In less than week, the Ecological Society of America’s 2013 Meeting will commence in Minneapolis, MN. There will be zillions of talks and posters on topics ranging from microbes to biomes, along with special sessions on education, outreach, and citizen science. So why am I going?
For starters, I’m a marine ecologist by training, and this is an excuse to meet up with old friends. But of course the bigger draw is to educate my ecological colleagues about all things data: data management planning, open data, data stewardship, archiving and sharing data, et cetera et cetera. Here I provide a rundown of must-see talks, sessions, and workshops related to data. Many of these are tied to the DataONE group and the rOpenSci folks; see DataONE’s activities and rOpenSci’s activities. Follow the full ESA meeting on Twitter at #ESA2013. See you in Minneapolis!
Sunday August 4th
0800-1130 / WK8: Managing Ecological Data for Effective Use and Re-use: A Workshop for Early Career Scientists
For this 3.5 hour workshop, I’ll be part of a DataONE team that includes Amber Budden (DataONE Community Engagement Director), Bill Michener (DataONE PI), Viv Hutchison (USGS), and Tammy Beaty (ORNL). This will be a hands-on workshop for researchers interested in learning about how to better plan for, collect, describe, and preserve their datasets.
1200-1700 / WK15: Conducting Open Science Using R and DataONE: A Hands-on Primer (Open Format)
Matt Jones from NCEAS/DataONE will be assisted by Karthik Ram (UC Berkeley & rOpenSci), Carl Boettiger (UC Davis & rOpenSci), and Mark Schildhauer (NCEAS) to highlight the use of open software tools for conducting open science in ecology, focusing on the interplay between R and DataONE.
Monday August 5th
1015-1130 / SS2: Creating Effective Data Management Plans for Ecological Research
Amber, Bill and I join forces again to talk about how to create data management plans (like those now required by the NSF) using the free online DMPTool. This session is only 1.25 hours long, but we will allow ample time for questions and testing out the tool.
1130-1315 / WK27: Tools for Creating Ecological Metadata: Introduction to Morpho and DataUp
Matt Jones and I will be introducing two free, open-source software tools that can help ecologists describe their datasets with standard metadata. The Morpho tool can be used to locally manage data and upload it to data repositories. The DataUp tool helps researchers not only create metadata, but check for potential problems in their dataset that might inhibit reuse, and upload data to the ONEShare repository.
Tuesday August 6th
0800-1000 / IGN2: Sharing Makes Science Better
This two-hour session organized by Sandra Chung of NEON is composed of 5-minute long “ignite” talks, which guarantees you won’t nod off. The topics look pretty great, and the crackerjack list of presenters includes Ethan White, Ben Morris, Amber Budden, Matt Jones, Ed Hart, Scott Chamberlain, and Chris Lortie.
1330-1700 / COS41: Education: Research And Assessment
In my presentation at 1410, “The fractured lab notebook: Undergraduates are not learning ecological data management at top US institutions”, I’ll give a brief talk on results from my recent open-access publication with Stephanie Hampton on data management education.
2000-2200 / SS19: Open Science and Ecology
Karthik Ram and I are getting together with Scott Chamberlain (Simon Fraser University & rOpenSci), Carl Boettiger, and Russell Neches (UC Davis) to lead a discussion about open science. Topics will include open data, open workflows and notebooks, open source software, and open hardware.
2000-2200 / SS15: DataNet: Demonstrations of Data Discovery, Access, and Sharing Tools
Amber Budden will demo and discuss DataONE alongside folks from other DataNet projects like the Data Conservancy, SEAD, and Terra Populus.
