Over 240 biodiversity and data scientists, including more than 30 students and representing at least 7 countries, assembled at University of California, Berkeley 5-7 June 2018 for the second annual Digital Data in Biodiversity Research Conference [1], this year subtitled Emerging Innovations for Biodiversity Data. The nearly 30% increase in attendance from the inaugural conference in 2017 underscores the growing wealth of openly available data for scientific research. The increase in attendance resulted in a large and diverse program [2] that featured nine exceptionally well-received plenary sessions, 54 concurrent sessions, and two-dozen posters [3]. Eleven discussion leaders took advantage of the newly introduced discussion session format, shaded gray in the agenda and embedded within the concurrents [4]. The popularity of the discussion format means it will be continued next year. The 2018 conference also introduced an unconference event [5] that allowed time for free discussion of conference activities. Themes for this year included: Addressing the fundmental questions of evolutionary biology and ecology; Meeting the research challenges of the Anthropocene; Biodiversity data archives for education and science outreach; New tools for data discovery and analysis; and Future, untested frontiers for natural history collections.

A Sunday pre-meeting workshop and North American GBIF Nodes meeting [2] preceded the conference and five workshops, a guided and self-guided field trip, and collections tours at California Academy of Sciences [6] followed on Wednesday. Abstracts [7] for all sessions are available on the conference wiki.

For a participant’s view of the conference, see the blog by Ciera Martinez [8], evolutionary biologist and Fellow at the Berkeley Institute for Data Science.

iDigBio appreciated the opportunity to co-host the conference with our collaborators at UC Berkeley and especially recognizes the Berkeley planning team: Heather Constable, David Ackerly, Michelle Koo, Carol Spencer, Brent Mishler, Michael Nachman, Carl Boettiger, Carla Cicero, Peter Oboyski, and Pat Holroyd.

We are also pleased to make a save-the-date announcement for next year’s conference, to be hosted by the Yale Peabody Museum in New Haven, CT, 10-12 June 2019. Planning for next year is now underway. More details will be coming late summer and early autumn.