Something from nothing

For a while now, I've been meaning to write about my recent thoughts on my iGEM team, but (despite multiple reminders in the form of blog posts by other iGEM-ers) I kept getting distracted by other things. Somewhat ironically, a chat with a certain blues-ing gentleman about my lack of dance-related posts lead to discussion of torch-passing, which is exactly what's been on my mind regarding iGEM.

When I first got involved with iGEM in 2007, there wasn't really much of a team. It was our first year competing independently (rather than as a joint team with UofT, as in the two years before), and though there were a handful of interested students, there was essentially no structure or organization, let alone defined roles. At the start of the competition year, aside from a bit of money we had left over from the previous year's fundraising efforts, we also lacked resources (not to mention lab space).

That first year, three of us were doing almost everything, from fundraising to securing lab space, to designing the project and learning lab techniques, to working in the lab until ridiculous hours of the night and training other students in the lab skills we'd only just learned ourselves. A few other students were involved as well, but it was the three of us who were trying to build a team from pretty much nothing, holding everything together and driving it forward. (I remember how it was like Christmas, the day our first set of equipment and lab supplies came in: pipettes, glassware, gel rigs, agarose, media, petri plates... and a new prof in Biology was generous enough to let us use his then-empty lab, since he had no students at the time. Later we migrated up to the bacterial genetics lab that one of the three of us was working in that summer, which in turn led to that prof getting interested in iGEM and becoming one of our faculty advisors.)

At some point Andre likened our efforts to get the team going to trying to erect a tent from the inside: having to hold up the sides and establish the structure, until hopefully it gets stable enough that you can let go and get out of it without it falling down on you.

By spring 2008 the three of us had all graduated, but I was still in Waterloo doing research, and ended up holding the tent up myself. Without the other two equally committed members to rely on and to share the workload with, I gained a new perspective on developing the team. And being the last remaining member of that trio of insanity, the issue of how to build the team into one that would be sustainable long-term loomed huge in my mind: at that point there was no one else I could have handed things off to, and the situation wasn't helped by Waterloo's co-op program, in which students alternate work and study each term (nor the fact that the most knowledgeable/experienced students are generally the ones who are about to graduate). So the focus shifted onto recruitment, as well as training and integrating new members, with the hope that some of them would stick around and take on leadership roles themselves.

And it's a very tricky thing, finding that perfect combination: enough interest in the iGEM competition itself; enough technical background to be able to contribute immediately (or enough desire to learn the necessary background independently); enough time/energy to put into the team, on top of coursework or work hours; enough terms remaining in their degree that they'll be around to put the benefit of their iGEM experience back into the team; enough of a sense of the big picture that they recognize the need to groom others to eventually fill the vacuum they'll leave when they graduate. Anyone with some subset of these things can make a hugely valuable contribution to the team, but it's those few with just the right combination who will be the ones making the team successful in the long term.

Despite how jaded I quickly became about the vast majority of students who get involved solely to gain some lab experience or a line on their CV/resume -- into whom we'd pour substantial time and effort and resources, only for them to disappear come midterm season (perfectly understandable, but still disappointing and frustrating) -- there was always something about the beginning of each term that got me excited and filled me with optimism. So much promise and potential. Of course, then midterms would hit, people would disappear, and I'd feel like we were back where we started and that I'd been delusional in thinking that this would be the best term yet. But looking back, it was never delusion: each term was indeed better than the last, and, one by one, we were indeed gaining people who were in it for the long haul, taking the lead on design, lab, modeling, software and outreach.

Since I first became the last person holding up the tent, I've seen my role as doing whatever was necessary for the team to be as effective as possible. Early on, that meant things like training people in the lab, leading design meetings, and preparing funding proposals. As other members gained experience and took on more responsibility, my role adapted accordingly and became a more high-level team coordination/big-picture guidance sort of deal. Ultimately, I'll know I've been successful once I've made myself completely obsolete.

Last summer I even made run for it, seeing what would happen if I closed my eyes and my ears and left the tent... and most things actually continued to stand up pretty well. (... aside from fundraising... the financial situation gave me a bit of a heart attack when I came back in the fall... and member retention from that term was also quite dismal; both of these things mean the long-term view of the team needs strengthening).

Fast-forward to spring 2010. I've never been so optimistic about the team, and with good reason, it seems. Last week, for instance: I find myself sitting in a design/mathematical modeling meeting with Andre (who returned to Waterloo for grad school) beside me. To my right, the current modeling activities are being explained to the new members of the modeling group. To my left, at the far side of the room, the design team has split into two subgroups, each with a relatively new member explaining the current design to even newer members and guiding them in doing further research. This inexplicably warm, fuzzy feeling hits me. I lean over to Andre: "Hey, look... look around... look at what everyone's doing... and we're not doing *anything*...!"

So we're getting there. I'm really excited about the group we have around this term: two new co-ops who've quickly taken on leadership roles and seem genuinely committed to the team, plus a handful of returning members who are taking the lead on various aspects of the team's activities. A couple of these members have even been thinking longer-term, about the direction of the team, and how to keep it sustainable -- this in particular makes me super happy, since it's one of the hardest things to impart to those who don't really start thinking about it on their own. The one piece that's still kind of missing is fundraising, but if that's the only thing I have to worry about at the moment, that's still pretty awesome in my book.

Partly because this randomly just came to mind and partly because I can't think of a better way to wrap up this insanely long post, I leave you with a video from the 2007 iGEM awards ceremony. The finalists had given their presentations, the judges left to deliberate, teams started going up onto the stage to take photos while they waited, and the following spontaneously ensued: