Proposals for the VIVO Conference  A reminder that the VIVO Conference is looking for workshop proposals, poster proposals, proposals for presentations and panels, you know, the same kinds of proposals we have had in the past.  The conference is in Montenegro, but it will be a VIVO Conference.  The conference organizers want to hear from you.  If you have taken a look at the call for proposals (http://vivoconference.org/talk-proposals/) and Open Review, it looks a bit formal, and word "paper" is used.  The conference is not looking for papers – of course, if you've written one, we'd love to have you submit it to the conference.  The conference is looking for your presentation, panel, poster, or workshop proposal.  In your abstract, please indicate what format you would prefer.  And if you'd like to suggest a new format for your proposal, that's great!  We are always open to trying new things.  We look forward to receiving your proposal!

Calls for the week  The VIVO Calendar is available here:  http://bit.ly/vivo-calendar

Ontology of Card Sleights  Seriously?  Yes.  Using the Basic Formal Ontology, and the Information Artifacts Ontology, both ontologies used by the VIVO ontology, a computer scientist has created an ontology for representing all published card tricks.  The paper gives a great overview of ontological thinking and purpose, as well as the benefits of ontological representation. Article is here:  https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.08523  Ontology is here:  http://purl.org/net/ontologyofcardsleights 

Semantics  Juan Sequeda writes a great trip report.  His report on the recent US Semantic Technologies Symposium recounts efforts to define "knowledge graph".  VIVO creates a semantic knowledge graph of the work of the institution.  See http://www.juansequeda.com/blog/2019/03/22/2nd-u-s-semantic-technologies-symposium-2019-trip-report/

Welcome UQAM Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM) has been a strong supporter of the VIVO project as a member of Duraspace, and participating in development through the developers group, particularly in the area of internationalization. Their VIVO site is now in available publicly and registered in the VIVO Site Registry.  See  https://expertises.uqam.ca/ 

Duraspace Summit, RDA, CNI, NIH  I've got some travel coming up, and hope to see many of you at one or more of these destinations:

• Research Data Alliance (RDA), April 2-4, Philadelphia, PA.  RDA is a big meeting, held every six months, to advance the practices of representing and sharing research data.  As one might imagine, the FAIR data principles are all the rage, and much is being done to improve research processes with the respect to production and sharing of data.  Persistent identifiers, data foundation terminology, legal issues in sharing, and many other topics for discussion.  The fall meeting will be held in Helsinki, Finland.
• NIH Metabolomics Consortium Investigator Meeting, April 5-6, San Diego, California.  As some may know, I have returned to the faculty of the University of Florida on a part-time appointment (20% effort) to serve as co-principal investigator for the Metabolomics Consortium Coordinating Center (M3C).  M3C coordinates the efforts of 13 other awardees working in compound identification and the development of software for metabolomics work.  So I remain very connected to the world of research.
• Coalition for Networked Information (CNI), April 8-9, St. Louis, Missouri.  CNI is a great meeting – great people, interesting topics, simple format of project updates, invited keynotes.  CNI meets in the spring and the fall.  The fall meeting is in Washington DC each year.  At the meeting in April, Julia Trimmer of Duke University and David Carlson of Texas A&M University will present a project update on VIVO.
• Duraspace Summit, April 10, St. Louis, Missouri.  The Summit is a one-day meeting for Duraspace members.  Presentations and meetings relate to the role of Duraspace in the scholarly ecosystem, and the relationship of Duraspace and the projects it supports, such as VIVO.  This year, this is likely to be discussion of the coming merger of Duraspace and LYRASIS and the impact on the projects of Duraspace as a division of LYRASIS.  I hope to see you there.  If you are not a member, it's easy to become one.  See http://bit.ly/duraspace-join Unsure what you get as a member?  Member benefits are here:  VIVO Membership Benefits

Please be patient with responses during this travel period April 1 to April 11.  Thanks!

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon 
VIVO Project Director