Team:Calgary/News

The Alberta Meet-Up at Lethbridge was our largest yet! There were 7 students from Calgary, 7 from Alberta, and 6 from Lethbridge. AiF kindly organized two days packed with valuable workshops, allowing students yet another opportunity to interact with other iGEMers.

The first day began with lunch (one of the best parts of the day) followed by presentation training from Anne Marie Downey. This session provided members with lots of advice on how to format their presentations, what to present, and how to eliminate nervousness. Some members from each team were able to quickly prepare short presentations which were then critiqued by the rest of the students. The critique given to each student could be applied to everyone, which was a valuable experience in looking at good and not-so-good presentation technique. Following the presentation skills workshop, it was time for dinner (another excellent time of day)! The dinner and rest of the evening were graciously hosted by the lovely ladies from the Lethbridge team.

The following morning, students split up to attend the fundraising and wiki workshops. The fundraising workshop was led by Leona Yez. At this workshop, students were taught how to make marketing pitches and other fundraising strategies. Together, the teams discussed which type of companies should be targeted for sponsorship. Additionally, some students practiced making pitches, receiving valuable critique from Ms. Yez and the other students.

Jesse Johnstone led the wiki workshop, and gave students useful information in designing navigation for ease of use. Students examined the successful aspects of a few of last year's wikis, and looked at some website designs (the good, the bad, and the ugly). We also learned the method of applying templates, which is extremely useful in keeping code clean and easy to edit. At the workshop, teams were able to troubleshoot their respective coding problems with Mr. Johnstone and the other students (eg. fixing Lethbridge's picture links and troubleshooting Alberta/Calgary's CSS problems).

The weekend gave all of us valuable advice for presentations, fundraising, and wikis. It was also an incredible opportunity for team collaboration and getting to know one another. :)