Conference Success
The tenth NBN Conference took place on 15th October at the Royal Society. 130 delegates from across the Network and some new faces joined us for this year's Conference with the theme of “Opening opportunities for biodiversity:working with the NBN”
The NBN Trust Chairman Sir Neil Chalmers opened the morning's proceedings and the first of the day's presentations “Increasing collaboration with Indicia – rolling out on-line recording” by Jim Bacon of the Biological Records Centre.
Download Jim Bacon's presentation
Next up was Jonathan Silvertown of the Open University who talked about “iSpot's first year and prospects for developing a symbiosis with the NBN”
Download Jonathan Silvertown's presentation
You can find out more about iSpot on the website
The next presentation came from Stuart Ball of the Joint Nature Conservation Committee
Extracting trends from biological recording scheme data
The morning presentations ended with Bjorn Beckmann of the Biological Records Centre
Using data from the Orthoptera Recording Scheme to study climate change
Just before the break for lunch we were delighted to officially recognise the upload of the 50 millionth record earlier this year, by Bedfordshire and Luton Biodiversity Recording & Monitoring Centre. The record in question was that of a micro moth, Mompha ochraceella (Buff Cosmet), which was recorded near Cranfield in a moth trap in 1982. The Chairman presented the award to Keith Balmer, dataset administrator and Jackie Ullyett, the Centre Manager
Lunchtime provided an excellent opportunity for networking and viewing the various displays and presentations…
John van Breda also gave two demonstrations of Indicia for those who were interested to find out more, following Jim Bacon's morning presentation.
The afternoon session commenced with the annual Sir John Burnett memorial lecture, which was delivered by Andy Clements, Director of the British Trust for Ornithology.
Dr. Clements talk was “NBN Partnership 2020: facilitating Big Society's role in recording and using biodiversity data“
Following the lecture Sir Neil Chalmers presented Dr. Clements with the Sir John Burnett memorial medal.
The next presentation of the afternoon came from Andrew Thompson of Natural England who talked about Integrating species data into Agri-environment Delivery – the NBN AE-species tool
With the day drawing to a close, the final presentation came from Aldo Tanca of Greenspace Information for Greater London (GiGL) who talked about Automated screening of planning applications: specific advice & data searches
With the programme of presentations over, the NBN Trust's Chief Executive Jim Munford, opened the floor for general questions and discussion. One of the key comments came from Gill Stevens of the Natural History Museum, who asked about the democratisation of recording and whether there will be a reluctance to share data if the NBN starts to take more publicly gathered data? The response was that the NBN won't be the doorway for public data, rather that other organisations will be the shop front for data, through the use of web services.
Proceedings concluded with thanks to all of the presenters who had created an informative, lively and thoroughly enjoyable Conference.
NBN Conference 2011
Unfortunately, unless the NBN Trust is able to secure sponsorship for the next NBN Conference we cannot guarantee that it will run in 2011. If you would like to sponsor the Conference or could suggest possible sources of sponsorship please contact the Secretariat.