VREs are excellent environments to build distributed teams and to collaborate on research topics, to share data, methods and knowledge virtually. The needs of the communities are met by cutting-edge VREs – virtual meetings and distributed teams face challenges though from lack of in-person interactions to cultural differences to time-zone mismatches to non-native speakers, to name a few. The objective of this meeting is to work towards good practices for communicating and collaborating effectively and efficiently within distributed communities and initiatives.

Collaborative notes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Qyf2tprMpsSg6_egfIIXjFf-W_LJSWQpwDkT…

Collaborative folder link:  https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1TWMvgnLj2vZTqzSM2BUqQQMUfr6Tx0Le…

Agenda for the meeting will be:

0-5 mins: Introduction to the IG (Sandra Gesing)

5-50 mins:  Examples for VRE frameworks with collaboration tools (Chair Sandra Gesing)

• The US landscape (Mike Zentner) (10 min)

• The EU landscape (Keith Jeffrey) (10 min)

• The Australia/Asia landscape (Kheeran Dharmawardena) (10 min)

Discussion: What are commonalities between the frameworks? What is missing? (15 min)
50-75 mins: What are the challenges and benefits experienced in collaboration of distributed teams? (Group Discussion) (Chair Zhiming Zhao)

Questions are: Which challenges can be solved via technology? Which challenges are interpersonal or organizational? What would be a good way to address the different dimensions of collaboration? What works well and what does not work well? 

75-90 mins: International Teams and Initiatives – Good Practices in the changing academic landscape of COVID-19 (Kheeran Dharmawardena)

• Experiences from writing the RDA COVID-19 recommendations 

• Emerging Technologies

This session is aimed at anyone who is or has been involved in distributed teams and initiatives and using, developing or maintaining any form of online collaborative environment or their individual components. In preparation for this meeting, attendees could think about the challenges they face in virtual meetings or collaborations within distributed teams and examples from their own experience.