Because good research needs good data

RDMF revisited - unconference style

Sarah Jones | 10 March 2019

It’s been a while (16 months in fact!) since the DCC held an RDMF, and we’ve had a few requests from the community to provide a space for discussing challenges and sharing lessons on providing research data support. Hot on the heels of a trial at IDCC in Melbourne, we’re going to bring back the RDMF in an unconference format.

We’ll be running a DMPonline user group session for subscribers on the afternoon of 8th April in Manchester and a public DMPonline training event on the morning of 9th April. The RDMF will follow this as a half-day event. Registration will open later this week, but put the dates and location in your diary now.

You can see more about the IDCC unconference on our website. The idea of the unstructured format is to allow the attendees to shape the programme based on their interests and needs. You can run group discussions, work together on creating common resources, provide tutorials and share the issues you are facing in a safe space. We'll collate ideas in advance and begin with pitches to create a programme.

We'll then do what you all do best - break into groups and share ideas and lessons. I found the IDCC unconference really rewarding. Bringing people together and helping to facilitate discussions was enough. There is so much knowledge in the community at large that just having time and space to share questions and concerns and get insights and reassurance from others is incredibly valuable.

You can start to share ideas now as comments if there are particular topics you want to discuss or see covered. A few that are consuming my thoughts lately are:

  • Overlaps between Open data, FAIR and RDM
  • How institutions should engage in the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC)
  • Strategic procurement design – sharing lessons to help the sector as a whole
  • Supporting research communities develop their standards and data sharing agreements for FAIR data

The 2019 event will be the 19th RDMF. We hope you can make it in April, either to the RDMF or DMPonline training or both.