WANTED: PID for an object that is not too big and not too small. One that provides just the information that I seek, and is in a language that I can understand. Not too old. Accompanied by data and resources. Available in my country. Open access only need apply. What would a PID be without its accompanying metadata? Rich data help fulfill the FAIR promises by making information more easily findable, and by providing clarity on the constraints around being accessible (how?
Genomics data offers enormous hope of tackling our world’s toughest health challenges. But we can’t successfully carry out our critical work of defining technical and ethical standards for genomics data without first building a diverse “intentional community” committed to inclusivity. At the GA4GH 8th Plenary I was invited to give a keynote talk about this topic. listen time: 30 min. KEYNOTE: GA4GH 8th Plenary Building an Intentional Community for Standards Development
Broad diversity in the community that makes standards and policies ensures that the standards will work for all that we seek to include. Yes, gender and race diversity, but also region, industry, background, viewpoint, and approach. And when we’re talking about standards for genomics data sharing, that diversity is essential for inclusion of information that can benefit the entirety of human-kind. It was so much fun to be interviewed for the the OmicsXchange podcast this month in my role as the chair of the Global Alliance for Genomics and Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion group.
Over the past two days I have been looking over product and start-up pitches in my role as one of the judges of this year’s Ansary Entrepreneurship Competition at Stevens Institute of Technology. Each year undergraduate students turn their undergraduate engineering and business Senior Design Projects into business plans, and prepare elevator pitches to compete for prizes that total $17,500. I have been spending my evenings reading executive summaries and listening to the (video recorded) pitches while providing feedback and asking questions about their business ideas and product approaches.
I am honored and excited about being featured in the LinkedIn article series by Heather Flanagan of Spherical Cow Consulting, “What’s it like to be…”. Making the decision to become an independent consultant was a scary one when I took the leap in late 2018. It was great to reflect on that decision and consider how things have gone so far during this interview with Heather. You can read the full interview in LinkedIn:
In 2020, FORCE11 created a year-long blog series about scholarly infrastructure. Force11 is a community of scholars, librarians, archivists, publishers and research funders that grew organically to help facilitate the change toward improved knowledge creation and sharing. There goal is to create a change in modern scholarly communications through the effective use of information technology. In March, in my role as Project Upholder of Metadata 2020, I chatted with Jennifer Kemp about the importance of metadata, the lifeblood of this infrastructure, a ubiquitous and foundational component of scholarly communications.