What's a chapter?

Chapters are self-organizing local groups of Public Lab members, such as the Gulf Coast or Boston, where people come together around a site-specific environmental issue or the desire to start an interest group around a tool. Public Lab chapters can help connect a) people with expertise who want to do something, b) people with environmental concerns who want to do something, and c) people who have gear who want to do something with it.

The Public Lab nonprofit

Public Lab is an open community supported by a nonprofit. Currently the nonprofit staffs two regions-- the Gulf Coast and Northeastern United States. The rest of our time is spent supporting organizers, establishing formats for meetups and workshops, coordinating research and tool development and maintaining online platforms such as PublicLab.org, MapKnitter.org, SpectralWorkbench.org, and Infragram.org that serve the whole community.

Find nearby Public Labbers

Figuring out what's already happening near you: First, check to see if there are others already working with Public Lab in your region. There are currently ~12 local mailing lists in the United States.

If there isn't already a mailing list for your region, is there a local group that is already concerned about a similar issue that you are--a local environmental our outdoors group? Perhaps a group of makers or hackers? Or do you want to fly kites over the water and know of a local canoe club? Reach out and see if these folks are interested in partnering. In the long term, such partnerships will make for a vibrant and effective chapter! Contact welcome@publiclab.org with any questions.

Host a workshop

Try hosting a workshop or a meet-up to get everyone together and gauge interest. For example, if you are interested in hosting an aerial mapping workshop, here is an overview. If you are interested in hosting a spectrometer meet-up, try this on for size. Consider setting a regular date, time and place to meet--the first Saturday of the month at Park X at Z o'clock! Don't forget to let the wider community know what you're doing by posting research notes on www.publiclab.org about what you're working on--other community members in your area might pop out of the wood work, and those who have set up their own chapters can offer tips, tricks and ideas!

Start a local chapter

Have some dedicated people together? You are ready to start a chapter, great! Now what?

1. A couple things to check:
2. Read through the value statement developed by the Public Lab organizers group. If this sounds like a community whose values align with yours, fantastic!

3. Do you have a group of 3-5+ people that want to get together weekly and fly kites? Or a group that wants to map in infrared, over the next five years, changes to a local wetlands area?

4. If you're onboard with the value statement and have a couple of people together, reach out to the Public Lab organizers group, organizers@publiclab.org. We are a growing group of people who lead events and chapters across the globe, and can help you:

5. Signup for this website and create a profile page
6. Connect to folks on mailing lists
7. Set up a page for your chapter
8. Join the organizers yourself
9. Once more than ~20 people are involved, we can help you set-up a local mailing list

Putting your chapter on the map

The map at http://publiclab.org/places can display your chapter or place page. You can add place pages to the map by tagging the page with longitude and latitude, using power tags like this:

lon:-90.100612 and lat:29.951576

See the Gulf Coast page for an example of this kind of tagging.

What's next?

Now that your chapter is up and running:

1. Discuss your goals individually and as a group
2. Consider scheduling monthly or quarterly meet-ups
3. Host a regional barnraising in your community
4. Report back to Public Lab (by posting a research note) on what you're working on to connect with others in other areas of the world doing similar work.
5. Use your data for advocacy