Being a member of the Perry lab is pretty wicked for a number of reasons, but one of my personal favorites is our lab meeting setup. Most research labs will hold some kind of meeting once in a while so that each member can share status reports about their work and get suggestions for how to move forward with project ideas and specific tasks. Our lab shares a Google slideshow that I manage where each of us contribute 1-2 slides of updates, figures, and pictures, which are then presented at a ~1 hour biweekly meeting.
Now before you go judging me for being a big fan of something that sounds pretty dull, please know that we’ve already taken the boring factor into account and spiced things up a bit more than just sharing a slideshow of updates. I don’t know who came up with the idea originally, but someone suggested that our slides be themed. The slide manager (AKA me) comes up with a bunch of theme options and, at the end of every lab meeting, we vote on the theme for next time. As each person updates their slides for the meeting, they also contribute something to go along with the theme. The title slides pictured below might give you a better idea of what I mean:
These themes have included several "favorites", ranging from “Favorite cake/pie” to “Favorite tree”. Occasionally we get really nifty and Photoshop ourselves with a non-standard hair color of our choice, pick celebrity doppelgangers for each other, or even sort ourselves into Hogwarts houses. I really appreciate the fun that these themes inject into our relatively standard status report sessions, and it’s a chance to get to learn a bit about each other too. Next Monday we get to find out everyone’s favorite carnivorous plant; it’s gonna be a good week.