Hello future iGEM teams! We have prepared a guide to help you kickstart your iGEM project, where we draw from our own experience with the competition and hosting of The Nordic iGEM Conference!
The Parts We Made
We made 2 parts to help us reach our goals with our project.
We used the riboswitch to induce expression of a marker gene, dependent on fluoride levels.
BBa_K4868001 - A two-part construct for inserting genes and detecting fluoride:
This is the composite part we made for optimizing dehalogenases. You can read more about its function and applications on iGEM Parts Registry.
Getting Started With iGEM
When starting your iGEM journey you might think that you have all the time in the world! But trust us, down the road, you will wish you had done more things at the beginning. So always remember to try and keep up, do not let things sit that you could have done now. Having to start from a clean slate is always difficult. Therefore, we have made this guide for you, with different things that worked well for us or that we wished we had done differently.
The very beginning
Build your team - Think about the skills you need and consider bringing in new members to cover those bases. You can consider if you need someone with interest in:
Social media
Coding
Outreach
Laboratory work
Computational work
Text writing
Creative work for key deliverables like the promotional video
Find a day where everyone can meet at least once a week. It is important to catch up with each other, the project, and big decisions. Make it clear to each other how important these meetings are. Also consider things like, if three people cannot come to a meeting, should it then be rescheduled? This also depends on the size of your group. It is hard to coordinate that many people!
Choose someone from your team to be in charge of future meetings - the meetings will be more productive if there is an agenda.
Understand each other - Get a sense of your team's personalities: Do you have any potential limitations to watch out for? Different work styles? Overachievers or procrastinators? Taking a personality test could be a helpful idea. Just be careful not to put yourselves into boxes - this will only limit your potential!
When your team is in place
Brainstorm - Plan your brainstorming techniques and figure out how to choose the best ideas. We used a voting system; but find out what is best for your team.
Research the idea you come up with and make sure that it is possible and the expectations you can have (how far can you expect to come in the time you have?)
Talk with your supervisors to make sure your ambitions are possible and that your facility has the necessary equipment for it.
Make a group contract together that everyone can agree to. It will help you in the long run. Here are some things to consider:
What is your commitment level: How dedicated are you to the project? And will you be okay if not everyone is at the same commitment level as you?
How many hours can you invest? This is both during the semester but also during the summer holiday.
Is this a democracy or dictatorship or something else? (Anarchy is not ideal)
Is it okay to go on vacation? Home for a birthday?
Is it okay for someone to take a summer class?
Handling disagreements: How can you prevent and resolve conflicts?
When Wiki Freeze is close, think about what you expect from each other. Can you go to your uncle’s birthday party? What about your cousin’s wedding? Make sure to balance personal events and the project so you give the project enough time without compromising your own happiness.
When you have an awesome idea!
Apply for sponsorships as early as possible. Make a sales pitch and describe why a sponsor should sponsor exactly you. Have all your sponsor applications sent out before the summer holiday, because everyone goes on vacation at that time and getting the right contacts is very difficult then.
Divide your team into smaller groups so everyone knows which responsibilities they have.
Plan out the whole project from the beginning:
Look at the medal criteria and iGEM deadlines first to make the outline of the plan.
Make “soft” deadlines for your project. This means choosing a date before the real Wiki Freeze to have your own Wiki Freeze. This is the date you should be done with all the text on the website, so you are ready to upload it to the Wiki. A time buffer before the real Wiki-freeze will give you time to correct mistakes you spot on the Wiki.
You should also make a deadline for finishing all the visuals on the Wiki. Make sure to start making animations and figures for the Wiki page as soon as possible. Making these takes longer than you expect, so you better start now!
Some general advice
Strategic planning of the Wiki pays off:
Prepare your Wiki layout even before you get the official iGEM link. Draw it on paper or sketch it out online. Find a concept for your page and stick with it from the beginning.
Figure out what color palettes you will work with.
What will make your Wiki unique?
Visualize graphics and select an appropriate art style using software.
Start working on collaborations as early as possible.
Figure out what special prizes your team will go for, so you can steer your project in the right direction.
Make sure to find time for team building and ‘hygge’ with your team. Everything is much more fun, and you will end your iGEM journey with a bunch of new friends!
Knowing each other well may also prevent some future conflicts in the group.
Smaller things can be discussed and accepted in smaller groups. Not everyone needs to be a part of everything.
Make sure to do proper research before starting in the lab. Some mistakes may be avoided this way, and it can spare you some time. Here are some of the considerations that we should have made before starting our laboratory work:
Which bacterial strain do you want to use – and is it good at accepting plasmids?
In which order will you do experiments in the laboratory?
What is the timeline for your laboratory work – which experiments will be done when?
How To Host the Nordic iGEM Conference (or Another Big Conference)
Is it your first time hosting a big event? Yeah, us too! This year we hosted the Nordic iGEM Conference (NiC), and we learned so much! Over the course of a weekend, we had 8 iGEM teams from Nordic and Baltic countries come and visit us at our university. We planned lectures, workshops, panels and even asked each team to prepare a presentation about their project to practice for the Grand Jamboree.
We understand that it is a big job hosting such an event and therefore we wanted to share our experience and gained knowledge with you in a step-by-step guide!
Steps to follow
Find the ideal locations
Where should you host your lectures? Book a lecture hall!
Are there any meeting spaces that you can use?
Where will they be eating?
How many people do you expect to accommodate?
Will you offer people a place to sleep? (We arranged for them to bring their own mattresses and sleep in one of our gyms) Should they find their own place to stay? You can help them find cheaper hotels in your city to make it easier for them to navigate.
Select at least 3-4 hosts from your team. This means the people from your team who will be in charge of
Saying welcome and be the faces of the event.
Making sure you are on schedule.
Being the contact person if someone gets lost or something similar.
Food expenses
Decide between cooking, catering, or other food solutions.
Do you need to put a fee on participating in the event? Or can everything be covered by sponsors?
Sponsors
You can get sponsors from supermarkets for snacks or other food.
Apply for sponsorships for financial compensation.
Some sponsors can provide merchandise that is helpful for the event like sticky notes, nametags or notebooks.
Guests
Invite people that will provide you with knowledge and judging of presentations from the different iGEM teams. For us these people included:
One to give a presentation about how to write a good Wiki.
One to give a presentation about how to present a scientific topic.
One to have a workshop about entrepreneurship.
An alumni panel.
Panel judges for the iGEM team presentations.
Invite the Nordic iGEM teams (we also invited the Baltic countries)
Make an invitation to send out on social media to the iGEM teams.
Contact iGEM to have them display the invite in one of their official emails.
Gather information about your guests. We used Google forms to make a survey to know:
How many people are coming?
Do they have allergies or other dietary restrictions?
Are they sleeping over?
And other needed information.
General advice
Start planning the event at least 3 months in advance. The first thing you should do is seek out sponsorships.
Have some fun activities/games ready for when something goes wrong, and you have some extra time. We used some of the team-building exercises we had used together at the beginning of our journey.
If you decide to make the food yourselves, plan something easy and something where most of it can be made in advance.
Make sure to have dining equipment ready for when the meal begins. We ended up not having enough glasses for everyone and had to run around campus looking for more. So be sure to count!
Oh, and also, if you need to use electrical equipment: make sure it works before you need it and find out it does not work…
