1. Evaluating existing platforms in
terms of applicability to BioStrike,
Herbert’s consolidated reflections
nm5214wk5

2. The discovery of penicillin is attributed to Scottish scientist and Nobel
laureate Alexander Fleming in 1928.[12] He showed that, if Penicillium
rubens[13] were grown in the appropriate substrate, it would exude a
substance with antibiotic properties, which he dubbed penicillin.
This serendipitous observation began the modern era of antibiotic discovery.
http://www.slideshare.net/HamaNabaz/lab-6isolation-of-antibiotic-producer-from-soil
Zone of Inhibition: It is a circular zone around a
disc containing an antibiotic, for example, in
which the growth of bacteria susceptible to
the antibiotic is inhibited. Typically several
million bacterial cells are spread on the agar
plate, and if their growth is inhibited, a clear
"zone of inhibition" is observed around the
antibiotic impregnated disc. If the bacteria are
resistant to the antibiotic, a confluent "lawn"
of growth (opaqueness) is observed.
http://www.newton.dep.anl.gov/askasci/mole
00/mole00531.htm

3. Problem
Centralized Antibiotic Discovery
• Subsequent establishment of a meterable
pharmaceutical ponzi
10 Discoveries/Year

4. Solution
Decentralized Antibiotic Discovery
• Crowdsourced citizen science
99 999 Discoveries/Year

5. figshare

6. synbiota

7. figshare
• Science protocol
• 1. uploading images,
• 2. commenting on sizes of inhibition zones
• Severely limited
• Crowdsourced Annotations
• Nonexistent in terms of massive public access and hence participation
• You cannot annotate on top of the image
• Open Data Publishing / Citations
• Image authorship possible
• Open API
• Nonexistent at this point, current version (figshare profile) functions merely as
a marketing linkback to figshare itself
• Even if you decide to use figshare as a repository for images, pulling the
images out through the API is possible but then you still have to create your
own code for crowd participation features such as collective tagging and liking

8. synbiota
• Science protocol
• Lab Book sharing
• Only two categories useful: external references and internal
protocols/notes
• Crowdsourced Annotations
• Nonexistent
• Complete data management? Storing, browsing and examining
images isn’t done intuitively
• Open Data Publishing / Citations
• Only possible for gene sequences
• Open API
• Possible to export gene sequences data in an organized fashion
only

9. Figshare + Synbiota
• Both have hallmarks of Web 2.0 usability
• HTML5, within browser operation
• Low barriers to entry but not suited for the
instrumental and crowdsourcing purposes of BioStrike
• Understand that the core medium communicated are
images and the core activity being identifying through
visual confirmation the size of inhibition zones
• Instrumental unsuitability of synbiota: does not facilitate
decentralized uploading and viewing of images
• Instrumental unsuitability of figshare: No tag annotating feature
• Crowdsourcing is about many-to-many interaction
• Projects are organized around the barrier of groups, not very fluid
and inconvenient

10. Omero
• Science protocol
• 1. uploading images,
• 2. annotating on sizes of inhibition zones
• Crowdsourced Annotations
• Possible but too unwieldy for convenient, decentralized and
collective operation
• Application is too specialized for the specific purpose of
BioStrike
• Open Data Publishing / Citations
• Image authorship possible
• Open API
• Possible but expectedly too many hoops to jump over

11. What is superior to data? Better
data. API must facilitate data to be
repurposed for different uses.

12. Let’s prototype a Biostrike app!

13. Leveraging the Philosophy of
Growth Hacking
1. Identify existing/emergent social behavior
2. Determine the social affordance that corresponds to the
social behavior
3. Improve the user experience surrounding the social
affordance
4. Growth hack to critical mass by exploiting the social
behavior
5. Expand horizontally

14. Growth Hacking (how to make
things viral) + Citizen Science
Central Goals

15. Mass Communication to propel Citizen Science with
the fitness metric
Chance of Breakthroughs = f(traction)

16. Traction -> Critical Mass ->
Stigmergic Social Momentum

17. “CrowdMedia’s premise is simple: crowdsourced
social photos shared on Twitter or Instagram are,
more and more, becoming critically important to
news coverage. So the startup offers an automated
platform that gets those pictures out of social media
and onto the front page of major news
organizations, with rights cleared and money in the
owner’s pocket … all within minutes.”
CrowdMedia sells everyone’s newsworthy Twitter pics — and could just change journalism forever

18. High gratification:
easily obtained
social rewards
from existing social communes
You’d Be Surprised By What Really Motivates Users

19. Features of a Biostrike App
• Tap into existing social behavior
• Twitter: Personas, achievement unlocked sharing, agar plate image
sharing
• Secondary Crowdsourcing
• Fulfills social validation and rewarding + verification of good samples
• Users must be able to annotate tags on top of images
• Stupidly Convenient to use:
•
•
•
•
Sign up through Twitter account
Annotate tags on images
Rate IS (inhibition size) rank from 1-10
Provide metadata about an image: geotags and local information
• Crowdrank cancels out the noise
• Aggregated big data principle: although there may be inconsistencies
when images are captured from the camera, rely on the principle
crowd wisdom as a reliable signal will chime through the noise
• Promote Intergroup competition

20. Intergroup Competition, Stakeholder
Involvement
• Pokemon-type characters to be designed for aggregate IS
ranks, with different elements depending on locale found
• West: Water; Central: Fire; East: Nature; North: Wind; South: Psychic
• Legendary Scymons: ranks 9-10
• Involve schools
• Corollary: Young Scientist Awards with Young Civic Scientist
• Allow CIP hours to be spent on civic science hours; breakthroughs give
mass social recognition on Young Civic Scientist portal + complete
waiver of CIP hours left
• Banding of users
• Competition between classes, then competition between schools
• Allow a Special 4-6 Hobby Group that if successful will be granted Gym
Trainer Boss positions, just like the Pokemon games
• Organize grand tournament events