Sacha De'Angeli
Sheila Miguez

Chicago Open Science

This is our first event. We're more doing a startup organization in Chicago. We have two orgs. Far left is for Pumping Station One, one of the largest hackerspaces. The logo next to do that is Chicago Open Science, which is a subgroup. We're about 30 members, we meet about monthly-ish. Most of these guys come from Pumping Station One. We also have the Southside Hackers, a new hackerspace in Chicago that will happen in a few months. Another one is another hackerspace in Chicago, about 20 people. They aren't in Chicago, they are in the suburbs. One of these things isn't like the others.

We're just going to talk about us, what we've accomplished so far and what we hope to learn from you guys. I'm a chemical engineer from Pumping Station One, I like nanoengineers and polymers. Magnetite nanoparticles. I love hardware and nanomaterials and nanotech. Has a lot of the same security issues. Sheila. I'm a software engineer for my day job, I'm an amateur enthusiasit in school. I did an undergrad in computer science and psychology. I am more interested in cognitive psychology and the brain, and outreach. Reproducibility project and software carpentry, using scientific computing to improve the process of science with respect to writing the software and the toolchains and stuff like that.

Pumping Station One, we're at the .. square. We're at this very moment, the two of us are skipping the move, we're moving right now to three blocks north to a space 3x the size. So thanks for having us, we get to skip the move. We're 140 members. We were 2300 sq ft last year, and 6200 sq ft this year. Here's what we have right now: machine shop, wood shop, electronics, fabrication, fabric, fiber, art, computing, etc. We're here to make sure we do this properly and not get in trouble.

Our official reason to exist is to explore the intersection of art and science. We do have a lot of biology interest. Pumping Station One is a very diverse group. We like to have as many different ideas as possible. What we've done right now is that we've established a community, we have most of the lab in my basement just waiting to get moved. We have space, we're already pretty good I think.

Right now, things we're going to do is increase education outreach. We want to become a local repository of knowledge. I would like to go out and start publishing, this is maybe 10 years down the road, to actually be able to have real research coming out. "No, you're nuts." That's alright.

How do you deal with science and chemistry folks, or biology folks? Internally and externally, even if we have the science lab up, we immediately had tons of questions about safety regulations, tons of conversations whenever we just bring it up. Science-phobes. Thank you so much for having the "ask a biosafety officer" because we need that.

How do we not get raided by you guys? Is there a consolidated thing for laws? Is there an "ask a biosafety officer" for legal? There's state and local ordinances. There's just the anti-terrorist one on the federal level which says, "be useful and don't be evil". There's another one that covers the misuse of weapons, and has more lofty language, as far as regulatory and that certain individuals are in compliance with local state laws is difficult, because all the jurisdictions are different. We engaged with Genspace, there's this blog about raising backyard chickens. I'm really interested in raising chickens when I get a yard, but I live in DC now. They have this huge blog where people can go to this blog, and it shows the jurisdictions for each county and what laws are applicable to housing chickens, how far can the coop be away, and I feel like that could be useful if there were individuals willing to populate that on a local and national basis or international basis. That's a community way that this information could be shared.

If you want more information:

http://pumpingstationone.org/
http://southsidehackerspace.com/
http://chiopensci.wordpress.com/
http://chemhacker.com/
http://workshop88.com/
http://groups.google.com/group/chiopensci