Why Hold a Public Lab Workshop?

This page is intended to gather tips on planning, running and following up on a Public Lab workshop.

Public Lab's workshops have multiple goals: 1. to train interested people in using and/or making Public lab tools 2. to introduce the concept of Public Lab, particularly the open source ethic and recursive research culture 3. involve the participants in the broader Public Lab community 4. create feedback so that participants in the workshop continue to share their results and research with Public Lab.

Fulfilling these goals simultaneous can be a challenge. This page is for sharing issues encountered in workshops, offering advice on developing a workshop and as a portal for how to guides for workshops on specific tools

When to hold a Public Lab Workshop?

Presently we think this depends on the stage of a tool's development. Workshop are useful when a tool is at least prototyped so that participants can learn how to make and use a prototype.

Workshop should be distinct from Barnraising or Hackathon's which are intended to further develop the tool.

Tips on Organization of Workshop

Teaching about Open Source

1. Print documentation for introducing Public Lab and the concept of Open source research. File attached below
2. Explain the concept of Public Lab, consider projecting the website so participants can see the website and become familiar with using materials from it. e.g. reading directions from tool pages, finding research notes.
3. Consider teaching how to write a research note

Creating Feedback to the rest of Public Lab

We have learned that it is very important to document Public Lab workshop with photos and videos so as to share the results back to the wider community.

consider:

1. appointing someone official "documenter" of the workshop
2. running a wiki page during the workshop so notes and thoughts can be immediately added

Teaching to a Range of different Skills

Public Lab's goal is to bring together people with diverse skills and backgrounds to improve the quality of environmental health research. Therefore Public Lab often hosts workshops that include a range of people from different backgrounds. It is important to leverage that diversity of knowledge and not get stuck teaching to one knowledge groups.

Consider:

1. Beginning with a round of introductions focused on why people have come to the workshop, what they hope to gain and how they hope to use the tools. Have them explain their expertise
2. Organize the workshop based on the expertise in the room. If you have a lot of people with technology skills such as electronics have them either work together to rapidly make and improve the tool, or have them teach others with less experience. This worked out great in a Providence's AS220 Thermal Flashlight Workshop.
3. Bring different stages of the tool to the workshop. If people are more interested in using rather than making the tool, then enable them to work with a finished tool to improve use of the tool.

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Tool Specific Workshop how to guides

[[http://publiclaboratory.org/wiki/host-balloon-mapping-workshop|How to host a balloon mapping workshop]]

Examples of Public Lab Workshops