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Introductory presentation on BlogMyData

21st May 2010 @ 16:54

This is a 3-minute presentation introducing the BlogMyData project and was given at the JISC VRERI Kick-off event in London on 24th February 2010. Please ignore the strange face I appear to be pulling in the first frame, which is unfortunately what Vimeo seems to have chosen for the screenshot.

Welcome to blogmydata.org

Understanding and predicting the Earth system requires the collaborative effort of scientists from many different disciplines and institutions. At the present time, collaborations take place through face-to-face meetings, the scholarly literature and informal electronic exchanges of emails and documents. All of these methods suffer from serious deficiencies that hamper effective collaboration.

A Virtual Research Environment (VRE) is an attractive solution to the above problems. In the BlogMyData project we are creating such a VRE by combining the capabilities of two existing technologies that have already seen wide adoption among scientists:

The Godiva2 data visualization system provides a means for scientists to browse interactively in a 'Google Maps-like' fashion through large environmental datasets, including numerical model outputs and high-resolution satellite imagery, using only a web browser.
The LabBlog is a web-based blogging tool specifically designed for the practising scientist to record, disseminate and evaluate their research. The Blog can also be used as a collaboration tool that allows secure discussion between colleagues. Although initially designed for the use of laboratory chemists, the LabBlog is being adapted in this project to meet the needs of environmental scientists.

The BlogMyData VRE will allow scientists to explore data visually using Godiva2, then make comments about features in the data on a blog. Colleagues will discover these blog entries and offer further information, providing answers to research questions through comments. Through RSS and GeoRSS feeds, colleagues, investigators and other interested parties can be notified of research activity, and scientists can discover hitherto-unknown colleagues working with similar data in similar geographic regions.

For more information please see this introductory presentation, the project blog, the original project proposal and other project documents.