinking about the logistics of this and it seems doable with the caveat that the stream will of course be bad production quality and boring to most people. Any thoughts?
i also didnt get this…
Email from the 20th arrived safely in my mailbox. Looks a bit
weird however that there is no To: line in the email headers,
there is a Delivered-To though ?!?
Brave to live stream the development - I see the purpose and
effect on getting things done, like pair programming - but I would
personally not be into such intrusion of my privacy - I won’t try
to stop you from it though 
A friend of mine at MIT actually did
something with similar effect 10 years back: he rigged his machine
to take screenshots every minute or so and automatically put
together a video of it every night and auto-publish it on youtube
- with the purpose of stopping procrastination and making sure he
was not wasting his time. Was quite nice to see him build machine
parts in Solid Works super-fast with a whole days work in a couple
of minutes - I doubt coding is as exciting to watch though.
1 Like
I think it was probably hit by the Google spam filter. I had sent it as one email with a list of BCC which is why there was no “to”. I will use the Mailgun mass emailing service next time which should make for a better chance at reaching inboxes.
Re: livestreaming, I don’t consider it an invasion of privacy as long as I have control over what is shown on screen and when. A really low-effort option may just be to use the Jitsi video conferencing as it allows recording and screen-sharing, doesn’t allow a ton of people to join and watch but I don’t think that will be a problem. I also set up my own instance in about 5 minutes which seems to run a lot better than the public ones.
Talking of video calls, we are having another GOSH community call on Thursday 4pm CET and it was suggested there that I spend 15 minutes going through the internals of the HiSeq? Anyone want to join me for that? We could record it and put it in the update as well.