My name is Marco Minghini, I am an Environmental Engineer with a PhD in Geographic Information Systems (GIS). I am currently a Postdoc Research Fellow at the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. I first heard about RDA almost one year ago and I started to become curious about it, wondering if the activities of this organization could be relevant with my own work and research needs/interests.

One year ago I had no clue what RDA is. And if I had known RDA, I would not have imagined to attend one of their Plenaries, because data sharing had rarely been a concern of mine. I am a PhD candidate at the Max Planck Institute for Biogeochemistry in Jena, Germany, exploring the application of unmanned aerial systems (UAS or "drones") to study the carbon cycle. A large part of my project was about designing a small and lightweight sensor package and testing it on drones.

By: Jane Wyngaard and Lindsay Barbieri

“I entered into the data profession about three and a half years ago. I found the community to be very welcoming. The ideas of ethics and sustainability are starting to be brought forward more strongly now. Data aren’t just digits in the memory. They have real world effects in real world situations.

As promised, here is the second part of the blog.  At the event, held in St. Petersburg, Russia as part of the Group on Earth Observations (GEO) Plenary XIII, where I represented RDA, we spent all day discussing the value and best practices around data sharing.  From the draft notes, here are the recommendations from that event:

"GEO Members and POs should: