I'd like to convene a group to explore the possibility of breeding shiitakes. Please respond yes if you would like to join such a group. We would rotate the responsibility of facilitating the meeting. We can use the Biotech Without Borders lab as a place to meet.

At first let's commit to 2 meetings. We can reassess after that if we want to continue.

To all those who expressed interest in meeting, I'd like to know your availability on the week of July 7th and 15th to convene at Biotech Without Borders (43-01 21ST Street Suite 319) or online to discuss this potential collaboration on shiitake growing/breeding. You are free to propose alternate times.

At this meeting i'd like to get to know each other and the communities we are in contact with as well as our personal motivations for wanting to engage in a potential collaboration. I'd like to start discussions on what exactly should we collaborate on, and I'd like to brainstorm ideas for how to activate the individuals and resources we have access to in service of the potential collaboration. If we walk away from this meeting with a better idea of what is possible and what we hope for that would be a success. We should also plan for the second (and possibly final) meeting at this time.

I drafted a rough agenda to this meeting here. Please feel free to add anything. As with the last poll feel free to invite other external guests to vote.

Sneha and I met over a video chat and discussed what breeding shiitakes might look like as well as my current attempts to bring together different groups for fixed duration meetings around project ideas where the administrative burden (scheduling meetings, taking notes, setting an agenda) is shared by those in the group. It was my intention to bring together Gil and Sneha in this fashion, but based on availability I was only able to chat with Sneha. It was nice catch up in general, which was lovely. Sneha suggested adding Craig to the mix and he also responded to an earlier poll with "if need be times", so this next and final meeting I will try and schedule with him. If further meetings are desired we can discuss at this one.

Agenda can be found here. Let me know what times you are available. Sneha and I both thought it would be nice to meet outside. The Dead Possum Grove of Smiling Hogshead comes to mind, but if you have a suggestion for a site please leave it in the "reason" field. Alternate times can also be suggested.

As I mentioned in the last meeting (and hopefully is properly expressed in the notes) I'm not specifically trying to move the project in the thread context forward (it's barely a project IMO rather it's a collection of ideas) but rather I wanted the project idea as a nice framing to get to know y'all better and serve as a potential nucleus to a more defined future project.

I was looking forward to seeing folks IRL, but if it means we can actually simultaneously convene I will be OK with changing the meeting to an online one. However, I am also OK just meeting with Gil by myself for this final meeting of the series and recording the notes. In this case, the notes from both meetings will serve as a record of our thinking around the topic of of log cultivation/fungus breeding. A third option may be for another to try and convene us for a future date.

Regardless I will edit the context of the thread at the end of our series of meetings to capture what has transpired for others who may want to pick up on the topic/project.

Please let me know how you want to proceed.

This will be the first of 3 meetings spanning the course of 3 months to explore what it means to be a small crew and try to better pin down a project using our collective resources.

We will each convene one meeting. I will start.

Please indicate in your "reason" if you want to meet in cyberspace or meatspace.

An skeleton agenda can be found here. Please edit as you see fit.

I had started this thread with the intention of seeing if Gil and Sneha wanted to be a crew in order to weave together Biotech Without Borders, Schooner Apollonia, and Smiling Hoghead Ranch. While I still think that is an interesting idea and there were good discussions had under that pretense (see the meeting notes), I think the fact that we didn't revisit these discussions in the Winter is a good indicator that we should move on from this.

I also discovered through this process that the project that I initially was thinking about would take some time and at the moment I don't think Biotech Without Borders can engage such a long term project without a better understanding of how it would positively impact our survival.

Therefore I propose to close this thread to make space for other initiatives that may form instead.