On the wiki page for "Start a chapter" it says that I should contact an organizer near me:
Take a look through places, regions, and lists to see if there is activity in your area of interestFinally, email the organizers to let them know you are interested in starting a chapter.
However, there is no organizer in my country yet, because there is no chapter in Germany. Therefore I would like to start the first chapter in Germany with some friends. Who can I contact about this?
Hi @niklasjordan , I'm reposting from @stevie's response over email :) Hi Niklas, Thanks for getting in touch, and for pointing out that page - it needs a bit of an update. We've moved away from the chapter model for organizing because as you noticed here, it relies on having a local person to manage it. Public Lab is global (here are posts and projects from Germany), and emphasizing place based projects and issue based projects as the starting point for organizing allows us to bring more people in without requiring formal structures for local organizing! Here are a couple ideas for you and your friends in getting started on Public Lab:
Looking forward to seeing you on Public Lab soon!
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Perhaps @cindy_excites would also be a great point of contact as she works all over Europe and probably knows if there are other folks in Germany who would like to be connected
I'm originally from Stuttgart, Germany and I'd like to be involved.
Hi @liz, Hi @stevie, thank you very much for your detailed answer. I understand that you don't need to rely on individuals who have to hold local chapters together. However, we are now 5-10 people who want to actively participate in the group. From environmental activists and environmental organizations to developer/technologists and data nerds to science enthusiasts, we have everything with us. In addition there was already a conversation with our local FabLab with whom we can work together and use their rooms.
First lectures in the FabLab and workshops for interested CitizenScientists are already in consultation. In addition, there is a "Night of Science" in our city where we are planning an event. Contacts to the local press have also been established. We have already developed several project ideas and evaluated them with environmental protection organisations.
As you can see, we are fully involved and would like to make PublicLab better known to the people in Northern Germany. However, with the number of people and organisations involved, it would make sense to structure this somewhat. Therefore the question whether it would still be possible to provide us with the communication possibilities conceived for the chapters, such as an own mailing list and Wiki page?
For events and workshops it would be cool if we could hand out flyers, handouts or postcards. Can you provide us with something or help us with it?
In short: My friend and I started with it and told people about it and in a few weeks the project PublicLab Germany has grown extremely. Many people want to be there, there are many ideas and infrastructure that we can already use. That's why I want to involve everyone who wants to participate as well as I can and take it with me so that it becomes something. Therefore, some structure and organization would not be wrong I think.
What do you think?
Take care! -Niklas
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Hi @alessandra, to meet quickly Stuttgart is unfortunately a little far away. But I'm at a conference near Stuttgart in october. We could meet there for a beer? ;-)
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Hello @niklasjordan! Cindy here in the UK - would love to chat about your initiative and the infrastructure you've already built/setting in motion and how that can connect with some of the work we're doing in our various projects. As @liz mentioned, we've done some work with folks in Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands.
Hi again Niklas, This is great! Why don't you make a wiki page for Germany? As you can see it doesn't have one yet ("the add one now" button), and you can use it as a place to start organizing. Are you available to join the next Open Call?
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Hello everyone, @stevie, @liz, thank you very much for your numerous tips. That helps me a lot. I will create a wiki page for our city and use it as a central platform for our organization. @Cindy_ExCites I would be happy if we could chat a bit :-)
See you soon
Take care! -Niklas
Hi @nicklasjordan -Just saw and responded to your GH post before I saw this note. I thought you were trying to create a Germany page and had trouble, so I plugged a template in on that page. Want to start on that one? There are a couple reasons to start with a bigger geography rather than a smaller one:: 1) you include more people, 2: it's always easier to get smaller from a geography rather than bigger. If you end up with a lot from different places that need to be represented within Germany on that page you can always break out into city pages and use /germany as a parent page for those smaller city pages :)
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Happy to get southern Germany involved if we get a bigger Germany page going... :)
I have enriched the site for Germany a little bit. Over the next few weeks I will expand the site a little further and describe ideas for joint projects. @alessandra You are welcome to join ;-)
https://publiclab.org/wiki/germany
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