Team:University of Alberta/23 June 2009

Meeting Minutes June 22

Membership review of Clarren: No one knows who he is. Didn’t respond to any of our e-mails. Was on website team so should know how to use e-mail. Unanamous vote to remove Clarren from the team – Julia will include that directly in e-mail

Science updates: Mitch: nothing new Kalon: mutagenized pmm1 – officially complete. But may make new plasmid instead, for inserting cassette piece. That one would be cheaper so we can denature instead of digesting. Can still play around with pAB and pBA to see if things work. Julia: PCRing will need optimizing. No particular genes to prioritize. Still need to determine gene order. Kelly: new way to do things without using nicking enzymes – will test tomorrow. Could reduce problems later. Will also test nicking and bead method further. Selectable marker cloning progressing. David: only 16 primers left – will need special enzyme for 8, and 8 that don’t know how to do. Still have 70 that need to mutagenize because they have nicking sites, save that for later – but if Mike’s new method works we won’t need to be concerned. James: informatics: stop trying to log in as igemuser – just don’t use the FTP – look for e-mail from June 10. Server backs up at 4am Wiki – library mostly fixed (except for one paper) Stuff for eventually posting on external wiki – need unique identifier before file name – UofA_whatever_whatever Build a duplicate in internal wiki and move it all over. Wiki and website – Enoch and Dan – for external wiki, looked at template for setting it up. Talking to people about how to not use Drupal, so it will be more professional. The person knowing how to use Drupal is no longer with us anyways. Need to finish website soon, because people have been referred to it and its being viewed. Emera will meet with the website people later this week.

Business updates: $1000 from cell biology. May get $2000 from biochem, and got $5000 from MMI. Some concerns from departments about presentability and accountability – Ex. Will you continue working on the project? How sponsors are acknowledged?

AIF: getting 20 grand by end of month. Emera is working on AET proposal.

Ethics: Hagup is no longer part of team, and we need an ethics component. Could do either ethics or human practices for gold. Max says ethics team hasn’t done anything. Ethics may suit our project better? But life bytes is awesome for human practices stuff. Would we need things to work for that? Not really. Think about this choice for next week.

Google group has 45 members, many not on team – should remove them? Doug gave Emera admin power over group, but his viewpoint is to leave everyone on it because it adds publicity. Emera pointed out could be bad publicity (our jokes etc.) Any objections to cleaning it up? No.

July 11 and 12 workshop in Lethbridge – who’s going? Need to know by tomorrow. Sat morning travel, 1-6 is presentation training. Sunday: wiki or fundraising 9-1. Lunch then departure. U of L dorms are under renovation – so AIF will rent town houses. David is available. Eric Bennit. Oscar. Enoch. Steve. Uche may be available but would go late Friday so would bring own car. Emera will check if people can come on Friday night instead of Sat am.

Round table: Kelly: website should have been up sooner. The internal wiki should have more organization – need cohesiveness, currently each group is doing things very different. Put pictures on, keep up to date. Do design of your pages and other team members can help if you need it. Very easy to learn. Do it as we go! Very important part of judging.

No one is coming to weekday evening shifts – should cancel those? Yes, its just Alina signed up for then and she can work on her own. Max can’t do every Sunday. Steve and David can cover them.

Vote for leaving on Monday or Tuesday after the jamboree? Voted fly back on Monday.