[3dem] EM core/facility staff Slack group

[Rebecca Thompson]

Hi all,

At the recent 3DEM Gordon Conference we held an EM facility discussion group. We had a fantastic cross section of facility managers, staff and users from across the world, and were able to discuss challenges facing us as a community interested in efficient running of high-end TEM facilities.

One of the big take-home messages of the discussion was around sharing best practice and information, and how this could be improved. Many facilities are developing and implementing interesting data acquisition or training schemes/resources, but these are are often not shared (sometimes intentionally, but often just because no one asked!).

As an outcome for the meeting, we have set up a Slack group for core/facility managers and staff, focusing on ‘high-end' TEM operation. We currently have channels for facility set-up, sample prep, training, Titan Krios hardware and EPU, and we hope that this will evolve and expand as more join- for example including different microscope and software types. We hope this will act as an online community for discussion around ‘high level’ topics such as ‘whats the most effective way to train my user base, how are others doing it?’, as well the everyday ‘my microscope has just done this weird thing, anyone else seen it?’ type discussion.

If you would like to join the group, please send me an email and I will send you an invite!

While we hope the Slack group will be a good forum to build communication within this community, there is really no substitute for face to face meetings. It was fantastic to have the opportunity for a facilities focused discussion group at the 3DEM GRC (Thank you Hongwei and Sharon!), and I would encourage anyone involved in organising conferences or meetings in cryoEM to consider if a facility focused session/discussion would be appropriate. There are also focused meetings, such as the upcoming Best Practices in CryoEM<https://instruct-eric.eu/events/3rd-instruct-workshop-for-best-practices-in-cryoem/>, and hopefully more of these sorts of meetings will start to spring up!

Best wishes,
Becky


________________________________________________
Rebecca Thompson
Senior cryo-Electron Microscopy Support Scientist/Facility manager
Astbury Biostructure Laboratory
University of Leeds

Email r.f.thompson at leeds.ac.uk<mailto:r.f.thompson at leeds.ac.uk>
Phone 0113 3438957/3438959 (office/Titan Krios control room)
Mobile 07816179813
Location Roger Stevens 5.40
Linkedin   https://uk.linkedin.com/in/1rebeccathompson
Twitter  Bex_16

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