One year of lockdown

One year ago today, I was in England, nervously finishing up a standards meeting and hoping that I could make safely home without either getting infected with Covid or getting stuck on the wrong side of the border. 

On March 13th, 2020, I flew home via Chicago, on the last day before the border closed. My wife and I embraced, and we put our household into lockdown. We waited nervously for a week of potential incubation time, but I had apparently escaped infection. Spring break began, and we wondered if there would still be school at the end of it.

We were fortunate. I had noticed the potential trouble building and we had at least a month's supplies laid in our basement for our household. My wife and I could both keep doing our jobs online, and despite some friction with the kids and cats, we settled into an enclosed routine. I miss being able to get together with friends in person, but between my work and family, my life is full and over-full with social interactions, and in the evenings I usually just want a quiet place of solace. 

Some things, I am surprised that I do not miss, like restaurants. We've gotten much better at cooking, and the food we eat is healthier. I've lost fifteen pounds or so, thanks to my healthier lifestyle. More time with the kids is a silver lining too. But what a world of change we've been through, all of us, and it's not over yet.

Tomorrow will be the anniversary, one full year since the last time our house was open to the world. One full year of living our pandemic lives. 

There's a light at the end of the tunnel now, I think, but we're a long way yet from done. Our indoor cats perch on the windowsill, looking at the world outside denied to them to roam, and I think I can identify.

Building the SynBio StackExchange community

We're getting closer to launching the Synthetic Biology StackExchange Q&A site, but building a new community on StackExchange is hard, and we need more people to come help!

There are more than 150 different topic sites in the StackExchange network, and over the course of launching them, StackExchange has learned a lot about what causes a community to succeed or fail. Most important, it seems, is having critical mass at the start, and they've set the thresholds for site launch accordingly.

What this means for SynBio StackExchange is that we'll launch as soon as we have:

• 250 people committing to use the site when it launches, and
• at least 100 of those having 200+ reputation on some other StackExchange site.

I've believe that both of these are quite reasonable and achievable. The 250 people threshold is pretty straightforward, and we're on track to hit that around the end of March. The second criteria, however, is harder since most SynBio folks aren't yet contributing to StackExchange, and will be the one that determines when we can actually launch the site.

Getting 200 reputation is pretty easy: it only takes about 4 questions or 3 answers. It's a big deal, though, since it means you've put a little skin in the game and figured out how to contribute on StackExchange. And once you learn to play the game, it's often pretty fun: helping people feels good, getting your own problems solved is great, and StackExchange is set up to really reward people who put in just a few minutes on a regular basis.

And so it is with building this community. Come join us, and bring one friend. Ask another one tomorrow, and ask your friend to do the same. We're doing pre-launch Q&A using the Biology StackExchange synthetic biology tag, so come ask one question there. Then ask another one tomorrow. And if you want more, ask me for an invitation to the community-building Slack where we're sharing tips and helping each other.

One step at a time, we're working to build this community, and when it's big enough, we'll get to have a dedicated watering hole where everybody who needs help in synthetic biology knows that they can come and find it.