(Additional) constraints:

• Jamboree is end of SEPTEMBER, not October.
  • That means our expectation needs to be that we're done experiments by the end of the summer, so we can spend all of September working on communications.

Organizational changes:

•  Recruiting
  • Start the week after the Jamboree.
  • Work on it with last year's team: ask what they liked / what would be a good selling point
  • Work on it with this year's team: ask what they got out of it.
  • Constrain application ideation slightly (guidelines about what our strengths are) so we can start blue-skying with something concrete.
  • Give some thought to "what makes a good iGEMer"?
    • Team diversity: having some design people this year was a really good thing.  CS people too.  Other skills: social science, HP, law, etc.
    • Look for people with some prior organizational experience.
• IAP
  • make it a "mini iGEM" (if possible)
  • Start planning (at the latest) immediately after the Jamboree.
  • Start recruiting / publishing immediately after the Jamboree.
  • Move up the Bloom's taxonomy: not just skills acquisition but design and communication too.
  • Will require more structuring (likely ..... though I don't know what last year looked like!)
  • Include a "science behind the science" section daily (with lunch?)  (rationale is constructionist: need a mental schema to hang all the domain-specific details to.)
    
    • Cloning (e coli)
    • Transformation
    • Minipreps
    • Restriction endonucleases
    • Gel electrophoresis
    • PCR
    • Cytometry
    • Microscopy
    • Transfection
    • Oligo synthesis
    • LR reaction
    • GG reaction
    • Sequencing
    • ..... what else?
• Spring semester
  
  • Set out week-by-week goals.  We need to have DNA designed and ordered by the end of the semester so we can hit the beginning of the summer cloning.  Work backwards from there to create a syllabus, and then STICK TO IT.
    • Start bi-weekly meetings sooner?
    • Or maybe the weekly meetings together and weekly minigroups for the first half of the semester, then weekly meetings together and weekly sub-groups for the second half?
  • BBP safety training ASAP .... everyone who might want to do cell culture work.
  • Minigroups: skill acquisition.  Anything more?
    • Cloning
    • Cell culture: propogation, transfection, FACS
    • Design and modelling?
  • work formally on group management skills.  (where to find such skills?)
• Summer
  • If we START cloning at the beginning of the summer, we should be more or less DONE cloning by the end of week 5.
  • Start cell culture immediately, using pre-prepared (mini'd) pEXPRs.  The usual spin-up experiments: single-color, multi-color, Dox induction.
    • BT: get more involved here.  Hopefully can coordinate with own project / experience.  This 20% tfxn can't happen again
    • (or choose a yeast project.........)
  • How to make sure the wiki mess doesn't recur?
    • Local MediaWiki instance?  With some WYSIWIG tools maybe?  Will this port easily to the iGEM media wiki?
    • It is unreasonable to expect everyone to learn HTML.
  • As with the spring, come up with a syllabus.
    • Can this be phrased as a set of learning objectives?

Overall learning goals:

• think like a scientist
• communicate well
• work on a team well 

Other thoughts:

• OMG people are cloning mammalian parts in pSB1C3.  Proposed HP: Mammalian biobricks outreach.  A mammalian protocols section, docs, etc.