Dear all,

It was great to connect with many of you yesterday. Here is a summary of what was discussed:

1. Update on Aligning GBIF.org and Hosted Portals (shared by Morten)

• Why: GBIF.org is aging software (~9yrs old) and there is an increasing maintenance burden. We are aligning the GBIF.org software around the hosted portal stack. We are aiming for consistency in data exploration between GBIF.org and HPs. In future, features can be brought to both GBIF.org and the HPs at the same time. We hope for faster development as a result of having fewer codebases.

• Impact: We plan to update the staging environments in early 2025. Morten will inform each hosted portal team as we approach this stage. Some pages will look a bit different, but familiar. The configuration format (JSON) and some HTML elements will change, and Morten will handle these updates. Custom styles may need slight adjustments.

• Next steps: Once the staging updates are ready, Morten will announce this by email and arrange the next community call. Your feedback for improvements will be encouraged.

• Note for Living Norway and Vermont Portals: There may be some specific challenges; Morten will contact you directly.

2. Hosted Portals Communication Campaign (from Kyle)

• Plan: Once the GBIF communications team has reviewed its proposals within the Secretariat, they will work with site owners on weekly features that promote individual hosted portals (and, more generally, the hosted portal programme) through via its social media and news channels.

• How you can help: Comms staff will be in touch in the coming weeks to secure or confirm key details (site name, institutional host, social media handles, etc.). If there are specific dates for which it would be helpful to have your hosted portal in the spotlight, please do reach out to kcopas@gbif.org or communication@gbif.org to let us know.  Also, if you have any events coming up during which you could help presenting GBIF’s hosted portal programme, we would be happy to support you with materials (slides, printed materials, etc.).

3. Automated mailing of news item updates on hosted portals (from Carole)

• Carole Sinou (legumes portal) is exploring automatic mailing of news updates to users. If you have experience with this, please reach out to Carole.

4. Next community call

• Future meetings will have a registration link so you can easily add them to your calendar. Our next call is planned for early 2025.

Thanks again for a nice meeting.

Best

Melianie

----------------------------

Dr. Mélianie Raymond
Community and Capacity Manager
GBIF Secretariat
Universitetsparken 15
DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark
Tel.: +45 35 32 14 96
E-mail: mraymond@gbif.org
www.gbif.org