[BBF Standards] BioHackathon, or Characterization Challenge

[John Cumbers]

3 thoughts, continuing the off-topic themes:

*Maybe the Chinese syn biologists could host a two week hack-a-thon in their
lab(s) before/after syn bio 4.0.  Cheap lab rental, cheap accommodation,
good collaboration, get to live in China for 2 weeks.
*Along the lines of the Teach the teachers, could we get something
like Venter's
Genome bus?
<http://phylogenomics.blogspot.com/2006/10/genomics-education-bus.html>Touring
the country, parking up every now and then rotating the people on board.
How much of what we're talking about needs a permanent lab?
*Most off topic yet: it occurred to me the speed limitations we're coming
across are waiting for overnight cultures of E.coli.  Is E.coli the computer
punchcard <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punch_card>of bio engineering, can
we ditch it for something that replicates faster?

Cheers,
John

On Feb 11, 2008 9:37 AM, Jason Kelly <jasonk at mit.edu> wrote:

> A design-a-thon prior to the start of iGEM might be a good addendum to
> one of the teach-the-teachers workshops.  One of the big struggles for
> each of the iGEM teams is the "what should we work on" quesiton, and a
> common mistake is picking something really unreasonable and then
> spinning wheels for most of the summer.
>
> Something like a design-a-thon attended by past iGEM alpha-hackers
> along with advisers/teachers/team members from the new teams might be
> a great way to exchange and vet ideas before the summer starts.  i
> think most teams would trade "competitive edge" for "possible chance
> of building something that works" and happily exchange ideas in the
> open.
>
> The other thing that's nice about this is that iGEM teams are actually
> going to go DO something for the summer.  I'm hesitant to have a
> design-a-thon w/ a bunch of folks who then don't have the spare cycles
> to actually go implement any of the designs.
>
> also we're going to need stuff like this to actually hash out
> standards, imo, so maybe not too off-topic.
>
> thanks,
> jason
>
> On Feb 11, 2008 9:18 AM, Drew Endy <endy at mit.edu> wrote:
> > I think that iGEM consuming Summer of Code is more likely.  Or, at
> > least infecting SoC.  (wow, this is really off topic for a mailing
> > list discussing standards for BioBrick standard biological parts).
> >
> >
> > On Feb 11, 2008, at 7:51 AM, Bryan Bishop wrote:
> >
> > > On Monday 11 February 2008, Raik Gruenberg wrote:
> > >> And then there is Google's "summer of code" where many projects are
> > >> attacked independently but in parallel over one or two months. But
> > >> that's what iGem already does (and better), isn't it?
> > >
> > > Summer of Code might need to consume iGem. Just saying -- it's good
> > > exposure that Google is giving to freelancers out there. You can't
> > > quite freelance biotech yet in the same way, but maybe soon.
> > >
> > > - Bryan
> > > ________________________________________
> > > Bryan Bishop
> > > http://heybryan.org/
> > >
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-- 
John Cumbers,  Graduate Student
Molecular Biology, Cell Biology, and Biochemistry
Biology and Medicine
Brown University, Box G-W
Providence, Rhode Island, 02912, USA
Tel USA: +1 401 523 8190,  Fax: +1 401 863-2166
UK to USA: 0207 617 7824
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