Team:Calgary/Collaborations

Collaboration was a very important part of our project. Having a large team with diverse students working on four subprojects (lab, modelling, Second Life and Human Practices), it was very important that team members communicated and collaborated well with each other. We had a variety of ways to do this. First, through our blog, 'Synthetic Blogology', we were able to keep everyone up to date on what each of the different subprojects had accomplished on a weekly basis, as well as what their goals were for the upcoming week. We also had weekly team meetings where we would discuss accomplishments and future directions. Lastly, our Wiki Notebook, where team members recorded what they did on a day-to-day basis also helped us keep everyone on the same page.

Collaboration between teams is a very important part of the iGEM competition as well. Not only is helping another team a gold medal requirement for the competition, but it's a great way to meet students from around the world and learn a bit about what they're up to. We are all working towards the purpose of promoting a synthetic biology community, and this clearly requires cooperation between teams. Beyond collaborating within our own team, this year we had a variety of opportunities to collaborate with other teams.