--- title: "Rocky Lab Challenge" url: "https://help.dectris.cloud/en/article/rocky-lab-challenge-iucr2026" language: "en" last_updated: "2026-08-12T21:51:30.618Z" --- # Rocky Lab Challenge DECTRIS at IUCr 2026 · Booth #22 # The Rocky Lab Challenge You have a card. Somewhere in this conference are three people holding the other three colours. Find them, form a lab, complete the four tasks — and one team walks away with an iPad each. The prize ## One team. Four iPads. Every team that completes all four tasks enters the lottery. One team is drawn, and **every member of that team receives an iPad**. [Explore DECTRIS D.LAB](https://dlab.dectris.com/) Winning team announced Saturday 15 August 10:00 a.m. DECTRIS booth #22 during the morning coffee break The draw is live and your team has to be there to claim the prize — bring the whole group. * * * How it works ## Four colours. One team. One shared project. A real lab is never one person. Neither is this challenge. 01 #### Sign up and collect your card Come to **DECTRIS booth #22**, sign up, and take whichever colour fate hands you: Pink, Yellow, Green or Blue. Your colour is your role. Sign-ups close **Friday 14 August at 17:00**. 02 #### Find your team Look around or come to the DECTRIS booth to find who else is playing and which colours they are still missing. A complete team is one Pink, one Yellow, one Green and one Blue — four people maximum. 03 #### Do the work in D.LAB Each card carries one task. Together they take a team from an empty project to a shared result — the same path a research group walks, compressed into a conference. Every task must be completed for the team to qualify. 04 #### Enter the draw Finish all four tasks and your team goes into the lottery. The winner is drawn on **Saturday 15 August at 10:00**. Stuck at any point, come back to booth #22 — the people who built the platform are there all week. Your card, your role ## Read your colour. That's who you are today. Keep your task to yourself until the team is complete — finding out what the others are carrying is part of it. Pink card #### The Principal Investigator Role in D.LAB — Project Manager You hold the keys. Yours is the project everyone else needs access to, and you decide who gets it. No Pink, no team — so make yourself findable early. The team name is yours to approve. **Why this matters**One shared platform: your group's data, tools and analyses live in one place, with access you control — not scattered across laptops and drives. Yellow card #### The Beamline Scientist Role in D.LAB — Data Inspector You are the one who looks at the data. Real frames from a real DECTRIS detector, and it falls to you to find what is in them and put it on the record where the rest of the team can see it. **Why this matters**Preserve scientific memory: logbooks, run history and versioned data mean what you saw today is still there for whoever comes next. Green card #### The Rescue Squad Role in D.LAB — Analyst Someone has left your team a job that does not work. Your task is to turn it into one that does — not by starting over, but by taking what is there and improving it. Then get the team to weigh in. **Why this matters**Rerun, don't rebuild: past analyses are reusable assets. Fork it, adjust it, run it again in minutes — no environment to rebuild. Blue card #### The Science Communicator Role in D.LAB — Collaborator Work nobody hears about may as well not have happened. You take the team's result out into the world — and yes, a group photo is involved. Getting everyone in one place is on you. **Why this matters**Real-time mentorship and sharing: comment inline, share a link, keep PIs and collaborators inside the work rather than outside it. Ground rules ## The fine print Four people, four colours A valid team holds exactly one Pink, Yellow, Green and Blue card. Teams are capped at four people — so that is up to four iPads leaving IUCr 2026 in the same group. All four tasks Every task on every card must be completed before the team enters the draw. Deadlines Sign-ups and submissions close on **Friday 14 August at 17:00**. The draw takes place the next morning, **Saturday 15 August at 10:00**, during the coffee break at booth #22. Help is available Booth #22 is staffed by DECTRIS scientists all week. Asking for help is not cheating. D.LAB account required Free to start — sign up at the booth or at [app.dectris.cloud](https://app.dectris.cloud/sign-up). The project stays yours Win or lose, the project remains in your account with every run, comment and logbook entry intact. Follow-up We might reach out to you after the challenge to hear about your experience and keep the discussion going. :