OpenWetWare:Poster

Discussion and planning of a representative poster for publicizing OpenWetWare (OWW) at meetings or retreats. Initially, the page just serves to plan a poster for one particular event. Hopefully this poster design could be used again or customized to fit a particular group, lab or institution.

MIT Biological Engineering Retreat, March 2006

Contact Person: Sean

• Abstract submitted 10 March (Fewer than 275 words)

Poster Title and Logistics

• Note: Maximum size is 42" by 42"
• Title submitted: OpenWetWare: A Wiki Serving the Biological Research Community (specified authors: OpenWetWare Steering Committee)
• Poster to be up at all three sessions, sign up to accompany it
  1. Sean

Abstract

• Submitted version:

OpenWetWare (openwetware.org) is a wiki-based web site designed to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and ideas among researchers and groups working in biology, biological engineering, and related disciplines. The site provides a place for labs, groups, and individuals to organize information and to easily and efficiently collaborate with other community members. Powered by the same software as Wikipedia, OpenWetWare provides a user-friendly interface for real-time creation and modification of pages. Changes for each page are recorded in its history, allowing modifications to be tracked and easy reversion to earlier page versions.

OpenWetWare currently hosts web sites for labs and groups from institutions across the world. All members of a group can contribute to wiki pages, making it a convenient way to plan meetings, organize lab duties, discuss group-related issues, and maintain a common source of information. Shared pages provide a space for members to dynamically contribute information that benefits the community as a whole. These types of pages include scientific protocols, information on materials, discussion groups, collaborative projects, and tutorials.

OpenWetWare is rapidly expanding, and collaborations on the site are helping to generate a rich information portal for the scientific community at large. If you would like access to edit existing pages, to help with the creation of new community pages, or to host your lab or group website on OpenWetWare, please contact us (http://openwetware.org/wiki/Special:Contact).

• From the About page (with modifications...):

OpenWetWare (http://openwetware.org) is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and ideas among researchers and groups who are working in biology, biological engineering, and related disciplines. The site provides a place for labs, groups, and individuals to organize information and to easily and efficiently collaborate with other community members. OpenWetWare currently hosts websites for labs and groups from institutions across the world, including http://syntheticbiology.org. The site is powered by MediaWiki (http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki), the free software package that also powers Wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia), providing a user-friendly editing interface. We hope that OpenWetWare will lead to greater collaboration among members and provide a rich information portal for the scientific community at large. New members are joining daily, and we are actively trying to expand the community. If you would like access to edit existing pages, to help with the creation of new community pages, or to host your lab or group website on OpenWetWare, please contact us (http://openwetware.org/wiki/Special:Contact). Please visit openwetware.org to start enjoying the read-only benefits of our community, and learn more about how these benefits will expand when you join OpenWetWare (http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:Why_join%3F).

Content

• Logo
• Screenshots
  • Please suggest particular pages
  • One class page: BE.109
  • One lab page: Lauffenburger lab
  • One other page: Protocols
• Information on joining
• Potential uses
  • Hosting your lab website such that anyone in the lab can contribute
  • Enabling both students and instructors to contribute to course content
  • Access to up-to-date protocols
  • Coordination of research projects (one of the best uses of OWW but also one that is the least attractive to many researchers)
• Acknowledgements
  • iCampus award
  • BioMicro Center
• Current members
  • I don't think this is necessary
  • What about examples or "groups from X states and countries"? - SC
• What's a wiki?/interface display

Poster ideas

Jenny's template for a poster:

v.4.0

v.3.0

v.2.0

v.1.0

Comments

• JK: I like this alot. One way to run the poster would be to have something eye-catching like this up and then have a laptop hooked up to the web in front. So sean (or whoever is there at the time) could take people through the actual site as they explain it. Could also sign people up on the spot :)
• Kathleen: This is cute. I would potentially focus more on community pages and less on individual lab pages, though. Offer it up as an easy place to host your lab website, but emphasize the merits of the larger community (it takes a village to raise a grad student?).
• yeah, i agree, you could replace the Endy lab page with the protocols page.

• Jennyn 20:52, 9 February 2006 (EST): Here is version 2. Let me know what you think. This is the 800px version --good for screen quality. I also have one that is 1400x1290px for print.
• JK: OK, yeah, the new version is totally awesome.
• BC 21:34, 9 February 2006 (EST): Very cool.
• Looks great but can we add acknowledgements to our funding sources
  • Microsoft iCampus Project (what's the official name?)
  • CSBi's BioMicroCenter (what's the official name?)
  • In keeping with the graphical nature of the poster we could just put up their logos? iCampus and CSBi, Biomicro may have their own logo but the homepage is down right now.

• Jennyn 19:36, 10 February 2006 (EST): Acknowledgements have been added. I made a couple of slight changes also for aesthetic purposes. Please feel free to provide suggestions for additions/deletions, comments, and the such. -
• SC: I like the laptop and signing people up on the spot ideas.
• RS 19:02, 7 March 2006 (EST): I think we should use v3.0 for the BE retreat.

Synthetic Biology 2.0

I think we should also submit a poster to SB2.0.

Poster Title and Logistics

• Title: OpenWetWare: A Wiki Serving the Biological Research Community
• Authors: OpenWetWare user community
• Abstract: Needs work!

OpenWetWare (http://openwetware.org) is an effort to promote the sharing of information, know-how, and ideas among researchers and groups who are working in biology, biological engineering, and related disciplines. By providing a user-friendly editing interface (a wiki), the site provides a place for researchers to organize information and to collaborate with other community members. OpenWetWare currently hosts labs and groups from across the world including http://syntheticbiology.org.

OpenWetWare is particularly useful to the synthetic biology community because it hosts several ongoing discussions about the field. Key issues under debate are standards of operation and characterization for synthetic biological systems, abstraction hierarchies for biological system design, the societal implications of synthetic biology and more. Furthermore, it hosts the interactive websites of several undergraduate classes related to synthetic bioloby at both MIT and Berkeley.

New members are joining daily and we are actively trying to expand the community. If you would like to contribute to these discussions about the field or foster new ones, please apply for an account (http://openwetware.org/wiki/OpenWetWare:How_to_join). Ultimately, we hope that OpenWetWare will lead to greater collaboration among members and provide an accurate and useful information portal for the scientific community at large.

Comments

• Submitter: Since most of the people who are attending SB2.0 are presenting a poster already. We have two options. Email Jonathan directly and/or submit the abstract under perhaps Drew or Tom's registration. Regardless we need an abstract.
• Poster: We might want to slightly change the poster for SB2.0 to reflect the presence of the Synthetic Biology community on OWW.

• Austin 16:21, 2 March 2006 (EST): I think we should add that syntheticbiology.org is in fact hosted on OWW and that there's a large synthetic biology community on OWW.
• BC 16:27, 2 March 2006 (EST): It might make sense to contact Jonathon directly anyway because the OWW poster might need to be handled differently to most posters, i.e. we'd like it in the abstract book but probably wouldn't want it associated with a particular group or Institute.
• Jennyn 18:52, 2 March 2006 (EST): Do you want me to modify the current poster (above) just use Jen's "real" OWW poster when it is done?
• Kathleen 19:49, 2 March 2006 (EST): The meeting is not until May. Maybe we should wait a bit to decide on the format of the poster. It may depend on where it is posted (among all of the other posters or someplace else). For now, I think we need to focus on the abstract because I'm assuming that needs to be submitted soon.
• Jennyn 18:25, 3 March 2006 (EST): I added the SB page. It think the focal point of the poster is now that page because it is so blue and in the dead center. I'll post another less-obvious version later.
• RS 19:02, 7 March 2006 (EST): I agree with Kathleen that we don't need to worry too much about the poster yet. If Jen's logo and poster design are done by that point, then we can use that otherwise we can go with something like v4.0.
• RS 19:56, 24 March 2006 (EST): I talked to Jonathan today and he said to just email him the abstract and he'll makes sure it gets admitted. I don't know if the abstract needs further work or not.