The bootcamp journey !
At the beginning of March, our instructors organised a journey in the middle of the Cévennes National Park, at La Maison Clément.
The goal of this retreat was to get to know each other better, and thus create strong relationship within the team, but also to make a big “brainstorming” of the different ideas that could become our future project.
And it was a great success!
Thanks to the support of the call for project MUSE Take Off #1 for pedagogical innovationand of the INRA, the iGEM Montpellier team could profit of an intense and ad hoc formation to be prepared for the competition. Around 20 students from the University of Montpellier of different levels (undergrads-overgrads) and having different backgrounds (biology, physics, bioinformatics, biotechnology,...) attended this pedagogical “experiment”. In collaboration with the CSIP(Support Center for Pedagogical Innovation-MUSE), the instructors developed a three-day program alternating team-building activities (e.g. marshmallow challenge, draw how to make a toast,...), individual work, project brainstorming, bibliographic research and seminars.
For this occasion, we had the chance to meet Jake Wintermute, long term fellow at the CRI, Paris. Jake was advisor of the iGEM Paris Bettencourt team from 2012 to 2018, and explained to us what we should have expected from our iGEM experience (including love and rage). His presence among us was truly enriching: he allowed us to have a better representation of the iGEM adventure, understand more specifically what it is expected from an iGEM team (i.e. the objectives we have to fulfill). He also gave us tips on what a good presentation should look like. Hope we have learnt the lesson!
A few project ideas were proposed during the bootcamp. We then developed them further and presented the outcomes to other students and researchers of the University of Montpellier. We prepared a few poster sessions at the University in order to gather feedback and suggestions on the different projects.
At the end, it was KARMA that got selected, and our adventure started!