With our presentation just a few hours away, we first went to the opening ceremony and iGEM breakfast, where one of the HQ guys (Randy) gave us a nice speech and we got to meet the first few people from other teams.
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| Typical american breakfast, random stuff + sugar |
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| Team Slovenia before the opening |
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| Kresge Auditorium |
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| Randy opening the iGEM jamboree |
Immediately, team Alberta and Wisconsin were labeled as the 'party' teams and rightly so. Everyone was really nice and friendly and we were soon sure that this event will be made of epic win and the result of the trip will be GREAT SUCCESS, even if we don't manage to take away any awards.
After the opening ceremony was over, other members dispersed to different presentations from other teams, while me and Jernej found a quiet place in the biggest hall possible and practiced for the presentation. We also got the chance to try out presentation on the stage, where we hoped to be again later in the week, presenting as finalists. We were feeling quite hyped and while nerves started to chew our concentration, we were both confident and sure we'll do just fine.
We met with the rest of the team for lunch at 11:30 and headed to our presentation room at 13:00, when finally the first presentation from our track started.
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| group photo after lunch at Walker (Texas Ranger:)) ) hall |
Temperature was rising with every minute and when the time for our presentation came, Tomi gave us a few last minute words for morale boost.
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| pep talk |
I slightly messed up my part, Jernej did great, apart from that everything went perfect. The presentation was over, questions were answered and as soon as judges announced we're out of time for official questions we were swarmed by both the members of other teams as well as judges who attended the presentation unofficially. We saw that the project was amazing, because of all the positive feedback we got just a few minutes after the first presentation.
Here are some pictures from the presentation:
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| Jernej and his game face #1 |
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| Jure gangsta stylin` it |
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| Home crowd |
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| Jernej with his game face on #2 |
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| first discussion of the judges on our project |
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| those that werent presenting were as nervouse as Jernej and Jure |
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| home crowd with 2 japanese guys still awake |
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| and the 2 japanese guys asleep after the presentation :)) we think it was jet lag |
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| anwsering questions |
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| a lot of people were interested in our project, some were more interested in Monika and Jerneja :)) |
We left the presentation building at around 16.00, when we finally managed to answer all the questions people were throwing at us. The spirit of the entire team was high, feeling was great.
We visited some presentations from other teams and found out that most of the projects are very interesting and ideas great, but very few had as astounding results as we did (*cough* Cambridge *cough* - the presentation was really nice though).
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| crowd at the first poster session |
It's amazing how a simple event like explaining poster to an unknown person can result in having friends from all over the world. After the poster session (19:00) we attended FBI workshop concerning biosecurity, where they told us what steps they're taking when it comes to novel biological applications which could potentially be used to harm others. Had a few laughs, when a typical Pakistani student was asking about getting a job at the FBI (they were inviting people to apply for one of course). It was fine, not amazing though. We headed back to our hotel at around 20:30.
So after a nice day like that, party is the next step. First we drank a few beers with our instructors, celebrating great response from all the other teams. After a while, me and Jernej decided we had to find some Danish girls we met at the poster session (and they had a cool Computer Science oriented project btw!). While walking up and down in the hotel we met the guys from Alberta, and shockingly they invited us to a party in one of their rooms. The word got out and after an hour or so, we got our first warning to leave the room because we were too loud. Alcohol had nothing to do with that, I swear. We met some awesome people on that party (Sarah, Yue, Nathaniel, Alin … basically Wisconsin and Alberta people) with which we hung out for the rest of the jamboree. We also met a mexican team, that were fun (and of course the girls pretty) and some German/Swiss people.
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| party time #1 |
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| happy face :) |
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| fun times |
After we switched 3 rooms and were told the MIT police will come if we don't calm down, we decided it would be best to go to the near parking-lot garage, where we wouldn't be bothering anyone. We got there and after a while the party died out, people got tired and slowly, one by one we went to bed. It was a free day tomorrow. Except later in that day we had to get ready for our poster session. But the rest of it was free. If I don't count all the presentation we wanted to see and the number of practice runs for possible final presentation. But yea, it was mostly free. Beeedd…
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