On July 11th, we hosted a workshop at the NightScience event organized by the CRI (Center of Interdisciplinary Researches). This workshop was made to present our project along with the different disciplines and topics that gravitate around it (synthetic biology, microorganisms, fermentation and nutrition) and to collect people point of view about them. With the presentations, we made a cooking workshop to introduce people to Indian fermented food (Idli and Dosa) and we realized a little cookbook so they could try the recipes at home. We made at the same time a small workshop with volunteers to build our DIY spectrophotometer.

In an attempt to see if they acquired some knowledge with the presentations, we decided to give them twice the same questionnaire, before and after the presentation, but due to the little number of participants, we couldn't get any significant results. Nevertheless, we could understand how non-scientific people see our project when they answered the open questions. The following graph show the evolution of the answers on one question regarding the microbiome. We can see that the number of people getting the right answer after the talk increased.

We organize a little lunch at the CRI (Center for Research and Interdisciplinarity) in Paris to present our project and to get comments from the fresh new students of the promotion that came from all over the world.

At the CIUP, there is an Indian House that accomodate Indian Students that came in France to study. We could get in contact with them and organize a little brunch with the Cooking Club. They shared with us some recipe, and we presented our project (the informal way) to get there feedback. It was also the time for us to advertize our IndianApero for the next week. It was a really enjoyable brunch and we had a lot of fun; the students were really interested in our project and found it innovative. For them, including culture and repsect of tradition is something important and the DIY concept of the Ferment it Yourself was also really liked.

With the help of a former iGEMer from the Paris Bettencourt 2014 and the CIUP Paris Descartes, we could organize a little party at Cité Internationale Universitaire in Paris. Cité Universitaire is a foundation that host students from all over the world in Houses. We organized this event at the College Franco-Britannique to advertize our project and to see how students view our project and gather their ideas and comments. We prepared for them Indian snacks such as Idli and Dosa and we made an exposition with poster so they could walk and read what they were interested in.

The explanations were formal but still, it was a really nice experience because we shared many thoughts with the participants and they were really into our project. There was students from many houses and especially from House of India. These students talked about their country and the political, social and economical issues. There was every possible study background, from law to mathematics, and from computer science to biology. Once they understood our project, we shared a little survey to know which person, if they had the occasion, would try our product. Surprisingly, among the 33 person that came, only one person said she wouldn't try it. Our project seemed to be well accepted among foreign students.