Jamboree
(1) a large gathering, as of a political party or the teams of a sporting league, often including a program of speeches and entertainment.;
(2) a large gathering of members of the Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts, usually nationwide or international in scope

Oxford Dictionary

This October marks twenty years since our supreme leader, Charlotte Deane, came to Oxford to start the first protein informatics group in this university.

Twenty years is a really long time, and at OPIG we like to celebrate things in style. From the beginning, it was clear that we would be doing what we know best: get together, consume lots of food and drinks, and perhaps talk about science. But, frankly, that’s what we do all the time. This simply wasn’t enough to celebrate two decades of scientific production. So Charlotte entrusted several of us with an ambitious goal: to reach out to our former members, and to ask them to join us, in Oxford, to celebrate two decades of protein informatics. And that’s what we did.

For two months, we painstakingly tracked down every person that has ever been part of our group, and attempted to gather their contact details to invite them to Oxford. Attempted to, for the most part. While LinkedIn gave us some early victories, some alumni had managed to cover their tracks very well, including one person we could only found after tracking down their three previous jobs. Nevertheless, after much digging, we managed to find updated contact details for every person that has ever passed by our lab, and nearly thirty of these former alumni (almost 50% of them!) made their way to Oxford on October 8th* to hold the first OPIG Jamboree.