Introduction and goals

This year, we wanted to leverage the skills of the Toulouse team to organize a Meetup, just as the 2022 team successfully organized the first Meetup in Toulouse. Thanks to our instructors and our partnership with BioEco Graduate School, we already had in mind what to do and what not to do. On top of that, we wanted to transmit these skills and share other points of view on this organization. Fortunately, this was made possible thanks to the collaboration with the iGEM Nantes team.

Why the collaboration with Nantes?

During the beginning of the competition, iGEM Nantes reached out to us to get tips on how to organize a meetup. After discussion all together, we decided to live this adventure together until the month of June. We were driven by the many advantages we would benefit from this co-organization. First by confronting our vision of the organisation, we reached a better and more efficient and innovative way to organize this event. Second, this collaboration enabled us to grow our respective network as we contacted potential sponsors. Third, we increased our skills especially in communication by sharing our experience. Finally, as we follow different academic careers, it helped to enhance our creativity.

Functioning of the co-organization

All the organization was done by videoconference and involved two persons for each team to make the exchanges easier and be more efficient (i.e. Bayane and Cléa from iGEM Toulouse; Léa Philippe and Mélys Leprevost from iGEM Nantes). As for the sponsor part, this event was entirely financed by BioEco Graduate School (Biotechnology for building biobased economy). Lauren Arata, BioEco’s project manager, Carole Molina-Jouve, manager of the BioEco graduate school, Ludovic Montastruc, and Stéphanie Heux, work packages leaders of BioEco graduate School, also helped us in the organization area. Concretely, we had a meeting approximately every two weeks with iGEM Nantes to brainstorm on different topics. Then, only Cléa and Bayane had a meeting with BioEco Graduate School to discuss our progress. This was decided to facilitate the exchanges. We also made a Gantt chart to set the deadlines and the actions to do until the final date. We opted for purple for the graphical charter as it is the characteristic color of the city of Toulouse.

The co-organization of the meetup was separated in different parts:

1) Contacting the French teams

The first thing to do was to contact the French teams to inform them about the event and see if they would be interested in participating in it. To do so, we looked at which teams were active on social media and reused last year’s list of French teams. We listed ten teams in total so each organizing team was responsible for contacting five other teams. This way, it would divide the workload. We gave them all the information required on accommodation, transportation, meals as we went along. In April, we sent them the link to the website to register for the event. It made this event official!

We thank Lauren Arata for updating the following website: https://meetupfr.sciencesconf.org/.

2) Setting the event outline

During our regular meetings, we brainstormed on the content of this event. We benefited from last year's experience thanks to the representatives of the BioEco school. For example, we decided to make it last only two days instead of three to let the other teams choose their time of return. We wanted to keep the mini-Jamboree training and the “pitch your project” session. As a novelty, we wanted the awards ceremony to take place in a restaurant. Here is the full program of the meetup:

3) Organizing the meals, accommodations and transportations

For the meals, Lauren Arata helped us a lot as she knew the budget allocated for food. She booked the caterer for Thursday dinner and Friday lunch. We had buffets from “Demoulin Traiteur” a sustainable, zero-waste and local caterer. She also booked the restaurant for Friday evening, the Barricot. According to their will, the teams were accommodated in CROUS student residences nearby INSA. We thank the CROUS for making this possible. Regarding transport to Toulouse, the round-trip tickets were reimbursed for two persons per team. To keep within budget, we decided to limit the number of participants to 4 per team.

4) Composing the jury

Although this event was cooperative, we decided to add a challenge by assessing the teams on different aspects of their project. The goal was to train for the Giant Jamboree as there was a “pitch your project” session and a mini-Jamboree. During the whole meetup, a jury was present to give constructive remarks to the teams and help them improve their project. They also asked questions to the teams and enabled them to see which aspect of the project they needed to work on more.

The jury was composed of:

• - Stéphanie Heux, research director at Toulouse Biotechnology Institute and one of the instructors of our team.
• - Ludovic Montastruc, professor at INP-ENSIACET.
• - Stefano Grasso, Multiplexed Synthetic Biology Scientist at Lesaffre.
• - Thomas Crestey, intern at TBI and member of the 2022 Toulouse iGEM team.
• - Laeticia Gautreau-Rolland, teacher in immunology and cell biology at Nantes University.

They all had knowledge in synthetic biology due to their field of work and/or to their former experience in iGEM. Stéphanie Heux created the evaluation grid based on iGEM rubric questions.

We thank the members of our jury very much for their implication! More information about them can be found on our Attributions page.

5) Creating the awards

To award the teams for their implication and to keep a memory of this event, we created five prizes based on the model of the iGEM brick. As the main characteristic of this event was the circular bioeconomy, the prizes were manufactured in wood. On top of that, it was a local production as it was produced by Fabric’INSA present on campus. We thank them greatly for their help.

Three prizes were awarded by the jury: Best Pitch Prize, Best Presentation Prize and Bioeconomy Prize. The Public’s favorite was voted by the audience and the Photo rally prize by the organization team.

6) Organizing the campus and classrooms

We thank our school INSA Toulouse for agreeing to host this event on its campus and for letting us use classrooms. The participants of iGEM Nantes arrived the day before the meetup to help us organize the campus. Among the many tasks we had to do, we put up signposts to guide the participants, and we tested the sound and screen of the conference rooms.

7) Organizing the game

The game was designed to make the other teams discover the city while having fun. We opted for a photo rally where each team was composed of different French team members to encourage bonding between teams. The teams had to follow one itinerary out of the three options, and for each route, they had to solve rebuses to guess the specific locations. Once they reached these places, they were required to take a picture in front of the iconic monuments and landmarks in Toulouse. Since this activity was a success last year, we decided to keep the same rebuses and other enjoyable challenges.

We learnt a lot from this co-organization.

First, at an organizational level, we realized that having several interlocutors complicates the project’s progress and requires us to be methodical and clear when sharing information with other teams. If we have one piece of advice to give, it would be that planning is the key to any organization. Another thing to be careful of is that co-organizing extends deadlines as decisions need to be made by both teams. In hindsight, we should have created a group conversation with all the French teams to facilitate exchanges.

The meetup is a great opportunity to discover other projects and discuss the progress of our own project with other teams. It's also beneficial to connect with students in a similar situation, as they may be encountering similar problems and challenges, providing valuable advice on how to overcome specific situations. We are delighted that each team enjoyed this event and received valuable feedback to enhance their project. We feel that a genuine bond was formed among the French teams, and we are eagerly looking forward to meeting them again during the Giant Jamboree.

1. - After the kick-off we devoted a meeting discussing entrepreneurship, focusing on what is expected in a business model. As iGEM Toulouse was more advanced, we advised them to build a business plan.

2. - For greater inclusivity regarding our project, we translated each other's promotional videos into our respective native languages: Greek for ours and French for theirs.

3. - We wanted to create a comic about cancer but this did not take form due to time constraints.

4. - Finally, our main collaboration focused on safety. Both of our teams conducted similar experiments, including cell culture, which required us to follow safety regulations. We considered creating a guide for iGEM teams outlining the risks involved and necessary precautions to avoid them. Each team conducted research on the laws in their respective countries, and we communicated regularly through Instagram to organize the guide. You can find the guide titled 'Handling cell lines' below:

This was a valuable experience as we learned more about each other's projects. We contributed to the support of the iGEM community by creating a safety guide. It was important for us to produce this guide since not all teams are accustomed to conducting cell culture. We thank iGEM Patras Medicine for their participation in this work.