For people first encountering Public Lab, there are a lot of unknowns about how our community is organized, how we collaborate, our culture, and the personal relationships that fuel our work. 

## Welcome!

Welcome to a collaborative research effort including activists, makers, scientists, technologists, curious people and assorted hybrids of all of the above. 

Together, we develop open-source tools for environmental exploration and investigation, promoting inexpensive and accessible "Do-It-Yourself" techniques to increase the ability of underserved communities to identify, redress, remediate, and create awareness and accountability around environmental concerns. 

> But it only works if we all share our ideas and innovations! 

## Benefits

* a community of diverse and helpful fellow researchers to ask for support and advice -- by signing up on the website you may join several relevant mailing lists
* a growing body of open source research and resources to leverage in your work
* you may use, reuse, adapt, improve, and distribute any Public Lab research without even asking permission! (Find out how at http://publiclab.org/licenses)
* a place to publish your own work and to build a body of research online 


## Responsibilities

* to share what you do with the rest of the research community (through our mailing list and website: http://publiclab.org) 
* to help others leverage your and Public Lab's research and resources
* to cite our community (which you're now part of) when presenting or publishing your work, if you based it on or drew ideas from the Public Lab research community.



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### Welcome Committee

The Welcome committee was created to do just that -- welcome people first encountering Public Lab, and provide a personal connection for explaining our culture, ethics, digital infrastructure, and organizational structure. 

[people:welcome]


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### Handouts

Here are some 1-page PDFs to share at events:

* A standard "Welcome to Public Lab" handout: [welcome-to-plots.pdf](https://publiclab.org/sites/default/files/welcome-to-plots.pdf) (PDF)
* A handout specifically for workshops ("by participating in this workshop..."): [welcome-to-plots-for-workshops.pdf](https://publiclab.org/sites/default/files/welcome-to-plots-for-workshops.pdf) (PDF)

Edit these in Google Docs here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gNthbscUD2BZJRCllDx169ZD4tqoKtC7wqs_BhD4vnc/edit