Parallel Workshops Thursday Afternoon

Parallel workshops will run simultaneously, and you will have the opportunity to choose the session that best fits your interests or needs. You can register for your preferred workshop at the beginning of the Winter School.

Option 1: Pia Viviani [until 6:00 pm]

Option 2: Rosy Mondardini (consists of two parts) [until 4:00 pm] -- laptop/tablet required*

*please let us know in case you do now have one

Community Management

If you think you can set up and plan your Citizen Science project on your own, think again! To find people collaborating with you in a project, you need to know who they are before you start planning too many other project details. Who are the actors and organizations you need to make your project successful? What are their interests? How can you reach them? And how do you set up a project that takes different interests into account? If you can answer all these questions, there is a good chance you will find enough citizen scientists collaborating with you.

In this workshop, we are going to use an example of a Citizen Science project and work through a checklist you can later use for your own projects.

Learning objectives:

Participants know how to

• set up a stakeholder analysis
• identify your collaborator’s interests
• catch potential collaborators' attention
• offer different levels of participation
• make people stay with you

More about Pia Viviani on this subpage: Speakers & Trainers

Digital Tools for Citizen Science project*

*this workshop requires you to bring a laptop/tablet. Please let us know asap if you do not have one.

Citizen Science Zurich provides a set of open and free tools that allow researchers to create and test new projects in an intuitive and easy way. The tools support the creation of two common types of CS projects:

• The CS Project Builder (CSPB) allows you to create projects for the analysis of existing digital data. Analysis happens via a web interface where participants can perform complex data classification tasks such as image recognition, tagging, mapping, transcription of digitized text, etc.
• The CS logger facilitates the creation of projects for the collection of digital data with smartphone Apps. The apps (Android and iOS) enable data collection in the form of geo-located images, video and sound clip, and other types of media.

This workshop will provide a detailed overview of the two platforms and engage you in a hands-on exercise to setup a real project based on biodiversity images.

Citizen Science for the UN Sustainable Development Goals

The UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) aim to address by 2030 global challenges such as climate change and inequality. Despite being over halfway through, progress towards the goals is lagging. One of the key factors for achieving the SDGs is the availability of reliable data to measure progress towards specific targets. As traditional data sources show their limitations and reveal major data gaps, citizen science is increasingly regarded as a valuable tool to enhance and complement official statistics. Citizen science not only helps gather more detailed data but also raises awareness and mobilizes communities to drive action toward the SDGs.

This presentation with provide an overview of the existing and potential contributions of citizen science to this global effort, encouraged by the recent request by the UN to “place communities at the center of data collection efforts to fill data gaps and accelerate progress”.

More about Rosy Mondardini on this subpage: Speakers & Trainers