Team:Sorbonne U Paris/Partnership
Partnership
For several years now, the Parisian teams have been working together on various projects. Even if 2020 is an exceptional year, it was no exception. From the very beginning, we started to think about different projects that we wanted to carry out together, and how to bring them to fruition. To do this, the Parisian teams joined together for different collaborations until we arrived at a natural and seamless partnership. And, we had a lot of fun doing this together.
Newton said "when two forces are joined, their effectiveness is doubled". So, imagine if there are 5 teams.
The Parisian MeetUp is a long standing tradition that started as a French teams’ MeetUp back in 2014, evolved last year as an European MeetUp, and this year, with the current sanitary conditions, we had to make it a virtual MeetUp, which allowed us to open it to a worldwide MeetUp that allowed the gathering of teams from all over the world.
After several brainstorming sessions started in early July with the 4 other Parisian teams (GO_Paris-Saclay, Ionis_Paris, Paris_Bettencourt, Sorbonne_U_Paris), we decided the most convenient dates for hosting the event would be from September 6th to 7th 2020. Two months of organization made the event possible. Each iGEM team manager was responsible for the coordination of her/ his team members in order to have the maximum impact during the two days of the Worldwide MeetUp.
The Sorbonne_U_Paris team was responsible for organizing workshops and doing flyers and programs. One of our PI also gave a talk during this event.
We were happy to offer different activities to participants. There were inspiring guest talks, workshops, team project presentations, a Bio-Entrepreneurship Hackathon held by After iGEM, and of course, fun social activities at the end of the day.
On october 3rd and 4th, the Cité des sciences et de l'Industrie (Science and Industry museum) of Paris was taking part in the 29th edition of the “Fête de la Science” (Science Festival). During these two days, the program gives pride of place to experiments with more than thirty activities on offer. After a first contact with the moderator of the Cité des Sciences et de l'Industrie, Valérie LEROUYER, we decided to join our forces with four other Parisian teams, our partners, (GO_Paris-Saclay, Ionis_Paris, Paris_Bettencourt, Evry_Paris-Saclay) in order to be present this weekend.
We had at our disposal three stands, two screens, and scientific equipment which allowed us to offer scientific activities to children and adults.
Thanks to this event we had the opportunity to present our projects (by a poster or a video) and get feedback from scientific and non-scientific people. It was a really good way to introduce ourselves to the exercise of presentation.
During these two days, we organized the relay between teams in such a way that there were always two different teams on the stands. This plurality allowed us to be more efficient and above all to better adapt to the expectations of the public. Indeed, we had very different knowledge and backgrounds, not forgetting the fact that our iGEM projects were diverse. This cohesion was a real way to captivate the public according to each person's areas of interest, but it was also a way for us to learn more about our respective subjects and our ways of presenting them.
In addition to having been an instructive day for our project, we were able to get together (the 5 Parisian teams, partners). It was not easy with the current pandemic, we could only see each other through our computer cameras. It was a real pleasure to all meet, masked of course.
These different collaborations have allowed us to get to know each other humanly but also to discover each other's projects while promoting Science. These different projects have been carried out thanks to our different talents but above all thanks to our mutual help. None of this could have been possible alone.
And as we don't do things by halves, what better way to end this partnership than to write this text together. With this last initiative, we wanted to show unity between our different teams.
We iGEM Sorbonne University would therefore like to thank the four other Parisian teams without whom all of this adventure would not have been possible.
