For the first time since the end of the iGEM Regional Jamborees, two teams collaborated to organize the European Experience, a meeting where all the Europeans iGEM teams were invited in Paris to exchange, discuss, and celebrate. iGEM IONIS and iGEM Evry decided to organize such an event in order to tighten the relations existing between all European iGEMers.

We started organizing this event in late January, and reached out for iGEM Evry to help us organizing it given its importance. We also wanted to team up with another iGEM team to collaborate on a big scale common project. Our goal was to create an event that people would remember, and needed help in order to do so. As time went by, the teams discussed and agreed on the type of event we wanted to do. There was a lot of discussion about what kind of event we wanted to do, but eventually we stated that we had mainly 3 mains goals in mind for the European Experience: train for the Giant Jamboree, learn more about Synthetic Biology, and exchange with other teams.

We then decided to organize 2 roundtables, focused around two main themes: “Challenges and Risks of Synthetic Biology” and “Synthetic Biology: a new economic world”. The aim of these roundtables was to make everyone learn more about Synthetic Biology straight from professionals, along with knowing more about what they could do once the iGEM is over, how they can transform their project into a professional activity. This was also for us the occasion to host professional in an international-class event: we took that in consideration and organized a special VIP cocktail area where we were able to meet them after the roundtables.

We also decided to ask all the teams to come with a poster, and to be able to present their project to everyone. This would be very useful as a training fort the Boston Jamboree, and would allow every European team to meet and discover each other’s projects.

Our team is also really grateful to the laboratories INSERM …., that give us the material we needed to arrange our paillasse.

Thanks to the IONIS Education group, we were able to find the perfect place where to host our event. We also managed to get a discount on a local hotel and provide a cheap housing for every team who wanted one. This way, we would be able to host as much teams as possible, in the same place ! After sending our invitations, we got a confirmation from 30 teams scattered all around Europe, coming from 11 different countries.

We also wanted this event to be fun for all iGEMers, along with an opportunity for them to discover Paris and the French culture. For this reason, visits and activities in Paris were planned for the second day. We also managed to get a partnership with Paul, allowing everyone to discover French breads and pastries.

The whole event was really amazing all along, whether when we were preparing it (announcing it and receiving messages from people all across Europe was a blast), or when we were living it: we finally got to see all of the teams we have been in contact with, and meeting everyone in such an atmosphere was very exciting !

We also had the occasion to communicate with teams, through communication tools like Twitter and Facebook, and also through a dedicated app the iGEM IONIS team developed: this « companion app » was the perfect road book a map of the event, a schedule with every major event planned, and even a selection of nearby restaurants and places to eat.

The whole event turned out very well and we received tons of positive feedbacks, which really comforts us in our idea of making it a periodic event. We created a common association, called iGEM ESOC (European Symposium Organisation Committee), and are hoping that in next years some teams will choose to organize it again ! This structure will aim to provide a frame to the event. This would also give us the ability to efficiently plan (or help planning) any following edition of the European Experience in the future. Though we don’t think that the event has to be in France, if it is, some of the paperwork will already be done.