On 24 and 25 June 2014 the first of hopefully a long series of Bring Your Own Data (BYOD) parties took place in the context of the ELIXIR pilot for a broader data FAIRport. The BYOD workshops are conceived as a low barrier approach to get data owners acquainted with the possibilities opened by ‘functionally interlinking’ their data with other important datasets. In this first workshop data providers of MycoBase and the Human Protein Atlas (HPA) worked together with experts in semantic web technologies to make their data available in a findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable manner (FAIR). The data experts had some, but not a lot of RDF knowledge at the start of the workshop. Therefore the aim was twofold: (i) work out a showcase together to show the added value of interoperable data for facilitating questions across multiple resources; (ii) train the data owners into making their data interoperable. The BYOD was a mix of tutorial and hackathon. Please read an excellent blog report of the workshop here.
Overall the workshop was a great success. Both data providers and trainers felt they made progress and will continue to collaborate, probably even write a paper together. The participants indicated that it was essential for the outcome that data owners, biologists and data formatting and interlinking experts got the chance to spent a considerable amount of time together.
Since the workshop proved to be so fruitful, DTL plans to organise a series of BYOD parties. Barend Mons, Head of Node of ELIXIR-NL explains: “We will for instance organise parties where the D stands for ‘Data Types’. These BYOD’s will be focussed on typical data formats and metadata in the major biological subdisciplines (-omics for instance, but also biobanking, clinical data etc.). I am very excited about the outcome of this first ‘trial workshop’ and would like to thank all the participants (and not the least the sponsors, the ELIXIR hub and DTL) for their support and patience. DTL will begin to provide easy access to BYOD organising tools soon, I really look forward to the next one’s.”
Are you interested in organising a BYOD workshop? Please contact us.
