Citizen Cyberscience Summit – Day 1

So the first day of the Citizen Cyberscience Summit?

From James Borrell‘s opening with his lessons from a year of citizen science, to Leo Bottrill who closed the day by discussing the Moabi platform that is being developed for forest communities in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the issue of ‘inclusiveness‘ appeared throughout the day.

The line from Jacquie McGlade’s video presentation was very thought-provoking – ‘we need to collaborate with people that we don’t know, and we might not even like’. This goes to the heart of issues that came up in different presentations. It is so easy to exclude areas of activities – even when you don’t intend to do so. There is a need to keep definitions broad, and events and activities welcoming to newcomers. Even during a day that was mainly focussed on the professional communities (those that run citizen science projects, create tools, use it in their research or research citizen science itself), I felt that the messages about inclusiveness from various speakers were very valuable. We need to allow citizen science, in all its shades, to feel represented and respected. Considering that meetings about citizen science are fairly new phenomena, there has already emerged another need – to notice how not to create just an inner community of people that already know each other (while recognising that it’s very valuable to meet again…), but also to keep reaching out to new groups and individuals.

It was very satisfying to work towards such an event, and to hear many conversations and discussions all over the lovely building of the Royal Geographical Society. It was also good to see the interest in the policy and engagement track, a strand which was new this year. The rapid changes in attitudes to citizen science at global, regional, country and local levels in the span of just a few short years is very encouraging.

Finally, the geographic element was present in many different ways – from the map of Zooniverse participants in the morning, to the ESRI presentation in the afternoon, and the day ended with a mention of OpenStreetMap. So, geographical citizen science certainly remains relevant.

Now for the next day!