OpenWetWare:Presentations/iGEM 2007 Teach the teachers workshop

What is a OWW, why is it useful?

 * Started by students in the Endy and Knight labs as a means of recording and sharing useful biological information.
 * Addresses the problem of the lack of a searchable, accessible knowledgebase for experimental methods, as well as provides a new venue to communicate and collaborate with others about research ideas and projects.
 * Now consists of ~100 labs from ~50 institutions.
 * ~20,000 total pages, more than 200 protocols, 75 materials pages, and 50 equipment pages.

Useful information

 * BioBricks
 * Intro to BioBrick assembly by Chris Anderson
 * Class module on synthetic biology by Natalie Kuldell and Drew Endy
 * Protocols, Materials and Equipment

Active user base

 * Many IGEM teams on the site last year and many already are on this year
 * Strong synthetic biology presence on the site (it is the home of syntheticbiology.org).
 * Ask for help

Custom extensions

 * Automatic Pubmed citations via Biblio.
 * Recent changes filtering. See  iGEM on OWW recent changes.
 * Easy adding of plots and chemistry diagrams

things that you do already offline but might be more effective on the wiki

 * meeting organization (lab meetings (1,2), retreat planning (1,2), etc)
 * ordering
 * lab jobs (1, 2, 3)
 * equipment pages
 * control experiments, etc.

things you may not do currently, but which are easy on a wiki

 * long term storage of lab information (protocols, primers, restriction enzymes)
 * up-to-date lab webpage and http://smolke.openwetware.org
 * remove the webmaster "bottleneck" - democratized contribution

unique opportunities on OpenWetWare

 * publicize your work prior to publication
 * OWW will probably be the top google hit for your name
 * collaborate
 * find out what people are doing right now across the world or in your Map own building
 * shared spaces
 * Shared protocols, materials, equipment, etc.
 * protocol example

How to get started on OWW

 * Getting started: extensive help available on using OpenWetWare.