Data Collaboration
I recently had the opportunity to conduct an in-person workshop at the Cultivating Resilience: Building Climate-Smart Food Systems Together Summit in Vancouver, BC. The Summit was hosted by the Agricultural Genomics Action Centre sister hub to the Climate-Smart Data Collaboration Centre, in which ADC is an active partner and supporter. I chose to talk about Collaboration – a topic that is near and dear to me, yet a topic that can create a lot of chaos and stress.
Collaboration can mean a few different things to people, but I have always taken the lens of people working together to achieve a common goal or to work together and exchange knowledge. In the workshop, I asked people to introduce themselves at their table and discuss their relationship with “data”. The noise level in the room rose and the conversations were fantastic! I closed this part of the workshop with the statement: “See! how easy it can be to start a collaboration?” The laughter that ensued and the audience comment: “Have you WORKED with people!! They can be… well…. interesting at times!” Yes, I agree 100% with this statement! I can make it sound so easy, yet we all know the challenges behind working and collaborating with people.
Now let’s see what “data collaboration” looks like! Let’s start with the simple example of a table:
| 1 | 13 | 74 | Sunny |
| 2 | 15 | 78 | Cloudy |
| 3 | 21 | 71 | Part cloudy |
| 4 | 28 | 99 | Rain |
| 6 | 20 | 75 | Sunny |
How in the world – can I work with this table, let alone start any collaborations? Yes – any regular readers will anticipate where I am going with this – DOCUMENTATION!!! Without it – this is garbage! Sorry folks, sometimes the truth is ugly. Doesn’t matter who, how much time, or how much money was spent on collecting the information in this table – without documentation – it’s garbage!
Think about that brief introduction chat you had at the table or with a new colleague and/or collaborator – you usually start with the basic information about yourself: your name, your occupation, where you work, and maybe something personal like city/country you live in or whether you have a pet. Now, if I had that basic information about this table – I MIGHT be able to do something with it – title? headings? It’s a start and just like any people collaboration – it needs work.
The amount of work you put into a collaboration – whether it’s people or data – can lead you down a very rewarding path and outcome. Give it a thought – especially the next time you collect data, forget to document it, and go back to use it in a month or a year – Oops!
Don’t forget the Semantic Engine a great place to start that data collaboration!
image generated by AI
