RDA 2nd Plenary Meeting: Day 3

The third and last day of the meeting was also split between the National Academy of Sciences (morning sessions) and Washington Marriott (afternoon sessions). More specifically, the morning session started with a nice breakfast and a presentation of the outcomes of the break out sessions of the previous day. Johannes presented the outcomes of the Agricultural Data Interoperability Interest Group. I have to admit that I had not realized by then how many IGs and WGs exist in RDA!

The presentation of the WGs outcomes

After that, it was Mark Parsons, the Managing Director/Secretariat of RDA and responsible for the organization of the 2nd Plenary Meeting, who took the floor and presented an overview of the meeting and provided some statistics. He then introduced Andrew Treloar, Director of Technology of the Australian National Data Service who announced the venue of the 3rd Plenary Meeting (Dublin, Ireland), with the help of the DRI (Digital Repository of Ireland) team and a really nice video presentation of Dublin.

No lunch was provided this time but this gave me the opportunity to discuss some pending issues with Johannes while walking back to the Washington Marriott hotel for the afternoon sessions. This time, I attended the Libraries and Research Data session, which was fully packed and to my surprise was also attended by Mark Hahnel, the founder of Figshare. The discussion was rather generic and an overview of things already discussed in other sessions; however, the chairing of Wolfram Horstmann made things more interesting. In any case, it was obvious that everyone was exhausted after three days of intense meetings and participation.

My overall impression of the meeting was really nice; not only I got to follow the advances taking place in various interesting areas, but also gave me the opportunity for some networking and meeting new people (such as Keith Jeffery, a man actively involved in CERIF, a standard developed by EuroCRIS). In addition, it provided me with the opportunity to be more actively involved with both the Agricultural Data IG and the Wheat Data InteroperabilityWG.

The end of the meeting gave me the opportunity to get something to eat (at last - it was 18.00 and did not have lunch yet!) as well as get some things for the road/office/home. I also managed to go for a short walk at the Lincoln Memorial and Potomac river bridge. Last but not least - pack my staff and be ready for departure tomorrow morning!

My photos from the 3rd day of the meeting are available here.