Talk:ADBC Summit 2018

PLEASE USE THIS PAGE FOR DISCUSSION OF THOUGHTS & SUGGESTIONS FOR THE SUMMIT

Evaluation of last year's Summit

Full Report: https://www.idigbio.org/sites/default/files/workshop-presentations/summit7/ADBC%20Summit%20VII%20Evaluation%20Report.pdf

Summary

An invitation to an electronic survey was sent to 131 individuals who participated in the Summit onsite; 80 individuals responded yielding a 60% response rate. Most (59%) respondents were representing a TCN or PEN with the remaining divided about equally between iDigBio and other organizations. Respondents represented projects funded each year of the ADBC program and they were about evenly split between those attending their first Summit and those who had attended prior ones (45% vs 55%).

iDigBio provided an orientation to those new to the ADBC community, including those attending the oVert TCN kickoff meeting. Most (75%) participants rated the orientation at least “somewhat helpful.” Nearly all respondents rated the presentations by iDigBio, NSF, and the TCN representatives to be at least “somewhat informative.” The format of the lightning talks was generally viewed as effective with the general scope of the TCNs and lessons learned of greatest interest and statistics related to digitization progress the least. Comments reveal that an interest in greater opportunities for Q&A and discussion during the TCN presentations; organizing the talks on some basis other than year of funding or directing each TCN to focus on a specific area of strength might facilitate that.

All of the working/interest group meetings and discussion sessions as well as Demo Camp and the workshop of collections data and ecological/conservation research were rated positively although ratings varied. The most highly rated sessions were the EAB meeting with TCN representatives, the oVert working group meeting, Legal Issues with Collections, iDigPaleo working group meeting, the ecology workshop, Demo Camp, and the sessions on Symbiota and Specify.

Summit organization was also regard positively with an appropriate amount of time devoted to formal presentations, time for informal interaction, and working/interest group meetings. The Summit venue was rated highly, despite the lack of affordable dining options nearby and the challenges of traveling to Gainesville. Respondents did comment on some issues related to communication about the Summit including delays in having a final program available, last minute changes to the program, the difficulty of reading the wiki, and confusion about the cost of participating in optional activities.

With respect to the impact of participating in the Summit, a majority of respondents from iDigBio, TCNs/PENs, and other organizations reported increases in knowledge of both iDigBio and the national digitization effort and TCNs. A majority of respondents from iDigBio and other organizations reported likely increases in communication and collaboration with TCNs, with 40% or more of TCN representatives indicating the same, including those participating in their first Summit.

Ideas for Summit Content

Topics for Summit-wide Discussion

• ADBC Next Gen effort (Barbara Theirs/BCoN)

Topics for Individual Discussion Groups

• Innovation Experiences, Lessons Learned
  • Example: How to, and how not to, design a light box: A cautionary tale. Cindy Skema (MaM TCN)
• Data Quality Feedback
  • Experiences from our data providers
• Georeferencing / Georeferences
  • Current practices, Calculating costs, Evaluating research use issues and value: sharing feedback from the community (GRU Workshop, Digital Data II, SPNHC Symposium)
• Challenges for research use of the data (across stakeholders). (from Charles Marshall – Would like some discussion of how one of the biggest challenges is making use of their collective data to advance our understanding of ecological, evolutionary and environmental change, as well the underlying systematics of their taxa).
• Bottlenecks. What are your digitization slow steps?
• iDigBio beyond ADBC and collaborations with TCNs and other data providers (Proposed by Neil Cobb)
  • Role as GBIF node and how that impacts US data providers
  • Other roles of iDigBio and how that affects TCNs (e.g., education & outreach, serving underrepresented communities)
• Biotic Associations (Proposed by Neil Cobb)

Training Modules

• On Building a Carpentries Biodiversity Data Lesson by and for the Museum Community. A report from CarpentryCon, Digital Data II discussions on this topic and a chance to get input from the ADBC Community.
• Georeferencing

Theme Idea for Day 2

• People like to learn something tangible
• Maybe have themes for Day 2 --> same theme in the same room --> meeting "strands"
• Strand ideas:
  • Carpentries --> R, spreadsheets, OpenRefine, iDigBio API
  • Education --> lesson plans, broadening diversity
  • Data management --> Symbiota, Specify, Arctos
  • Digitization --> georeferencing, photography, innovation
  • Research --> BiotaPhy, niche modeling

DemoCamp

Fieldguide: We will demo the three Fieldguide products. Fieldguide is machine-learning software designed for image recognition of natural history specimens and live images of species in the field. Andre Poremski (aporemski@gmail.com) Neil Cobb neil.Cobb@nau.edu

Poster Session

During the 7/18/2018 CORE team meeting it was proposed we do a poster session on data use. Several times and locations were talked about including at the Harn, and at Powell Hall during the reception. It was suggested that we have a speaker talk about data use at the reception before the poster session. Kevin said he was interested in helping to organize.

Field Trips

• Tours of FLMNH collections: Randy Singer volunteered to organize the tours this year. We talked about having them on Friday from 8am-10am though maybe they should be on Thursday with the rest of the post-summit activities?

Self-Guided Tours/Activities

• National Fossil Day at the Florida Museum
• 100th Anniversary Exhibit at the Florida Museum
• Tree of Life exhibit at the Harn Museum of Art
• UF's Natural Area Teaching Laboratory
• Hike around Lake Alice (including Bat House)