What is Research Jam[edit]

The Research Jam is a research lab meeting open to all. Imagine a large Zoom meeting where people from all over the world come on their own accord to share small research updates, or throw an idea out to see where it lands. If you find it difficult to imagine, good news, all of our jams are recorded and shared on our YouTube channel, see it for yourself.

Who should attend research jams?

• Anyone who believes presenting in front of labmates is the best way to drive research forward;
• Anyone who believes one way to give back to the community is to sit in a few short presentations and provide feedback.

What do you get out of it?

• Connections & collaborators
• New ideas
• Good or bad feedback
• Compute support
• Practices of presentation and communication
• Just a little bit of pressure to push forward that project you've been working on (can be painful but it's the good kind of pain)!

Time to brag: do you know in merely one year, research jams have helped produce at least 5 papers?

Upcoming jams

• Open Collab Research Jam #24 on Wednesday, November 13, 2024. 8am PT.

Past jams

• See the list of all past jams here

What to expect after you make a submission[edit]

Automatic email confirmation

Upon submission you should receive an automated email confirmation containing all your answers and a link to this article. That is to confirm that your submission was successful.

Confirmation on speaking

Research jams are normally scheduled on Wednesdays. On the previous Sunday we would check all the new submissions since the last jam. You will be contacted individually if there's any problem with your submission. Otherwise, look for a calendar invite (with zoom link) for Wednesday, and an email with logistics from Rosanne no later than Monday.

Preparation

It will be best if the slides of the presentation can "stand on their own", i.e. if people later look through them without you speaking, they'll be able to understand the gist of what you're doing. (Of course, just because you put words on the slide to be read later by someone who didn't attend your talk doesn't mean you need to read all the words on the slide.)

Every plot should have both axes labeled.

It's important to make the best use of the 5 minutes assigned to you! Please try practicing your talk a few times beforehand, make sure the content is clear and delivery smooth. Do not assume people have any background on the topic you are presenting, and always add abundant links, axis labels, legends and references to your slides, which people will access and scroll through during your presentation!

Read this for more presentation tips from Jason.

What to expect if you are just attending[edit]

Zoom presentations

Find zoom info from the MLC Events Calendar. It will also be shared on Discord #research-jam channel, prior to the event.

Discord hangouts

After all the presentations, if you have further questions, each speaker would hold a voice channel on our Discord. Feel free to join and jam with them!

Note: we are recording!

Unlike DLCT, or most other MLC events, research jams are recorded and shared afterwards on YouTube. If you'd like to have your image or voice removed, contact us.

What to expect after you give a presentation[edit]

Recording

Usually the recording of your presentation will be posted on our YouTube channel, and linked on the event page, a few hours after the jam. If you have any issues, contact Rosanne to edit the video.

Continued support

Please know that research jam is not supposed to be a one-off thing. Our intention and goal is to build a distributed "lab" for everyone, and in labs people share incremental updates on their projects every few weeks. So anyone is welcome to come back and present at a future session if there's any new developments.

In addition, we are happy to support researchers with compute resources, paper editing, and mentorship. On our Discord under the HELP WITH category there are corresponding channels for each.

If you make any new collaborations/connections from this event, and end up producing a paper/blogpost/app/company/etc. a few months or years later, drop us a note! It would make us very happy.

A community to make everything easier

We understand that research can be exciting but also extremely hard. There would be moments when you feel you're never able to push forward your project, or make a deadline, face a rejection, or finish the writing of that paper. Please remember that we and the whole community are always here to support you, and are willing to help however we can. Don't hesitate to get in touch!