With ICEDIG now running its course, the first stakeholder engagement efforts of the project were launched at the highly anticipated ICEDIG Opening Conference which was held on March 6th, 2018. The event was hosted by the Finnish Natural History Museum at the Economicum university premises in Helsinki. Welcoming the audience was LUOMUS Director Leif Schulman who is also the coordinator of ICEDIG.
The event, titled “Transforming Natural Science Collections for the Digital Age”, brought together project participants and stakeholders to discuss the role of ICEDIG, current developments in the field of mass digitisation of natural science collections, and the use of collections data. Lively discussions were held as stakeholders in the audience interacted with the speakers. Critical themes were being addressed covering various aspects of mass digitisation and empowering collections data.
A panel discussion “Building DiSSCo together” was subsequently held to close off the ICEDIG Opening Conference, where experts and stakeholders discussed how they could bring together their knowledge and services to build up the new Research Infrastructure. Panelists at this table included Jeroen Bloothoofd (Picturae), Ana Casino (CETAF & DiSSCo), Adriana de Palma (NHM London), Donald Hobern (GBIF), Dimitris Koureas (Naturalis & DiSSCo), and Deborah Paul (iDigBio). All the speakers acknowledged that the sheer magnitude and complexity of realising DiSSCo will be an enormous challenge but all agree that it is imperative that the new Research Infrastructure will be built to respond to the societal challenges that face us today and tomorrow.
To view videos of the talks and download the presentations, please click here.