Cambridge University Botanic Garden welcomes the community to the 2018 European User Conference.

Cambridge University Botanic Garden, established in 1846, will be hosting the 2018 European user conference. On Friday May 18, we will start in the early morning with optional trainings. You can chose to attend the “Introductory training” or the “Advanced training”, according to your level of experience. Paul Smith, Secretary General of BGCI, will kick off the conference with a key note speech on “Why botanic gardens need to share their collections and data with broader society”. Next, participants will explore the potential of the software through exciting presentations and workshops by users and developers of the software.

Sharing User Experiences

Following up the success of the past conferences, the focus remains on Sharing User Experiences. The programme is supplemented with a session covering news and updates.

The programme contains as many presentations as possible from the user community. We would like to thank all speakers for their contributions. The call for papers is closed.

Agenda

Pre-conference suggestion for Thursday, May 17th 2018

The PlantNetwork Plant Records Training Day is taking place on Thursday, preceding the User Conference. You are welcome to join the members of the Plant Network at the garden tour on Thursday 17 May at Brookside public gate at 15.30 (starting time changed) and the dinner at 18h30 at the local pub ‘The Eagle’, Cambridge.

Conference on Friday, May 18th 2018 

8:00 – 9:30 Training (optional)
o Two parallel sessions:
Introductory training, Reinout Havinga, Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam
Advanced training, Havard Ostgaard, Botanical Software

09:30 Coffee / registration

Welcome and Opening
Pete Atkinson, Plant Records Officer, University of Cambridge Botanic Garden
Reinout Havinga, Head Garden and Collection, Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam

Key Note Speech & Panel discussion
o Why botanic gardens need to share their collections and data with broader society
Paul Smith, Secretary General, BGCI

Coffee Break

Workshop 1 – Accessible data: at what cost?
Åsa Kruger, Scientific Curator & Mats Havström, Head of Research and Collections, Gothenburg Botanic Garden

Session 1 – Making the effort
o Westonbirt Arboretum – how to make our mapping geographically accurate
Alison Vry, Database & Records Officer, Westonbirt, The National Arboretum
o Multilingual data entry – at what cost?
Ralf Omlor, Curator, Botanic Garden of Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz

13:00 – Lunch

Session 2 – Optimizing your work flow
o Importing collection data. Using the import function to import field collection data into accessions and update Items.
Pete Atkinson, Plant Records Officer, University of Cambridge Botanic Garden
o Cleaning the cupboard: how to prioritize between stock taking efficiency and plant history recording
Chantal Posthouwer, Collection Manager a.i., Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam

Coffee Break

Workshop 2 – Mobile Plant Records
Havard Ostgaard, Botanical Software

Session 3 – Inclusive collection management
o Involving staff and volunteers in record keeping: the more the merrier?
Martin Smit, Curator, Stellenbosch Botanic Garden
o Visitor access – inviting the public in to our databases
Anneleen Kool, Associate Professor, Natural History Museum, University of Oslo

Q&A
Havard Ostgaard, Botanical Software

17:00 Closing

18:30 Conference dinner at the Indian Restaurant Rajbelash

Post-conference suggestion on Saturday, May 19th 2018

Cambridge University Botanic Garden cordially invites you to visit its annual Festival of plants, a day dedicated to bringing plants into focus. Have a look at last year’s programme here for an impression.

Accommodation

Cambridge has a large amount of good hotels to choose from. It takes roughly 10 minutes to walk from Cambridge Station to the garden.

 

Fee and Registration

Conference fee (Friday): 30£ per delegate
Plant Network dinner on Thursday and User conference dinner on Friday: to be paid individually at the restaurant.

For registration, please fill in the form at the bottom of this page before April 15. If you would like to be placed on the waiting list, please contact Margherita Tinti.

Contact

• Margherita Tinti, Community Manager, Botanical Software Ltd: margherita@botanicalsoftware.com
• Havard Ostgaard, Manager, Botanical Software Ltd : havard@ botanicalsoftware.com
• Reinout Havinga, Head of Garden and Collection, Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam : reinout@dehortus.nl
• Pete Atkinson, Plant Records Officer, Cambridge University Botanic Garden: pja34@cam.ac.uk

Thank you

We would like to thank Cambridge University Botanic Garden for hosting this event. In particular we would like to thank Pete Atkinson at Cambridge University Botanic Garden and Reinout Havinga at Hortus Botanicus Amsterdam for organizing the conference together with us.

2017 Conference

To read more about the 2017 conference or view the recordings of the sessions, please visit https://botanicalsoftware.com/index.php/2017/05/uk-and-european-user-conference-recordings-slides-and-summary/