iNat Conference?

Is there any interest in an iNat conference? Do they exist regionally and I just don’t know about them?
Tell me more =)

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That would be cool for people to give presentations and posters about their local projects, or projects that have been incorporated into scientific studies, or new species discoveries. There would also be the essential field outings to iNaturalize and meet like minded people. It could bounce around regionally too.

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If one is ever arranged, I hope they have a huge room with wifi and comfortable seating so that people can come in and set up a laptop and ID together in a big, communal atmosphere. :grinning:

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Projector and everyone shouts out their ID

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I am very interested! In fact, I’m hoping to organize a local one (Massachusetts) once Covid calms down even more. Maybe next year?

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Yes please!

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It would be cool to have one in my hometown of CinciNati! ;)

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Sounds like a great idea! Could start with community meet-ups and scale from there. My only concern would be, conferences are an enormous organizational undertaking requiring a lot of staff and volunteers, months of planning, and also funding. For a non-commercial organization that would be a large challenge, though probably not insurmountable.

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I imagine that would sound like a mixture of an auction house and the price is right.

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if you’re thinking of a large conference, i think it could be more financially viable if you deemed it something like a Nature Technology conference, where you invited reps from iNat, eBird, WildBook, and such… and also folks from the major camera makers, lens / binocular makers, and such… and also other gear makers… and also folks doing interesting research or with special knowledge in the field…

locate it in a city that has easy access to water, forest, mountains, and grasslands. that way, you can have sessions indoors, but then you can also organize outings where, say, you can try out the latest binoculars while recording bird observations. or go on a whale watching tour where you can also check out how Wildbook can be used to identify individual whales. or learn the best practices for looking for mushrooms, go out into a forest to look for them, and then bring them back to do other stuff like microscopy, etc.

i think the biggest challenge would be what kind of food to serve. (ex. can you serve chicken to birders? would fungus enthusiasts prefer to eat mushrooms?)

if it’s going to be a purely iNat conference, then i think it should be half online and half in person at cities throughout the world. so, say, keynote speeches and certain other sessions could be online and broadcast to the world, but then you would have local sessions at various cities throughout the world to get outdoors.

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Pretty sure there are inat groups regionally , and I think the one in India is growing steadily.

There is burgeoning interest in citizen science . India has a new annual event dedicated, CitSci India to citizen science initiatives whole event, and an organization just to promote citizens science, presently dominated by the birding community.

I was fortunate to be able to make a small presentation, ( Conference Talk on “Community Science and the Biodiversity Picture: Connecting People & Adding Resolution –presented at CitSci India 2021) .

And if ever an inaturalist event happens would be interested to hear and see what others have to share.

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@ mycomagus Welcome to forums.

combined with an auction as suggested elsewhere on the thread, this should be fun.

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I would like online conferences, it’s the only way currently to make it truly international. I know there’re many smaller groups that meet irl or on zoom calls, it must be possible for bigger audience. Or let someone else to make a new identothron and meet there.

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I love the idea, particularly also for getting students more involved and giving them something they could put on a CV. A lot of our students (college level) have to do presentations at some point in their academic life. Giving them an incentive to use iNat for a project and present their results to a broader audience outside of class may help getting them to think about iNat more as a tool to do science and interact with others and not just as a means to collect points for a school grade. It would take quite a bit of organization though to ask for and select abstracts for presentations etc.

Online sounds best for getting broad participation without the limitations of finding travel money etc. During the pandemic, we had a few conferences go online with poster presentations and recorded short talks where attendees could interact either live via chat/zoom or asynchronously via message board to ask questions. I’m sure they were using some sort of online conference registration and management system that probably costs quite a bit of money to use, but I have no idea of the technical details behind the scenes.

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We are coming up to the next Southern Bioblitz. If you live up North, help with identifying would be hugely appreciated by countries with few identifiers.

There are usually events to encourage newbies to learn to iNat. And to bring us your shiny new obs, thank you.

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Is it an idea to place webinars online ?
There used to be many.

-Bat Behaviour: North American Bats and White-Nose Syndrome-- 

In 2006, a microscopic fungus arrived in North America causing white-nose syndrome, a devastating fungal disease in bats, and one of the most drastic declines ever observed in an animal group.

Since then, white-nose syndrome has killed tens of millions of bats. Mortality rates reached 100 per cent in some caves. And three species are now listed as endangered in Canada, including the little brown bat, previously the most abundant and widespread bat species in North America.

Join us for a CPAWS Manitoba webinar with Dr. Craig Willis, Professor of Biology at the University of Winnipeg, whose bat lab has been studying white-nose syndrome for more than 15 years. He will discuss the dangers of white-nose syndrome to Manitoba’s bats, the research being done to identify, protect, and improve critical bat habitats, and how you can get involved in monitoring bat populations in Manitoba.

About the speaker

Dr. Craig Willis is a Professor of Biology at the University of Winnipeg who has been studying the behaviour, ecology, and physiology of bats for over 20 years. His research on bats and white-nose syndrome has been covered by a range of national and international media including CBC's 'The Current' and 'Quirks and Quarks', CTV National News, the Guardian (UK), and the Los Angeles Times.
 
About CPAWS Manitoba:

CPAWS Manitoba has been instrumental in establishing 22 new parks and protected areas in our province. That's an area larger than Lake Winnipeg at nearly 26,000 square kilometres. Our goal is to protect half of Manitoba’s lands and waters.

--Lunch and Learns--

Nature has been here for us during the pandemic.

CPAWS Manitoba wants to maintain this positive connection to nature by providing a space for Manitobans to connect online from the safety of our homes and be inspired by nature in our backyards and beyond.

Join CPAWS Manitoba for weekly lunch and learn presentations from experts across the province who will share their knowledge and
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I would like an agenda with all kinds of webinars which are availble like this one
https://cpawsmb.org/cpaws_event/bat-behaviour-north-american-bats-and-white-nose-syndrome/

But other earlier proposals are good as well

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