Monday March 5, 2012

Collaborations

• GCM -- Denny Larson, Jessica. Woburn monitoring...
• H2S screen TX gas patch contacts and developments
  • Texas Sharon: low cost copper pipe based tool http://www.texassharon.com/. connect research
  • also need to include Wilma Subra (LEAN), and Haynesville shale communities, Oil and Gas Accountability Network:
  • this collaborations has health surveys asking “do you smell rotten eggs”- OGAP and Subra Co.
  • good place to start deploying H2S in the Oil and Gas Accountability Project interest in wide scale mapping project of well sites
• Chris Church/ExCiteS Public lab collaboration on Thermal imaging - London drive-by thermal imaging
  • ask Zeiwey Paulo to share back via blog and research notes. Next steps is phone conversation.
  • thermal imaging how to guide-- compile what has been put together so far
• Gulf Gathering-Shannon
• Tulane Environmental Law conference: Galveston Baykeeper, Sabine Riverkeeper-Paul litigation around saw mills Dioxin dumping-shannon to follow up, Massey Coal litigators--sent maps Stew and Jeff worked on.

Recent & Upcoming events

• Liz presenting briefly on spectroscopy at Parsons tonight. Draft presentation in dropbox.
• Sara presenting at MIT and Olin this week--Chris Walley’s class and Jean Huang our collaborator on estrogen research
• Crisis Mappers NYC http://www.meetup.com/Crisismappers-NYC/events/52430782/
• debrief on Toxic Action Center conference
• March Madness Update and ready to be passed on to organizer for next stage -
  • do local collections for helium, local mailing lists
• TxRx, Social Agency Lab, Air Alliance (invited TEJAS and Galveston Baykeeper), SXSW events

Fundraising

• http://www.epa.gov/region2/grants/ Citizen Science – Community Involvement Today and in the Future 12,500 - 25,000 - http://www.epa.gov/region2/grants/CITIZEN-SCIENCE-RFA-2012-v6a.pdf Nadia OGAP-mapping oil gas in new york city? aerial mapping Gowanus and Newtown Creek
• Google Summer of Code due date next week - project ideas list needed
  • http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/gsoc-2012
  • read over/review by other staff - http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/gsoc-ideas
  • only fund existing projects
• Azavea Summer of Maps, for students to do spatial analysis??? http://www.azavea.com/a/summer-of-maps/

Public Archive/Publications

Web

• Glowdoodle Public Lab? Install on server and debug.
  • Nominate the larger question on how to host diverse forms of community collected data on website to happen as a workshop during staff meeting.
  • How can these images become evidence? “Penny-pinching landlords look out” -- can these images stand up in court? What are other questions of the effectiveness of the data we collect, besides gov/law? Guy who presented at Sprout on “interpreting thermal images” link with London crew. Lebkey???
  • Shan talk to Global Green (NGO that does weatherization of homes)
  • Review of what’s possible, what are research questions
  • Round-up of folks working on tools/applications. Folks who are contributing, who could become leaders
  • write an email to the publiclab list, mention people by name with a phrase of what they are doing to drum up interest, include reach out to domain experts who are already on our list.
  • include idea of barnraising to bring together imaging experts, construction trades who weatherize homes (green jobs), and community investigators. Late summer? aiming at late-July retail roll-out.

###Organization###

• Open Hardware License campaign - this week? Related but smaller MapKnitter licensing campaign.
  • big switchover (community consensus and signup needed) - please review
  • http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/open-hardware-licensing
  • http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/open-hardware-licensing-logistics
  • http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/ohl-agreement - user reg form
  • mailing list
  • people who have participated in projects
  • wiki page for each tool on who has contributed.
  • Jeff doing list reachout, Shann doing individual reach out.
• Goal is 100%
• design open hardware logo?
• add us to the OHL wiki page? other PR? Write press release to send out to others - Mathew (later in March) (random link to a few inspirational friends in Open Hardware http://openprosthetics.org/) Next Open Hardware Summit? Shannon look into OHS and pass on info to Jeff/Mat

• reach out to CERN?

• Looking ahead to staff meeting:

• try self-evaluations before staff meeting? not based on job descrip. because first year has been unusual. Create some short answer prompts that we can fill out. We can refer to existing systems (does anyone have experience with any?), but let’s start by jotting down questions that are important to us.
  • positive experiences
  • issues that need attention
  • external threats from outside the organization
• We need this so that we can revisit job descriptions during the staff meeting and have a full year review.
• reach out to evaluation people?
• Mat - quarterly goals with work partner, and review them at the 6 month mark, and how we got there or didn’t and work practices were constructive or not. nebulous. Outcome is a lot of newsprint. Helpful.

• Liz send email with link to Google Doc.

• Approaching some more people for the board? Phil Brown, TAC, Lois Gibbs? Perhaps set up external evaluation of some of the things we are offering by grassroots organizers? Perhaps just for the balloon mapping? Good long term development.

• Accountant? Have one.

Field work this week

• NYC Bronx kite mapping didn’t happen, but going to give equipment to Whitney.
• Fixing H2S strips Providence.
• GRN Bonne Carre wetlands mapping, Houston mapping with Air Alliance