Seventh joint Diamond–CCP4 MX workshop

David Waterman
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Raquel Costa (NOVA University of Lisbon, Portugal), who won the IUCr-sponsored poster prize at the first online edition of the DLS-CCP4 workshop.

The seventh joint Diamond–CCP4 Data Collection and Structure Solution Workshop was planned, as usual, for early December 2020 at Diamond Light Source. However, it was clear by May 2020 that this would not be possible. The organisers quickly committed to running a virtual workshop instead, even though at that time none of us had much of an idea what would be involved! We went through a number of iterations in our plans, and held a one-day mini-workshop in the Summer to check feasibility and gain experience. In the end, we decided to spread the full programme out over two weeks, but to be merciful regarding the intensity of the daily sessions by restricting to office hours only. This ensured the workshop fit better into the lives of those students and tutors who are sharing their work space with family, and gave everyone a break from the computer each evening.

As ever, we had a day of beamtime at Diamond's MX beamlines, supported by the excellent beamline staff who were on site to run experiments. The other sessions of lectures and tutorials were run over Zoom, with Slack channels for text-based communication. This combination served us very well, and it is likely that some elements of this approach will become the norm in future, even for in-person workshops. Emily and Stefania from the Diamond Events team deserve a special mention for their excellent work hosting the Zoom sessions, setting up breakout rooms, directing students to tutors, and for remaining ever-friendly compères for the full two weeks. Thank you both!

One aspect of the in-person workshops that could not easily be repeated online is the social element. Happily our attendees were a genial group and even self-organised a games evening. Another important social event is the poster session. Unfortunately we couldn't find a virtual equivalent of a poster and drinks soirée that we would normally hold at Diamond House. Nevertheless, we were able to use technology to our advantage by having the attendees upload their posters to Slack and allow conversations to continue around their projects throughout the workshop. This proved extremely useful for tutors trying to keep track of 20 student projects! A team of judges scored the posters based on how informative they were to the tutors as well as on exciting scientific content. There were many good posters but after totting up the scores we found a clear winner, Raquel Costa from UCIBIO in Portugal for the poster "Strategies to solve the 3D structures of two proteins from a prominent human gut commensal".

The 2021 event will hopefully return again live at Diamond Light Source this December, but if we have to make it virtual again, we know we can make it work.

26 February 2021

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