German-wide Meetup

The concept of the German-wide Meetup was as to gather all the teams to network and set up collaborations for the iGEM Giant Jamboree. In the beginning of October, the team was a small group of Bachelor’s and Master’s students with very little diversity. By November, the team doubled in size and included members from many departments: CRTD, BIOTEC and the Biology Department at the TU Dresden. We became a truly international iGEM team, covering many disciplines and nationalities. With the resources, we had pulled together now, we thought we can plan something big, a German-wide meetup. We could host the meetup, using the whole of Dresden and be able to accommodate all the German iGEM teams. Out of the 13 that were invited, 9 came to the assembly, with a total of 50 people attending. The goals of the meetup were: • Sharing our iGEM experience so far • Getting to know the projects and visions of all attending teams • Train the pitch and presentation skills in order to prepare for the Giant Jamboree • Finding collaborations and strengthen the bonds between the teams • Increasing the general knowledge about Synthetic Biology through conferences and events • Having a fun weekend together Preparation: To prepare for the meetup, a team was assembled to manage and organize the scheduling, food costs, designs and logos, accommodation, etc. Sponsors had to be found and boxes had to be checked to make sure that nothing can go wrong for such a large occasion. Vier Vogel Pils sponsored the beer for the event, while Promega hosted a seminar on RT-qPCR. We had planned everything to the millisecond that by the time the conference came around, we were prepared.