I would overall agree, although I’ve found the California Academy of Sciences part did more to help me sell the concept of iNat to other people than National Geographic. Building trust in a brand is a fine goal - which I have no doubt iNat will acheive - , but it doesn’t help people who have never heard of you.
A formal commitment/approval by a respected scientific institution/society is really reassuring for the general public, especially for parents or less tech-savvy people. Due to past scandals (mostly in the medical research charity space, admittedly), people can be wary of non-profits in France and I suspect in a fair few other countries.
I don’t think any specific commitments iNat could make about governance on its own would help at that stage of getting people to know the platform (although I’d of course welcome them!) because people’s concerns at that point aren’t really formalised or thought out, it’s more a matter of “vibe” where people need a shorthand to know if it’s even worth finding out more.
The iNaturalist network seems like a great tool for that, but I don’t know how much work expanding it would require (a fair bit, I’d wager) and whether that could bump against competing local projects.
That’s not to say that I won’t be enthusiastically looking forward to what the new status brings, but it does come with a downside.
We, iNat observers and identifiers, will be interested to see iNat forge its own independent identity.
California Academy of Sciences, since you started in California, was a good basis for us in the Rest of the World. (But National Geographic with its complicated history, not so much)
Disclaimer - my camera bag has an NG logo - it was the only one that fits.
Obs in CA 12.8 million
USA 69 million
World 148 million
(Rest of the World 79 million - significant we are)
I don’t know much about US legal frameworks but trust the decision is a good one and a reflection of iNat’s success. So congratulations I believe!
I was wondering if the legal change will have any affect on the resources offered for free or reduced cost (was it Google offering storage, I forget?) - are any of these resources dependent on the previous structure/partnerships? I imagine not.
Also, I remember early on when I got into iNat I read this post and found it really useful. It gave an idea about what the team is doing, some direction for the near future, and also set expectations about what changes/enhancements are plausible. Would it be possible for a similar post to be written in the coming months?
That hasn’t changed. We’re still getting very generous in-kind donations from Google and Amazon web services, as well as some hardware from Nvidia. See https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/inat-supporters
I’m more wondering what you folks envision than envisioning anything myself. When I first joined I didn’t know what iNat was and have since come to think of iNat as a graduate project that went viral and took everybody involved by surprise. It seemed to me that it exploded before anybody really had time to think about what sort of administrative structure would work best, never mind getting a realistic strategic planning process in place.
The national partnerships have always puzzled me a bit. On the surface they appear to be local versions of the partnerships with NG and the California Academy, which raises questions (at least for me) about what the lines of responsibility, accountability and control look like in the new iNat structure.
I’ve reported to and served on a number of not-for-profit and charitable boards. I’ve seen crazy ideas succeed and apparently bullet-proof concepts die horrible deaths. When you tease them apart, the good and bad outcomes pretty much all come down to money, planning, management systems and the team. Every organization has its own mix of competencies; from the outside, iNat’s strongest suit appears to be its team.
iNat isn’t making massive numbers of cutting edge widgets, it doesn’t employ hundreds of thousands, it isn’t administering multi-billion dollar budgets but it is seeking to engage a very large number of people in a lot of places and it is endeavouring to generate a large pile of data points that are usable for actual research. It’s not Amazon but what it does is complicated enough to make management challenging; If the organization continues to grow like anything even vaguely resembling recent history, structures are going to matter.
Sounds like a great t-shirt slogan for those questioning iNat’s research tool role and legitimacy.
Given the fears and anxieties regarding global and technical change, there could be some tumultuous rides ahead for an org that relies so significantly on an AI-powered identity tool for both recruitment and participation.
What makes me nervous is the dismal track record of what I would call ‘spiritual disengagement’ that occurs when a small group (often around new tech) grows so popular that it loses touch with its visionary foundation and principles the faster it grows.
On the other hand, if we’re too afraid to at least keep trying to create a more nature-connected humanity, what other real hope remains?
Hmm. Maybe I should try asking the chatbots that question.
On this note, I was wondering a couple weeks ago why I randomly received a welcome email from the Canadian Wildlife Federation, despite never signing up for any newsletters from them. Is there a major change in how iNaturalist.ca in specific will be governed as a result of this change, that could explain this unexpected email?
Here in Germany I would say data security and potential commercialization of data are definitly an topic of concern, that is important and where I hear that people mention it as an argument of using or not using a service. But again this might come from the “academic bubble” from the University-city I live in…
I don’t think so. Germans are for sure extra aware of privacy and their data… not only in university settings. It’s a big topic compared to a lot of other countries and I know a bunch of people that would not (or do not) use certain sites and apps because they are too concerned
Yeah like my friends and family in Germany who refuse to use Facebook because of privacy concerns but use WhatsApp every day… (Facebook bought WhatsApp about a decade ago so both are by the same company now.)
The email sent by the Canadian Wildlife Federation last month was a mistake, so my apologies that you received this. Our IT department spent the last while investigating and the error was due to programming of automated emails which should not have included the emails from iNaturalist.ca affiliated users. Being the network partner for Canada CWF has access to iNat.ca affiliated user emails in order to send iNat related updates (as per the privacy policy). The issue has been fixed and I’ve been assured this will not happen again - it’s also a major concern for our organization and ensuring good standing with our charitable status, so we take this extremely seriously.
All that to say, there is no change in how iNaturalist is governed with respect to the global network and we continue to operate the same in Canada as we always have. It was a total coincidence that this happened near the same time as the transition to a nonprofit.
(Facebook bought WhatsApp about a decade ago so both are by the same company now.)