James Borrell is a biodiversity scientist and science communicator researching how people and nature can adapt to environmental change.

Citizen Cyberscience Summit 2014 (#CCS14)

It’s an exciting time for scientists and citizen scientists alike. Following on from successful events in 2010 and 2012, London will this week play host to the 3rd Citizen Cyberscience Summit (Feb 20-22nd).

I’m lucky enough to be speaking on the first day, which is quite daunting considering that many of those in attendance are the people that inspired my interest in citizen science in the first place!

A testament to how popular citizen science has become, the entire event is almost sold out, but you might be lucky to find a few places left if you join the waiting list.

So What Is The Cyberscience Summit All About?

Citizen cyberscience covers a wide range of activities that empower and enable individuals and communities from around the world to participate in the scientific process. This might be through web-based applications, smart phone apps, or custom sensors. It is hoped that all these things might be utilized to work towards grand challenges such as mapping biodiversity, monitoring climate or analyzing data.

The Talks And Events I’m Most Looking Forward To:

Zooniverse has just surpassed 1,000,000 subscribers, an incredible achievement. Rob Simpson will be giving a talk describing the platform and talking about its future.

The Great Nature Project is a National Geographic initiative encouraging the general public from around the world to contribute photos and other information to a central database. As part of the “Hack Day Challenge”, they are looking for help identifying and designing citizen science projects that can be conducted as part of the Great Nature Project’s annual global snapshot of biodiversity. Exciting!

ESRI Mobile Apps For Supporting Citizen Science: Exciting to see what they’re coming up with!

Extreme Citizen Science in the Rainforest: The methods and tools used in Extreme Citizen Science to assist non-literate people to collect and analyse data were originally developed in collaboration with forest-dwelling hunter-gatherers in the Republic of the Congo, whose traditional livelihoods and ways of life were under threat from external pressures such as logging and poaching activity.

Citizen Science: A Vision For The Future: Dr Rick Bonney is Director of Program Development and Evaluation at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology and co-founder of the Lab’s Citizen Science program. I’ve always admired the work of the Cornell Lab, but it’s a long way away! So it’ll be exciting to hear about its citizen science program fist hand.

 

 

Citizen Science Tweeters To Follow (#CCS14)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

More suggestions welcomed, let me know in the comments!

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