International Data Week 2018, coming for the first time to Africa, will take place on 5-8 November, in Gaborone, Botswana. This decision has been taken in order to avoid clashes with the UN World Data Forum (22-24 October https://undataforum.org/WorldDataForum/) and the Plenary Meeting of the Group on Earth Observations (31 Oct-1 Nov http://www.earthobservations.org/meetings.php).
For this data conference taking place in Africa and which will contain as one of its major themes the issues around data for the sustainable development goals and data for innovation, we felt it was important to avoid the clash with the UN Forum. Similarly, the use of earth observation and remote sensing data will be an important theme in International Data Week and GEO (including major flagships, the Data Sharing Working Group and AfriGEOSS) is an important partner of the organisers and was a sponsor of the first International Data Week in Denver in 2016.
The organisers regret any difficulties this may cause to our community and participants. However, as we still have 11 months to go before the event, we felt the date could be changed without excessive inconvenience and that it was important to act as good citizens and partners and – to the extent possible – avoid direct competition with related events.
International Data Week comprises SciDataCon http://www.scidatacon.org/, a conference for research and practice papers addressing all aspects of data in research, and the 12th Plenary Meeting of the Research Data Alliance https://rd-alliance.org/plenaries/rda-twelfth-plenary-meeting-part-international-data-week-2018-gaborone-botswana
In line with the change of date the deadline for session proposals for SciDataCon has been extended to Friday 2 February 2018: http://www.scidatacon.org/IDW2018/
Please consult the call for session proposals http://www.scidatacon.org/conference/IDW2018/call_for_sessions/ and the conference themes at http://www.scidatacon.org/conference/IDW2018/conference_themes_and_scope/
Related events associated with CODATA, WDS, RDA and the Botswana Open Data Open Science Forum will change dates accordingly. The CODATA General Assembly will take place on 9-10 November 2018.
The organisers of International Data Week are:
- The University of Botswana on behalf of the Botswana Open Data Open Science Forum
- CODATA, the Committee on Data of the International Council of Science (ICSU) http://www.codata.org/
- The ICSU World Data System https://www.icsu-wds.org/
- The Research Data Alliance https://rd-alliance.org/