Five years ago, it started with an idea, and it took five years of intense work to transform the idea into tangible reality.
Adelheid and I, two researchers working in the realm of cell biology, deal with anything and everything that is connected to day-to-day life in the laboratory. Formulating research questions, writing grants and publications, working with students and technicians, but also coordinating who will thaw the freezers, dump unlabelled tubes with mysterious substances into the trash – all these things are part of our life, our lab life.

Over the years, we realized that for people working in the lab, the questions and uncertainties regarding laboratory practice remain the same – no matter which age or nationality of students or colleagues. So, we thought, we could save some time, by simply making a few video tutorials on these topics. Why? Because we care. We care about good scientific practice, we care about solid data and solid publications, we care about the reputation of science altogether, and perhaps most of all, we care about students and colleagues working in the lab, who have all these questions, and want to do things the right way.

Here we are, five years later, gone through everything you can imagine, collecting all those questions, asking students and colleagues about expectations, finding space for filming, learning how to film, finding solutions to unexpected technical issues (“why is this microphone not working?”, “in this light you look like spat out!”, “no problem, let’s repeat this shot another time, eventually it will work.”).

But now, it seems, we are about to go online with our 96 videos, 11 pdfs, the infrastructure for a community, and, furthermore, youtube videos, podcasts, webcasts and many more in the pipeline. We are excited, we can’t wait, we are a little bit afraid, and we can’t believe it. All of a sudden, it has become reality – we are going online.
It’s been a long journey, and yet, our journey has just begun.

Author: asban

#reproducibility # standardization # tutorials #lablife #cellculture