We wanted to connect with the older community that can’t always attend our in house public forums. These individuals are still an important part of the wider community; they vote and have an impact on the integration of synthetic biology projects. Additionally, as bioengineering becomes more prominent in the medical field, many of these older individuals would benefit from synthetic biology treatments.

To ensure our program fit the needs of this community we connected with Patee Ramsey: the WindsorMeade lifestyle coordinator, Laura Mullen: the Williamsburg Landing Manager of Activities and Melissa Degaraff: the Administrative Coordinator Christopher Wren Association. With each of these individuals we discussed the interests of their communities, the appropriate length of a program and the background knowledge participants would be bringing into the program. This solidified our goal of creating an interactive program which allowed participants to develop their own opinions about synthetic biology based on current applications and techniques in the science. We decided to leave the bulk of the hour program for conversations and questions, including several scenarios for the groups to talk through. Knowing the background of our community also helped us prepare for the kinds of questions we would be asked during the presentation. Particularly with Williamsburg Landing we were informed many of the residents had strong memories of the Cold War which influence their perceptions of advancements in science. Knowing this helped us better prepare for potential questions.