Last year in an effort to expand the infrastructure of sharing and building on past projects in the human practices aspect of iGEM the William & Mary team created the outreach database. The database is a searchable registry which now contains approximately 2,200 entries from gold medal iGEM teams. You can see how the database was originally created here. The hope is that iGEM teams will utilize the database by improving upon past projects rather than spending time planning and troubleshooting new programs. This year, we wanted to improve on this database and help teams learn to use it. Like any database, our outreach database is only helpful if teams know how to use the search features and have an idea of what they are looking for. To help teams use the database more effectively we created an outreach planning guide.

The outreach planning guide follows the process our team used this year to ensure our programming was goal oriented, relevant for our audiences, and impactful. This guide can assist other teams in creating meaningful programs by encouraging reflection on the community needs and interests. After reading through the outreach guide, teams will have the necessary knowledge to utilize the outreach database effectively.

• Encourage teams to think beyond traditional communities interested in synthetic biology to reach more of the public.
• To help teams focus on their particular outreach goals and promote more intentional programming
• To make it easier for iGEM teams to build upon work that has already been done in human practices
• To promote self reflection and continued progress in human practices

Below is the outline for our outreach planning guide:

The complete guide can be found at "Using the database". We strongly encourage teams to contribute to the database, adding their own outreach entries from over the years. Instructions are included on the guide.