The European Commission’s FAIR data expert group is hosting its first open community 
session on Monday 3rd July from 14:00-16:00 CEST. You may already have seen the call for contributions and the public GitHub. We realise GitHub may be an unfamiliar platform for some, so wanted to offer multiple fora in which you can get involved.
If you would like to feed into discussion, please sign in to the GoToWebinar on 3rd July. No pre-registration is required – just come along and share your ideas on the day. There will be a short introduction to the group and our objectives, but there’s not a formal presentation and strict agenda. This session will be driven by you and your contributions, so drop in at any time during the two hour window. You can also leave whenever you like – this is going to be freeform.
The aim is to provide a forum where you can discuss ideas directly with Expert Group members and each other. At the Research Data Network in the UK, Alice Motes spoke about the CLIR Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme. When she asked if there was desire for a similar thing in the UK, there was consensus in the room that it would be great. Mary Donaldson suggested that placing postdocs in the library to understand the data management side of things could be a good way to start closing the gap on the 500,000 data stewards it is estimated that we need.
These are precisely the kind of ideas and discussions we want to generate in the open session. So take a look through the call for contributions, and the comments people have been posting on GitHub already, sign on in and post suggestions, questions or comments yourself or otherwise help us to power up the wisdom of the crowd!
This session will be run by Simon Hodson, Peter Wittenburg and Daniel Mietchen. A second session will be run on Wednesday 26th July from 10:00-12:00 CEST.
Webinar sign in link: https://attendee.gotowebinar.com/register/3736763218412786433 .
For latest updates on the community sessions, check https://github.com/FAIR-Data-EG/consultation/blob/master/community-sessions.md