The European Experience was a meetup of around 25 European iGEM teams from eleven different countries, including four teams from the Netherlands. The meetup was in Paris and it was organized by two Parisean teams, team IONIS and team Évry. It started with a gathering where everyone could meet and talk about their project. Immediately people showed great interest in our project and wanted to know everything about our biolasers and lenses.We found out that the Pasteur iGEM team is also going to work with silicate, and we had lunch with some of their team members to discuss about our projects.

After lunch there were two conferences about synthetic biology, one that focused on challenges and risks of doing research and one that focused on the economics of synthetic biology. At the end of the conference Randy Rettberg, the president of iGEM, talked about why he started the iGEM competition and about the values of sharing information between the teams.

On Saturday evening there was a party for all the European iGEM teams. First there was a possibility to watch the football match between Italy and Germany and later that night the party really started. There was beer and a deejay, so our team really enjoyed ourselves. Later on the evening there even was a real fire breather!

Our team had a great time at the meetup, and you can also read about our touristic activities in Paris over here