Meeting in the Aisle

Lab meetings: love them or loathe them, they’re an important part of lab-life. There’s many different formats and ways to do a lab meeting. Sometimes it feels like we’ve tried them all! I’m going to describe our current format and then discuss some other things to try.

Our current lab meeting format is:

• Weekly. For one hour (Wednesdays at 9am)
• One person each week talks about their progress. It rotates around.
• At the start, we talk about general lab issues.
• Then, last week’s data presenter does a 5 minute, one slide Journal club on a paper of their choice.
• We organise the rota and table any issues using our general lab Trello board.

Currently, we meet in one of the pods in our building. A pod is a sound-proofed booth that seats 8 people on two sofa style seats. It has a table and an additional 2 people can cram in if needed. Previously we used a meeting room, with the presenter stood at the front using PowerPoint with a projector. One week the meeting room was unavailable and so we used a pod instead. It is a lot more informal and the suggestions and discussions flowed as a result. So we have kept the meeting in the pod, using a laptop to present data.

In addition to this, each person in my lab meets with me for 30 min on a Monday morning to go through raw data and troubleshooting. They also present a more formal talk to the centre once every 6-9 months. I mention this to give some context. Our lab meetings are something between “my cloning hasn’t worked” and a polished presentation.

I’m happy with the current arrangement, but we’ve tried many alternatives. Here is a brief list of things you can consider.

 

Two presenters

In my opinion this is a bad idea. We went through a period of doing this so that lab presentations were more frequent, or because we were also doing journal clubs too (I forget which). What happens is that one person has a lot of data and gets lots of discussion and then we either run out of time or the other person feels bad if they don’t have as much stuff to talk about. Accidentally you have made unnecessary competition amongst lab members which is not good. Just go for one presenter. The presenter feels like it is their day to get as much as they can out of the meeting and then next week the focus will move to someone else.

Round-the-table

This is where you go round and people say what they have done since the last meeting. Depending on the size of the group, this probably takes 2 hours or “as long as it takes” which cuts further into the working day. If the meeting is too frequent, lab members can soon get into a groove of saying “nothing worked” each time and it’s difficult to keep track of who is struggling. Not only is it easy for people to hide, the meeting can also become dominated by someone with interesting data. The format also doesn’t develop any presentation/explanation skills. My preference is to keep the focus on one person.

Rotating data talk and journal clubs

It is really common, especially if you have a small group to do data presentation one week and then journal club the next week. My feelings on Journal Clubs are: if they are done properly, they can be really useful and constructive. Too often they regress into the complete trashing of a paper. As fun as this is, it doesn’t teach trainees the right skills. I’d love it if people in the lab were on top of the literature, but forcing people to delve deeply into one paper is not very effective in promoting this behaviour. I think that it’s more important to use the lab meeting time to go through lab data rather than talk about someone else’s work. Some labs have it set up where the presenter can pick data or paper, which means people who are struggling with their project can hide behind presenting papers. I’m not a fan. We currently do a 5-minute journal club to briefly cover a paper and say why they thought it was good. This takes up minimal time and people can read more deeply if they want. I got this tip from another lab. I recently heard of a lab who spend one meeting a month going through one paper per lab member. We might try this in the future. We also have a list on our General lab Trello board for suggesting cool papers that people think others should read.

Banning powerpoint, western films on the table

At some point I got fed up with seeing a full-on talk from lab members each week, with an introduction and summary (and even acknowledgements!). Partly because it was very repetitive, partly because it inhibited discussions and also I felt people were spending too much time preparing their talk. Moving to the pod (see above) kind of solved this naturally. In the past, we did a total back-to-basics: “PowerPoint is now banned bring your lab book and let’s see the raw data”. This was a good shock to the system. However, people started printing out diagrams… these were made in PowerPoint … and before I knew it, PowerPoint was back! Now, there is value in lab members giving a proper talk in lab meeting. Everyone needs to learn to do it and it can quickly get people used to presenting. Not everyone is great at it though and what lab members need from a lab meeting – I believe – is feedback on their project and injection of new ideas. A formal talk from someone struggling to do a good job or overcome with nervousness doesn’t help anyone. I prefer to keep things informal. Lots of interruptions, questions and enthusiasm from the audience.

Joint lab meetings

When my group was starting and I just had two people we joined in with another lab in their lab meetings.   This worked well until my group was too large to make it work well. What was good was that the other PI was more experienced and liked to do a “blood on the floor” style of lab meeting. This is not really my style, but we had a “good cop, bad cop” thing going on which was useful. For a while. If the lab ethos is too different it can cause friction and if the other PI has any bad habits, things can quickly unravel. There’s also issues around collaboration and projects overlapping which can make joint lab meetings difficult. So, this can be useful if you can find the right lab to partner with, but proceed with caution.

Themed lab meetings 

No, not turning up dressed as someone from The Rocky Horror Picture Show… In my lab we work in two different areas. For a few years we segregated the lab meetings by theme. This seemed like a great idea initially, but in the end I changed from this because I worried it set up an artificial divide. People from the other theme started to ask if they could work in the lab instead. There was also different numbers of people working on the two themes. I tried to rotate the presenters fairly, but there was resentment that people presented more often on one theme than the other.  I know some dual-PI labs who do this successfully, but they have far more people. This is not recommended for a regular one PI lab with less than 10 people. Anyway, most labs just work in one area anyway.

Skype and remote lab meetings

For about one year, we had a student join our lab meetings via skype. She was working at another university and it was important for her to be involved in these meetings. It worked OK and she could even present her data when it was her turn. We used the lab dropbox folder for sharing slides, papers and data with her. We still use this folder now for that purpose. I know PIs who skype in to lab meetings when they are away, so that the lab meeting always goes ahead at the same time each week. I have never done this and don’t think it would work for our lab.

Fun stuff – breaking the routine

OK. Depending on your definition of fun… to check on the state of people’s lab books. I ask lab members to bring along their lab books without warning to the lab meeting and then get them to swap with a random person and then ask them to explain what that person did in the lab on a random date. It gets the message across and also brings up issues people are having with recording their data. We also occasionally do fun stuff such as quizzes but tend to do these outside of the lab meeting. I’ve also used the lab meeting to teach people how to do things in a software package or some other demo. This breaks things up a bit and can freshen up the lab meeting routine. Something else to consider to keep it fun: a cookie schedule. We don’t have one, but people randomly bring in some food if they have been away somewhere or they have cooked a delicacy from their home country.

State of the lab address

Once a year, normally in January when no-one wants to do the first lab meeting of the New Year, I do a state of the lab address. I go through the goals and objectives of the lab. Things that I feel are going well, areas where we could have done better. Successes from last year. The aim is to set the scene for the year ahead.

People in the lab can get a bit deep into their project and having some kind of overview is actually really helpful for them (or so they tell me!). Invite them along if you are giving a seminar or use a lab meeting to try out a seminar you are going to give so that they can see the big picture.

Ideas session

It doesn’t happen often that a presenter has nothing to present. The gaps between presenters are long enough to ensure this doesn’t happen. However, sometimes it can be that the person scheduled to talk has just given a bigger talk to the whole centre (and I forgot to check). When this has happened, we have switched to a forward-looking lab meeting to plan out ideas. Again this can break up the routine.

Time

I think 1 hour is enough. Any longer and it can start to drag out. I try to make it every week. Occasionally it gets cancelled when my schedule doesn’t allow it. But if the schedule gets too ad hoc, it sends the wrong message to the lab members.

Wednesday morning works well for us, but we’ve tried Tuesday mornings, Wednesday afternoons etc. I’m happy to set this by the demands from experiments etc. For example, most people in my lab like to image cells Thursday and Friday so those days are off limits. I also ask that everyone comes on time, and try to lead by example. I know a lab where they instigated a 1 Euro fine for lateness, including the PI. This is used as a cookie fund.

No lab meeting at all!

During my PhD we never had a regular lab meeting. Well, I can remember a few occassions where we tried to get it going but it didn’t stick. In my postdoc lab we also similarly failed to do it regularly. I didn’t mind at the time and was happy to spend the time instead working in the lab. However, I can see that many issues in the lab would’ve probably been solved by regular meetings. So I’m pro-lab meeting.

And finally…

Maybe this should have been at the beginning… but what exactly is the point of a lab meeting?

Presenter – Feedback on their project, injection of new ideas, is this the right route to go down? etc. Improve presentation skills, explain their project to others can help understanding.

Other lab people – Update on the presenter’s project, a feeling for what is expected, ideas for their own project. Have your say and learn to ask questions constructively.

PI – Update on project, give feedback, oversee the tone and standard.

Everyone – lab cohesion, a chance to address issues around the lab, catch up on the latest papers and data.

If none of the above suggestions sound good to you, maybe think about what you are trying to get out of your lab meetings and design a format that helps you achieve this.

—

The post title is taken from Meeting in the Aisle by Radiohead, B-side on the Karma Police single.