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From 2011.igem.org

Following years of discussion, we are going to reorganize iGEM in 2011.

• First, all iGEM teams will participate in Regional Jamborees in their region. The winning teams will advance to the World Championship Jamboree at MIT. This will start with 3 regions:
  • Asia
  • Americas
  • Europe

• Second we will establish a Regional Council and a Judging Committee in each region. Representatives from those committees, and others, will form the Council of Regions and the worldwide Judging Committee.

• Third, we will still be one iGEM program.

We are excited by this change. It should control the costs of attending the iGEM Jamborees and open new opportunities for participation in the running of iGEM.

It is critical that we still have a singel iGEM program even though we are making the operation of the program more distributed. The requirement to participate in iGEM will remain consistent across all of the regions. The teams will register with iGEM Headquarters, not the regions. The evaluation criterion for awards in the regions will be the same across the regions and at the World Championship Jamboree. Naturally, the regional judging committees will bring new perspectives and will see regional needs that are not now apparent. They will have a voice in the judging criterion through participation with the world judging committee.

These changes have become necessary as the number of teams in iGEM has continued to increase. We do not wish to limit the number of teams or dramatically increase the costs of the Jamboree. Please see Regions/iGEM_Growth for a projection of iGEM growth over the next five years. Larger jamborees are disproportionately expensive because they become more serious. The additional costs come in many forms. For example, more teams leads to a longer event. This leads to more meals per person. Also, larger events must be taken more seriously. For example, larger classrooms are managed by professional Audio-Video staff. As another example, large events require more on-site Campus Police.

For 2011, each Regional Jamboree will be about 1/3 the size of the whole. The same for the world championship.