Corresponding author: Abigail Benson (
Academic editor:
The 2022 Marine Biological Data Mobilization Workshop was a collaborative effort between Ocean Biodiversity Information System-USA (OBIS-USA), Marine Biodiversity Observation Network, Hakai Institute, Integrated Ocean Observing System, and Ocean Tracking Network, and hosted to promote open data and software in marine biodiversity assessment. The workshop focused on the application of the Darwin Core data standard (
Much of the workshop time was allocated to breakout rooms and individual work. The use of concurrent, topical breakout rooms led by instructors in combination with “floating” specialist volunteers. A 100% open and free virtual workshop leveraging synchronous and asynchronous communications technologies including Slack, Zoom, and GitHub. All instructional steps were offered in both Python and R (dual-programming language materials).
The workshop was attended internationally by 63 participants, with 48 attendees joining the associated Slack group. These new members have been invited to attend a monthly working group organized to address roadblocks to standardization and promote the mobilization of marine biological data. A pre- versus post-survey analysis showed substantial improvement to self-reported data science skill levels, a multitude of positive feedback was reported, and the workshop scored a perfect 100% standard Net Promoter Score (
Abigail Benson
TDWG 2022