Planning Session - advocating for grassroots citizen science

BioFabbing 2017.May.10-14 Unconference
#1

As I mentioned in my intro, a few of us are starting to get together to work on an advocacy campaign for DIY science / grassroots citizen science. We’d like to argue for support and ideally independent access to research funding - for most of us there is no way to access these budgets without going through a research institution. If we can find our voice quickly we can have a crack at influencing agenda-setting for the next European research funding framework, FP9 (for the period 2021-2027) – this process will be concluded at the end of the year. If anyone is interested in joining us for this we’d love to hear from you. Here’s some more blurb about the project:

@luc.henry and I would like to dedicate an unconference session to planning the campaign on Friday - all welcome.
We’re really happy to be supported by @claudia.goebel and @aleks from the DITOs project who will run a policy capacity-building session, Thursday 16:30, to analyse the current state of affairs in the European Commission wrt DIY Science, and do some stakeholder mapping. We’d like to follow this with an unconference planning session on Friday (unfortunately Luc has to leave Saturday morning). Hope we can find a good slot in the schedule!

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#2

This is a great point and it is more complex in Africa, where citizen science is not the priority of ours governments or African Union. Many citizen sciences projects are founded by International subventions.

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#3

Looking very much forward! And Friday is great! - Unforunately I need to leave around 19:00 :frowning: but Aleks will be there a bit longer, so all good.
Can’t wait!

#4

@thomasmboa - can’t wait to talk - have read a bit about your project and really want to know more!

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#5

Thanks for pointing to the capacity building workshop for policy on Thursday @lu_cyP The idea is to make it useful for as many different people as possible who might be interested in engaging with policy. Hopefully it will be an effective way to set the scene before the advocacy session on Friday. We have 90 minutes - so we’ll start with describing the current European context and then going through some basic steps of putting together a strategy for policy impact. There are a few different methodologies we could use so I’ll introduce them briefly. Stakeholder mapping is a way to start thinking about all of the different players with a stake in the particular policy context and the relationships between them. It can be most useful when applied to a particular situation so I can bring some suggestions for mapping within the DITOs project but, depending on how many people are interested and what is most relevant to them, we can take different situations. I think it would be really great if we could also look at a context beyond Europe @thomasmboa or suggestions that others have.

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#6

yes! Whilst focus is good I hope we can come up with stuff that is useful in a wider global context - we should try to design for that as much as we can to make our efforts as useful as possible.

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#7

@aleks @lu_cyP @claudia.goebel I guess advocating for grassroots citizen science should consider three organissational levels: 1) National (inside country) 2) Regional (UE) 3) International (UN…) even if all these levels are entangled, I think we should choose which level is relevant for a very productive session.

#8

Thank you for your initiative, looking forward to see yu all there @aleks @claudia.goebel @thomasmboa @lu_cyP

#9

Hi,
Looking forward to seeing you all. Learn from your experiences and share
mine :slight_smile:

#10

Hello! I would love to be there to help @lu_cyP moderate this session. I however have a talk and workshop to give elsewhere in Geneva that afternoon for the Open Geneva Hackathon event (bloody double booking) and therefore can’t be present after 1.30pm… Will there be a chance that we schedule in the morning? @dusjagr?

#11

@thomasmboa - very good point. I’d also add local/city level, and probably regional (in a sub-national sense).Also, I believe the levels that are important depend very much on the concrete activity or aim that shall be achieved. Would be good to specify this as much as possible first.

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#12

I would like to participate in this as well. Friday morning sounds good. If we include the unconference morning session maybe?

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#13

@mmborch. but friday there is a lot of other event in Geneva…

#14

Hi - here’s a pad for the session "Tools for policy engagement"
https://pad.okfn.org/p/biofab17-policyengagement

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#15

We’re summarising our brainstorming from Aleks and Claudia’s policy session in this google doc (located in the unconference gdrive): https://docs.google.com/document/d/1C7cbcdk4dluWmmb3P6MalAgx9qsn5yHEV2C8tchThbs/edit

@mmborch will share a photo of the postit explosion :wink:

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#16

We’d like to do another planning session around policy and advocacy strategies this afternoon. Luc has to give a talk at another event after lunch but will be back with us at the Confucius Institute around 4pm - we could take a couple of hours to work on it then. Would that work for everyone (like this post if yes)?

Progress so far - we’ve got some rough first drafts of the DIY Science movement’s
_ Values
_ Mission
_ Some suggestions for the kind of funding we might need
_ Some reflections on the challenges to getting that funding

Next steps
_ Refine what it is we’re asking for
_ Stakeholder mapping for those requests
_ Plan our campaign…

(@aleks & @claudia.goebel - could you share your presentation from yesterday in this thread? The instructions for stakeholder mapping and the other tools/processes, as well as the overview of the relevant parts of the European Commission would be really handy - thanks!! :slight_smile: )

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#17

Here is the presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1oiJSMztEWiZr6ipnwyULyWfTOdKZSQHAmvELd5lXGpE/edit?usp=sharing

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#18

At the moment member states are requested to review the new Science with and for Society working program 2018-2020. Via the National Contact Point SwafS of the Netherlands I am involved in a Dutch review group, in which interestingly I am the only none-academic. Member states need to give their feedback before May 30th to the EC. The working program itself is apparently classified, so I am not allowed to share. However I just registered for the review group via the National Contact Point, so I guess you can do that too in your countries. It is an excellent opportunity to have direct impact on the funding programmes of the next few years.

#19

Cool - does anyone know how we find out who the SwafS national contact points are in our respective countries? It’s a shame we didn’t know about this sooner. I really think this kind of stuff could be posted on the mailing lists…

#20

Ah - here we go: http://www.sisnetwork.eu/ncps/ncps-by-country/
Do any of the Germans here already have contact with Randi Wallmichrath? He’s in Bonn
http://www.eubuero.de/wg.htm