NUB2(2nd Norwich Unseminar in

Bioinformatics)

Thursday 1st October 2015TGAC, Norwich, UK

a group of scientists and non-scientists

interested in bioinformaticsand exploring different ways of collaborating

Lego1

Lego1 - building• ~4 groups, max 8 per group, ideally people you don’t know (well)

- tables are labelled groups A, B, C, D, write your name on the same side of the paper with the group label on it

• briefly introduce yourselves within your group (name, where you work)

• take bricks as you need them from the counter - use smaller boxes to bring them to your tables

• build a 3 storey house, build each storey separately, don’t join them together, different storeys fitting together well both structurally and aesthetically (10/15 min)

• when done, write together a short description of your design on the group label sheet, so that someone else could follow and replicate it

Lego1 - comparing & sharing

• pass your top storey to one group

• A->B, B->C, C->D, D->E, E->A

• pass your middle storey to another

• B->A, C->B, D->C, E->D, A->E

• connect your ground storey to the other two

• do you now have a house that fits together well structurally and aesthetically?

• put your storeys back together again, leave them with your spec - we may come back to them later

Lego1 - links to Open Data

• if we had discussed and agreed together a specification for building houses, when sharing components, they would have fit together better

• this would have taken quite a long time!

• providing a clear, standard-compliant, set of open instructions (e.g. lego construction kit instructions) would mean anyone could easily build something that would fit your house

• you got some practice writing a specification

• one way to get storeys made to different specifications to fit together could have been to build an adaptor

Open Space Technology (OST)

OST

• talk with your neighbours about Open Data - what questions/issues linked to it would you like to discuss?

• did a topic come up, that you’d like to lead a discussion on? Share it with the group, then stand to one side of the room

• then…

OST

• join the person whose pitched discussion topic you find most interesting - feel free to change between topics (law of two feet)

• OST works is good for building collaborations and produce tangible outcomes - but we use it here, rather, to give you space to have the conversations you’re most interested in having, not to build something specific - so we’re not asking you to take notes on discussions

Lego2

Lego2 - building• re-form groups from earlier, return to your spec

and house

• pass your spec to another group, try and rebuild your middle storey to fit the spec give to you by another group

• pass specs: A->B, B->C, C->D, D->E, E->A

• pass your remodelled middle storey to the group whose spec you received

• pass middle storeys: B->A, C->B, D->C, E->D, A->E

Lego2 - reflection

• hopefully the middle storeys fit together better than the first time we tried this - i.e. when you have a spec to work to

• you got practice working with someone else’s spec

• and spent some more time with the Lego

Reflection and close

Reflection

• discuss with your neighbour what (if anything) you enjoyed, learned, or found useful about the session

• if you’d like to share any of these thoughts with the full group, we’ve got 5 minutes to hear from you

Thanks!

• TGAC and EMBO

• Andy and Toby

• you

• Helen and Matt