I just came from an extraordinary seminar on EU Lobbying and Advocacy with THE GOOD LOBBY thanks to @alberto’s existing collaboration with their co-founder Alberto Alemanno.
They are ultimately about connecting those with high level policy advocacy expertise to civil society organisations and teams in need of advice and support.
In their words “The Good Lobby believes in forging unconventional partnerships to lobby for the public interest. We recruit a diverse mixture of expert volunteers to share their skills with NGOs working on the most important social and political issues in Europe. Our expert volunteers include some of Europe’s leading academics, lawyers, business professionals and its brightest students. On an on-going basis, The Good Lobby serves as a clearinghouse, and provides training, technical and strategic assistance in EU law, policy development and communication.”
They are very enthusiastic about Edgeryders work and I used OpenInsulin as a protoype for my activity on policy advocacy - I focused on open source patenting regulation for projects of public interest so already have some small seeds of how we could approach it in the EU (see my notes linked below for details).
I’ll be meeting with their other co-founder Lamin Khadar sometime in the not too distant future to discuss Edgeryders. He is also a probono associate at one of the world’s largest law firms DLA Piper - his job is to match up civil society with pro bono legal advice. At this stage we’ll be looking at the broader Edgeryders’ community needs but perhaps @winnieponcelet@anthony_di_franco@thomasmboa@ramykim@unknown_author it’s worthwhile you letting me know when you may be ready to begin dialogue around legal advice and I can foreground OpenInsulin in the conversation.
Anyone else who is interested in policy advocacy support please comment here so I can get an idea of where they may be able to match us up! Ping @nadia
And of course they offer various different and free workshops to changemakers around Europe so I encourage you to sign up to their newsletter and follow where they go!
For more on tonight’s EU Lobbying and Advocacy workshop, see my noteshere.
@nadia spearheaded a (partially successful) effort to keep CAPSSI’s approach in EU funding. Ask her when she comes back – for several reasons, it makes sense to revamp it, I think.
Last year we negotiated taking up lobbying for Assobit, the Italian association of Fintech operators. It did not work out, but @teirdes had theoretically accepted to take up the job. Those guys don’t know how much they missed out!
Anique, thanks for providing your notes here. I took a quick scan, and seems like some really good takeaways and questions (eg, who do the manufacturers listen to?). I am unsure where each team is in terms of talking about legal advice, as I’d been traveling, but can message the group to see if everyone’s on board with my interfacing on that issue. We’ll be having an international call this coming Sunday/Monday the 10th/11th, so I can also bring it up then to see how everyone feels about moving forward. I’ll report back regardless.
This is fantastic @anique.yael! Thanks.
Pinging @dfko again since I think that’s Anthony’s account he follows.
I’m very interested to follow this! Can’t take the lead in new endeavours, but I will contribute wherever I can.
Our biweekly meetup in Ghent is continuing and the legal/strategic side of things has been part of the conversation on multiple occasions. If meetings happen in Belgium, feel free to also invite people to tag along to the meetup.
If people are interested in this (like @winnieponcelet seems to be), Alberto A has a book on this out. It is meant as a how-to guide for citizen lobbyists. He left a copy at The Reef. A discussion: Exit vs. voice: reacting to decline in 2017
One thing about Open Insulin I think is good for this is, if they choose to work with us on it, sooner or later the Big Pharma interests who do not want this to happen will come out of the woodwork. Then it will be game on.
Anique, after last night’s call, we are on board to start the conversation around legal advice, be it, in each host country’s framework, and the broader international framework. Please let me know the next steps, and I will be keeping the rest of the Open Insulin members up-to-date. Thanks!
@unknown_author I hear you around the power of storytelling in lobbying. In fact that was one of the big take aways from the Lobbying workshop - how significant it is to have champions for public awareness campaigns - eg. Elon Musk and his move to remove all patents from Tesla recently?!!! Thanks also for the context of who and where could be good to ride the wave for OpenInsulin - no doubt many of us newer folk to biohacking can benefit!
And thanks also for the update @ramykim . Exciting to hear that things are moving forward so well over there. I followed Lamin up straight after the workshop but know he’s very busy. I’ll see how things go for us setting up a meeting in the coming while, and feel free to follow me up! Keep in mind that we’ll be talking about Edgeryders network in general, but as you know I’m invested in and supportive of OpenInsulin so will be foregrounding it and obviously it’s a great first prototype for our collaboration!