GBIF.ES joins the GBIF Governing Board Meeting and Biodiversity_Next Conference in Leiden (The Netherlands)
A number of events related to Biodiversity Informatics and GBIF took place in Leiden (The Netherlands) from 17-25 October 2019, most of them hosted by the Naturalis Biodiversity Center.
GBIF organized a two-day global nodes training workshop just prior to the global nodes meeting and GB26 aiming to assist all node managers in further developing their nodes, irrespective of their current level of development. The workshop focused on the skills that node managers need to develop strategic plans, to identify and engage key stakeholders for their networks, to develop training plans and workshops that benefit from the GBIF community of practice, to resource their activities, and to develop collaborative projects that strengthen the community as a whole. The workshop was attended by a further 33 participants from the nodes community.
In the Global Nodes Meeting (October 19) participants shared recent experiences, thoughts and concerns of GBIF nodes, defined priorities by drafting a Nodes Strategy for 2020-2021 and agreed on a Nodes Committee message to the Secretariat and Heads of Delegation. Then on October 20, the different GBIF Committees had their own meetings to discuss issues related to their day-a-day activity.
The 26th meeting of the GBIF Governing Board (GB26) kicked off in Leiden from 21-23 October. In this event, the countries, economies and international organizations which are part of GBIF discussed on and voted a variety of initiatives proposed by the Secretariat. In the official Governing Board meeting, there was representation from 27 Voting Participants, 9 Associate Country Participants, 13 Other Associate Participants and one observer country. A total of 121 persons attended the meeting.
The last event organized during these days in Leiden was the Biodiversity_Next Conference (October 22-25) scheduling many different workshops and symposiums classified in four main topics (standards, infrastructures, science and policy) and aimed to build a global infrastructure for biodiversity data. This conference gathered over 700 participants from 76 countries who took the time to share their knowledge, to connect, and to help find effective ways to jointly address the gaps and shortcomings in our overall scientific workflows and prioritize work that ensures we advance biodiversity science through a globally fair and trusted value system.
GBIF Spain was represented by Cristina Villaverde (GBIF Spain Technical Coordinator), who actively joined all the events, Francisco Pando (GBIF Spain Head of Delegation, in substitution) who joined the Global Nodes Meeting, the GB26 and the Biodiversity_Next Conference, and Katia Cezón (GBIF Spain Technical staff), who joined the Biodiversity_Next Conference with a presentation about the importance of training through the GBIF network.