Team:Queens Canada/SynthetiQ/how

From 2012.igem.org

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<h1>How?</h1>
<h1>How?</h1>
-
<p><b>This is our methods section.</b> This page is a journal written by Kevin Chen, who lead this project, that details how we started, some of the challenges, and how we solved them. I've italicized the sections are key for people interested in doing this themselves, that way you can skip through my other blabber if you want.
+
<p><b>This is our methods section.</b> This page will highlight some of the key points that brought our project together.
<h3>Inspiration:</h3>
<h3>Inspiration:</h3>
The initial inspiration for this project came from two main things:
The initial inspiration for this project came from two main things:
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<li>John Bohnanon's talk TEDxBrussels:
<li>John Bohnanon's talk TEDxBrussels:
<ul>
<ul>
-
<li>I had only heard a little bit about the Dance Your PhD Contest before watching this video. I thought that this video was incredible and right after watching it, this was already added to the "list of things that I'd like to do something in my life". Of course, at the same time I had to add "Get a PhD" to that list.
+
<li>This was a brilliant demonstration and proposal of the idea of using dance to explain and teach scientific concepts.
</ul>
</ul>
-
<li>Emma Ware winning the social sciences category of DYPhD 2011:
+
<li>Emma Ware winning the social sciences category of the 2011 Dance Your PhD Contest:
<ul>
<ul>
-
<li>I knew Emma through dancing with the KinetiQ Crew. I found out about this shortly after watching John Bohannon's talk and I was thrilled to hear that this was something that actually happened here at Queen's. So the whole thing just felt a lot closer. This confirmed it. I had to do something like this when I'm doing my PhD.
+
<li>Emma was a PhD student with Department of Psychology, and fellow dancer. After finding out about this news shortly after watching John Bohannon's talk. DYPhD and the idea of using dance to demonstrate science felt a lot closer to home.
</ul>
</ul>
</ol>
</ol>
-
<p>At this time, I was a volunteer with Queen's iGEM 2011 and we had just returned from the World Finals. Next came a dry period where I didn't really think much about the whole dance thing, and I was focused more on leading the QGEM executive.</p>
+
<h3>Recruitment:</h3>
-
<p>It wasn't until I became the team manager for the summer research team that this had actually clicked in as something I might not have to wait till I get my PhD to do. I wrote to a number of our team members asking what their thoughts on this might have been and I expected there to be a few concerns, at least money and logistics wise, but they were all pretty supportive.</p>
+
Here are a few key reasons why this idea might sound appealing to a dancer, or anyone:
-
<i>There are few key reasons why this suddenly sounded appealing to me, and maybe sounded appealing to a dancer:
+
<ul>
<ul>
-
<li>It's a unique opportunity
+
<li>It's a unique opportunity and experience
<li>International exposure
<li>International exposure
-
<li>Funding basis through the QGEM team
+
<li>This is the perfect research setting (Would any professional level conference really find this appropriate and/or worth the effort?)
-
<li>iGEM and synbio seem like they might be generally open to weird awesome stuff like this
+
<li>Synbio research is awesome.
-
<li>
+
<li>Why not?
</ul>
</ul>
-
<h3>The Summer</h3>
+
<br><b>The Summer</b>
-
<p>Now, the real work began. <i>I started by contacting a number of different dancers, or others involved with dance about this idea. And, for the most part, I got very little response. This could have been for a number of reasons:</p>
+
<p>The summer work started by contacting a number of different dancers, or others involved with dance about this idea. Initially, there was very little response. This could have been for a number of reasons:</p>
<ul>
<ul>
<li>No one actually thought this was a good idea
<li>No one actually thought this was a good idea
Line 44: Line 35:
<li>We weren't promoting this properly
<li>We weren't promoting this properly
</ul>
</ul>
-
<p>Had we started contacting people before the summer started, we might have had better results. But, we pushed onwards.</p>
+
<p>Had we started contacting people before the summer started, we might have had better results.</p>
 +
<ol>
 +
<li>John Bohannon:<br>
 +
There were few things that Dr. Bohannon suggested.
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Find a dancer that knows people in the dance community and will be able to lead the project. Maybe even hire this person as an artist in residence.
 +
<li>Make it fun, hilarious and incorporate other dance styles.
 +
<li>University campuses are crawling with dancers.
 +
</ul>
 +
<li>Melissa Wilton:<br>
 +
Melissa gave us lots of advice on the logistics of putting together a routine for our presentation as well as recruitment. Her involvement and interest was very inspirational and her connections helped us with the recruitment of our dance team. Her support lead us to our article in the <a href="http://www.emckingston.com/20120809/lifestyle/Dance+like+everybody%27s+watching">Kingston EMC</a>. </li>
 +
</ol>
 +
<h3>PCR</h3>
 +
<p>Over the rest of the summer, we worked on just doing some general bodystorm, which lead to our DNA model. And, we gathered everyone together to make our video about PCR. Even though we filmed this around the end of July, and intended to release it shortly after. We ended up spending pretty much all of our time trying to get our lab work to actually work. But, we were hoping to get more content in the video and talk specifically about amplifying DNA out of a genome. In the end, the video was finished and uploaded during the week of the wiki-freeze.</p>
 +
<h3>September</h3>
<p>
<p>
 +
September rolled around way faster than we had hoped, and our lab stuff wasn't going very well at all either. However, with the publicity from our article in the Kingston EMC and the return of Queen's students for the school semester, we made another recruitment push.<br>
 +
<p>
 +
We got in touch with the Queen's Dance Club, who passed our information to their group of teachers. In the first week of September, our first meetings were with  Devon Ryan, who became our choreographer and Sam Demetrious, who became a dancer on our team. So we quickly put together a draft of our script, which only really talked about some of the foundation of our project (because we didn't have any results yet), and we worked together on how we could actually make this into a dance. Now that all the students have returned to Queen's, Devon and Sam were able help us with recruitment.</p>
 +
<p>Next, we started practicing as a group.</p>
 +
<h3>Logistics and the Regional Jamboree</h3>
 +
<p>Naturally, research conferences in general are not designed to accommodate dance routines, and some lecture halls, particularly in the sciences, have large, fixed tables at the front of the rooms for running demos. There is also travel and accommodations to look after.</p>
 +
<ol>
 +
<li>Travel
 +
<ul><li>Because we were bringing so many people to the iGEM Jamboree, transportation was a bit challenging and this was probably the largest additional cost. We had considered paying to rent a bus, that would travel with all of the iGEM teams from Ontario, and split the cost. This started out as a really great idea, and an awesome way to meet our neighboring teams, but this didn't end up working out. Possibly because it was a little too close to the competition when we started planning this. In the end, we decided to opt for rental cars but, we were short on drivers. So we asked a few friends, rented 3 vans and made it to the jamboree. And, we only got a little bit lost.
 +
</ul>
 +
<li>Accommodations
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>Accommodations was the second additional cost. We ended up renting one extra room to accommodate our entire team and dancers, which was only one more than what we would have done normally. We probably could have saved money by renting at a cheaper hotel nearby but we stuck with the iGEM rate at the Pittsburgh Marriott and kept our entire group together.
 +
</ul>
 +
<li>Presentation Space
 +
<ul>
 +
<li>And this was probably the biggest challenge. Leading up to the competition, it was really important that we get as much information as we could about what sort of presentation space we would be using for the actual presentation. Initially we had a lot of help from the Americas East Regional Jamboree organizer, Sarah Clements from IBE. However, simply because of the way that the schedule is made, and the timing of things leading up to it, we ended up being scheduled in a room that had large, unmovable, demo table in the front of it. After finding out our placement, we went there first thing in the morning to look at it. After some last minute switches, we ended up being shifted to a space which had a movable table, and we were able to perform. So special thanks goes out to Sarah and Meagan Lizarazo for helping us arrange this.
 +
</ul>
 +
</ol>
 +
</font>
 +
<h3>After the Jamboree</h3>
 +
<p>We won the Best Model award! This was an amazing achievement for our team, and the first time that we have won an individual award. Originally, this project was more aimed at human practices. However, the explanation for why this was an excellent modelling project made perfect sense. This project, and its website, initially had very little documentation attached to it, with virtually no feedback, or detailed content. Ideally, we would have liked to really get this going, and possibly even do some testing to see whether or not people retained information better from the dance compared to a pure powerpoint presentation. There is so much potential to do some really creative outreach and get more people involved. But, we'll have to leave this for the future. For now, we are working on perfecting our routine and making a few additions based on some feedback after the regionals and a little bit of content we wanted to add here and there.</p>
 +
<h3>At the finals!</h3>
 +
In this second presentation, many of the logistics and aspects of the presentation went much more smoothly now that we'd had a bit more experience. The weekend was wonderful for both our dancers and iGEMers and we got a lot of excellent feedback on our presentation. Next, we'll be waiting for our video footage from iGEM so that we can share our presentation with everyone!
 +
<br>
 +
 +
</br>

Latest revision as of 02:21, 15 January 2013
Control


How?

This is our methods section. This page will highlight some of the key points that brought our project together.

Inspiration:

The initial inspiration for this project came from two main things:
  1. John Bohnanon's talk TEDxBrussels:
    • This was a brilliant demonstration and proposal of the idea of using dance to explain and teach scientific concepts.
  2. Emma Ware winning the social sciences category of the 2011 Dance Your PhD Contest:
    • Emma was a PhD student with Department of Psychology, and fellow dancer. After finding out about this news shortly after watching John Bohannon's talk. DYPhD and the idea of using dance to demonstrate science felt a lot closer to home.

Recruitment:

Here are a few key reasons why this idea might sound appealing to a dancer, or anyone:
  • It's a unique opportunity and experience
  • International exposure
  • This is the perfect research setting (Would any professional level conference really find this appropriate and/or worth the effort?)
  • Synbio research is awesome.
  • Why not?

The Summer

The summer work started by contacting a number of different dancers, or others involved with dance about this idea. Initially, there was very little response. This could have been for a number of reasons:

  • No one actually thought this was a good idea
  • Everyone was out of town for the summer or busy
  • We weren't promoting this properly

Had we started contacting people before the summer started, we might have had better results.

  1. John Bohannon:
    There were few things that Dr. Bohannon suggested.
    • Find a dancer that knows people in the dance community and will be able to lead the project. Maybe even hire this person as an artist in residence.
    • Make it fun, hilarious and incorporate other dance styles.
    • University campuses are crawling with dancers.
  2. Melissa Wilton:
    Melissa gave us lots of advice on the logistics of putting together a routine for our presentation as well as recruitment. Her involvement and interest was very inspirational and her connections helped us with the recruitment of our dance team. Her support lead us to our article in the Kingston EMC.

PCR

Over the rest of the summer, we worked on just doing some general bodystorm, which lead to our DNA model. And, we gathered everyone together to make our video about PCR. Even though we filmed this around the end of July, and intended to release it shortly after. We ended up spending pretty much all of our time trying to get our lab work to actually work. But, we were hoping to get more content in the video and talk specifically about amplifying DNA out of a genome. In the end, the video was finished and uploaded during the week of the wiki-freeze.

September

September rolled around way faster than we had hoped, and our lab stuff wasn't going very well at all either. However, with the publicity from our article in the Kingston EMC and the return of Queen's students for the school semester, we made another recruitment push.

We got in touch with the Queen's Dance Club, who passed our information to their group of teachers. In the first week of September, our first meetings were with Devon Ryan, who became our choreographer and Sam Demetrious, who became a dancer on our team. So we quickly put together a draft of our script, which only really talked about some of the foundation of our project (because we didn't have any results yet), and we worked together on how we could actually make this into a dance. Now that all the students have returned to Queen's, Devon and Sam were able help us with recruitment.

Next, we started practicing as a group.

Logistics and the Regional Jamboree

Naturally, research conferences in general are not designed to accommodate dance routines, and some lecture halls, particularly in the sciences, have large, fixed tables at the front of the rooms for running demos. There is also travel and accommodations to look after.

  1. Travel
    • Because we were bringing so many people to the iGEM Jamboree, transportation was a bit challenging and this was probably the largest additional cost. We had considered paying to rent a bus, that would travel with all of the iGEM teams from Ontario, and split the cost. This started out as a really great idea, and an awesome way to meet our neighboring teams, but this didn't end up working out. Possibly because it was a little too close to the competition when we started planning this. In the end, we decided to opt for rental cars but, we were short on drivers. So we asked a few friends, rented 3 vans and made it to the jamboree. And, we only got a little bit lost.
  2. Accommodations
    • Accommodations was the second additional cost. We ended up renting one extra room to accommodate our entire team and dancers, which was only one more than what we would have done normally. We probably could have saved money by renting at a cheaper hotel nearby but we stuck with the iGEM rate at the Pittsburgh Marriott and kept our entire group together.
  3. Presentation Space
    • And this was probably the biggest challenge. Leading up to the competition, it was really important that we get as much information as we could about what sort of presentation space we would be using for the actual presentation. Initially we had a lot of help from the Americas East Regional Jamboree organizer, Sarah Clements from IBE. However, simply because of the way that the schedule is made, and the timing of things leading up to it, we ended up being scheduled in a room that had large, unmovable, demo table in the front of it. After finding out our placement, we went there first thing in the morning to look at it. After some last minute switches, we ended up being shifted to a space which had a movable table, and we were able to perform. So special thanks goes out to Sarah and Meagan Lizarazo for helping us arrange this.

After the Jamboree

We won the Best Model award! This was an amazing achievement for our team, and the first time that we have won an individual award. Originally, this project was more aimed at human practices. However, the explanation for why this was an excellent modelling project made perfect sense. This project, and its website, initially had very little documentation attached to it, with virtually no feedback, or detailed content. Ideally, we would have liked to really get this going, and possibly even do some testing to see whether or not people retained information better from the dance compared to a pure powerpoint presentation. There is so much potential to do some really creative outreach and get more people involved. But, we'll have to leave this for the future. For now, we are working on perfecting our routine and making a few additions based on some feedback after the regionals and a little bit of content we wanted to add here and there.

At the finals!

In this second presentation, many of the logistics and aspects of the presentation went much more smoothly now that we'd had a bit more experience. The weekend was wonderful for both our dancers and iGEMers and we got a lot of excellent feedback on our presentation. Next, we'll be waiting for our video footage from iGEM so that we can share our presentation with everyone!

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