Thanks for all the input! We got the good news yesterday that the project funding is a go. Hurrah! So we want to continue with the plan of hiring Edgeryders to develop the Biofabrication platform.
Can we schedule a call soon to discuss details? In the meantime can you share with us what we can already prepare?
I am available for a call most times of the day until (Fri) 2017-12-23 evening. Probably send a Doodle mail around if more people should attend this.
In the meantime, please:
First decide if you want your own self-hosted Discourse installation, or the whitelabelling solution outlined by Alberto above:
[quote=“alberto, post:3, topic:7851”]I would suggest “whitelabelling 1”: same codebase + database as edgeryders.eu, access through your own domain, with your own logo/color scheme etc.
The advantage of that is that we only have to maintain the codebase + database once. This, yes, means you get Open Ethno in the package, and it gets maintained (and improved upon) with no extra effort.[/quote]
(Further details about the whitelabelling solution are in this document.)
Provide a feature spec document. Basically, which features do you need added / modified when starting from an unmodified Discourse installation? Please indicate the priority of each to inform the order of development.
Congrats, Winnie! Great news.
One more item: this choice does not need to be final. You could even try out whitelabelling 1, then, should your community grow very large or your needs change, export the database to a new Discourse instance next year (or to any other platform, in principle, though that would require more scripting).
What mainly interests me in the whitelabelling is the pooling of maintenance (less costs and worries) and the future possibility of researching citizen science like we discussed a while ago. The former I think will be the case for all clients, the latter is more specific.
Open Insulin was an attempt on the old platform to do this meta research. It didn’t work out, but we learned and I’m still very interested. If the research thing can better be done later on, that’s okay. Then again, if it is done now, nothing prevents you or others of playing with the data and possibly discovering things that can lead to a next project. From our experience, opening up possibility spaces like that can be very valuable.
Considering your plans of possibly selling this as a product, I invite you to also think what you would like to test out with us as an early client. What do you want to offer for what price? And what is the investment you’ll need to make (as described in more detail by @matthias in the dedicated thread) to go to market? How should your marketing look like?
I will fully embrace my role of a client and ask hard questions other prospects might also ask before, during or after sales and implementation 
And offer honest feedback where it can help, of course. I’ll schedule a call with Matthias, but it might be interesting for whoever will do the “business development” on this to listen in.
Some random question that came up while planning this: naming the community. Currently it is called Biofabrication Belgium. I’m thinking we will drop the “Belgium” to make it less tied to location. Though what I mainly wonder what are the pro’s and cons of branding it as a Magma Nova forum (our design bureau & education hub), since we are coming up with the money and time to organize and maintain it.
Was there a thinking process for you to decide to call both the company and community Edgeryders? @alberto @nadia
There was, and it was led by Nadia. I participated, but only from the sidelines and did not make the decision.