The 26th and 27th of July we had the chance to co-organize an iGEM meetup on the ESME campus in Paris, the InParis European Meetup with 3 other parisians teams (Pasteur Paris, GO Paris Saclay and iGEM Evry). During those two days, 16 teams and 79 people were present around different activities such as poster presentations, mini jamboree in front of a jury (15 members were present during the two days) but also team activities to know more about each other. This event was the chance for european iGEMers to discover other teams’ projects but also to create links between teams.
On the first day, after the opening opening ceremony began the poster session where all the team could discuss about other teams projects. During the afternoon was the first half of the mini jamboree presentation in front of a jury. This training was very interesting as the member of the jury rose many interesting questions and gave advice on their projects. At the same time, some activities like a pictionary competition and a workshop “World Cafe Discussion” about different topics related to iGEM were going on. To end this first day, we were hosting a BBQ party to get all the teams to know more about each other.
For the second day, presentations for the mini jamboree where still going on while more activities were organized like a music quizz, a general knowledge quizz and a new workshop “Hackathon Related to SDG” to learn about the after iGEM ambassador program for example.
Finally, during the meetup we had the chance to have special guests like Randy Rettberg, the iGEM president, Megan Lizarazo, the iGEM vice-president and Vinoo Selvarajah, the iGEM director of registry. Were also present at our meetup Nemenja and Will which are members of the iGEM programs, and also Marc Santolini, CRI (Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity) Research Fellow. We are very grateful they came to this event, their presence and their words were inspiring for all the teams and remembered us the spirit of the iGEM competition.