This consultation is designed to explore a possible model for international consultations that minimises both the need for participants to travel and the need for them to join late-night/early-morning calls and at the same time maximises the opportunity for colleagues anywhere in the world and in any work situation to participate.
Background and context
During 2020 there have been growing conversations about the exciting possibilities of digital representations on the Internet of the billions of specimens currently held in the world’s natural science collections. In Europe, DiSSCo’s Digital Specimen concept and in the USA, BCoN’s Extended Specimen concept are aligned in a general vision of connecting and aligning all information related to a specimen. GBIF currently brings together potentially related biodiversity records by matching similar entries in individual fields across different datasets mediated at GBIF. This new clustering algorithm gives us a taste of the possibilities of fully integrated biodiversity data in the future.
These ideas have spurred discussions, notably through the TDWG 2020 conference about how our global community can work together to build infrastructure to achieve a fully integrated digital data infrastructure. Ideas in different discussions vary and it is beneficial when we can work together towards a single, robust global solution.
During TDWG 2020, a growing group of organizations and individuals signed a Letter of Intent to work collaboratively towards a global specification and interoperability for the digital/extended specimen. These signees now conduct the present community consultation under the umbrella of the Alliance for Biodiversity Knowledge, using a mix of virtual meetings and online discussions via GBIF’s Community Forum.
The timeline below shows the planned elements of this consultation, which has been organised in two phases:
- Open view of the consultation threads - 9th February
- Moderator meeting - 12 February
- Virtual introductory sessions
- 16th Feb,6:00 UTC and 15:00 UTC
- Consultation open for editing
- Moderator meetings - 19th & 26th February
- Officially close session - 5 March
- Close consultations
- Synthesize and continue planning of phase 2.
- April/earlyMay
- Phase 1 moderators to complete phase 1 summaries. Accessible from the phase 1 page.
- Assign phase 2 moderators
- 2nd half May (absolute deadline 28th May)
- Phase 2 moderators prepare detailed topics briefs and discussion questions
- Load consultation threads for phase 2 topics on Discourse
- Announcements, Powerpoint slides for intro webinars
- June 8 - open view of the phase 2 consultation topics
- June 15 - Session 1: UTC 05:00. Session 2: UTC 15:00
- Hold virtual introductory sessions to summarise where we are and kick-off phase 2
(x 2 for different world regions, click links above for local times) - Open consultation threads on Discourse and announce in appropriate places
- Moderator’s meetings June 25th, July 9th, July 23rd
- Hold virtual introductory sessions to summarise where we are and kick-off phase 2
- July 27 (6 weeks later)
- Close consultations
- Mid August - Moderators deliver summaries
- End August - Further synthesized results available for roadmap development with aim of finishing up and reporting for the autumn round of meetings; TDWG 2021 and others.
- e.g., Anthropological, Living collections, Cultural heritage collections community / GLAMS, Archeological, Botanical (e.g., Botany 2021), African and Asian meetings, Digital Data, CBD, October
- October (w/c October 18) - TDWG 2021 keynote talk. TDWG 2021 symposium session SYM07 will present and discuss consultation results.
For more details see the following background and planning documents: