News and events
NBN Conference 2019 – review and social media
160 delegates attended the 2019 NBN Conference, which was held at the Albert Hall, Nottingham, on 13 and 14 November. A cross section of organisations were represented and included delegates from wildlife NGOs, academia, local environmental records centres, recording schemes, country agencies, students and individuals all concerned with biodiversity data and wildlife recording.
There were two keynote addresses, the annual Sir John Burnett Memorial lecture, 17 presentations and an afternoon of Network Knowledge Exchange sessions.
With social media buzzing for the two days, the snippets below provide a flavour of the discussions that took place. You can search for all of the related Tweets by using #NBNconf19 on Twitter.
We also streamed the two keynote addresses via Facebook Live, so if you were there, you can relive the event and if you weren’t able to join us, you will hopefully get a good idea of how it went!
PDFs of all of the presentations and a selection of photographs can also be found on the NBN Conference 2019 Presentations and Photographs page.
What an amazing place to be able to give a talk!! Honored to be invited to speak on networks and narratives here…. #NBNconf19 @NHM_Science @LinneanSociety pic.twitter.com/6at38yZsNk
— Sandra Knapp (@SandyKnapp) November 14, 2019
Sir John Lawton provides a welcome reminder of many conservation projects at landscape scale – perhaps wildlife recording and NBN will be able to celebrate wildlife recovery in future rather than documenting decline #NBNconf19 pic.twitter.com/hyhewFqAGw
— BRC (@___BRC___) November 13, 2019
Sir John Lawton setting out the dire state of nature in UK. Is natural history recording the eventual extinction of UKs nature? #NBNconf19 @NBNTrust pic.twitter.com/TjxdA1iiSj
— Pete Tomlin (@Pete_Tomlin) November 13, 2019
Recorders support full sharing of data for widespread species, but are much more cautious about data on rare species – but does this keep rare species safe, or does it make them harder to protect (‘cos no-one knows they are there)? Haven’t seen much evidence for this #NBNconf19 https://t.co/a1t6h0paiR
— Martin Harvey (@kitenet) November 13, 2019
Intriguing country differences too between England and Scotland on views on open data. Interestingly the most popular licence option is CC-BY-NC, which isn’t a true open data licence #NBNconf19
— GiGL (@iGiGL) November 13, 2019
Dr Roddy Fairley of SNH talking about the Climate emergency and our (the experts) role in bringing about necessary change: using biological records to tell truth to power by telling good stories #NBNconf19
— Claudia Watts (@violetbeetle) November 14, 2019
Think the Applied Ecology Resources tool is a great idea in principle but the fees for uploading documents and reports are going to be a massive barrier to getting documents from charities, recording schemes, individuals etc in there. #NBNconf19 @BritishEcolSoc
— Charlie Bell (@Charlie_Wellies) November 13, 2019
“Data is the fuel in the tank of conservation” @TonyJuniper #NBNconf19 @EssexWildlife @NBNTrust
— EWT Records Centre (@EssexWTrecords) November 14, 2019
Optimistic view of nature recovery given by @TonyJuniper Saying that good evidence and leadership needed going forward. Desperate to ask why UK spending on nature is less than the budget of a premier League football side & how to change this, but had to leave #NBNconf19 early pic.twitter.com/wpsZYGvNgE
— Cofnod (@cofnod) November 14, 2019
@TonyJuniper cites restoration eg white tailed eagle, red kites as good news stories. #NBNconf19 but accepts that these and large scale habitat restoration are the exceptions BUT there is hope eg Great Fen and Woodwalton Fen. @Floodplainmead @nationaltrust Places we can rebuild.
— Sue Townsend (@SueTownsend3) November 14, 2019
Sometimes feels like we LERCs cut off our nose to spite our face with open data discussions. Vast majority of data we hold has no commercial value & we alienate and upset recording schemes by not sharing eg caddisflies at full resolution with NBN #NBNconf19
— Elaine Wright (@Elaineeepoos) November 14, 2019
Making high resolution data openly available has not decreased income for @BRERC_Official – it’s in fact increased since data were shared with @NBNTrust!! Open data means progress… #NBNconf19 pic.twitter.com/t2Z0LqksjR
— Sandra Knapp (@SandyKnapp) November 14, 2019
Dave Raffaelli at #NBNconf19 say it’s a crime that natural capita assesments have forgotten species data
— Cofnod (@cofnod) November 14, 2019
It was worth going further north in a day than Gilbert managed in a lifetime to spread the #GW300 message at the #NBNconf19
Thanks for having me! @GilbertWhites pic.twitter.com/Yhox8ggujY— Kimberley James (@KimberleysJames) November 14, 2019
Fantastic stand by @_Northants_BRC at the #nbnconf19. Being able to generate maps like this on demand from the NBN atlas would be an incredible tool for engagement with recording pic.twitter.com/T5OlS7IfRo
— Will George (@WillhGeorge) November 13, 2019
The power of access to gd species data, recording & volunteers is awesome! Fab few days at #NBNconf19 hearing about how data is collected & used in many ways to inform conservation action. Lots of ideas to bring back to @CNPnature can’t wait for Cairngorms Atlas! 🐝🦇🐌🦊🌲🦅 pic.twitter.com/kaYiduOP1n
— Dr sarah henshall (@sarahhenshall) November 15, 2019
Thank you @NBNTrust for organising another fantastic conference and to all the speakers at #NBNconf19 for giving us all lots of inspiring food for thought on our long journey back to Scotland. Until next year!
— Scottish Biodiversity Information Forum (@SB_Info_Forum) November 14, 2019