The 2015 VIVO Conference.  What an amazing event, what a great community! Kristi Holmes (Conference Chair) and Melissa Haendel (Program Chair) sure know how to put on a show!  Great keynotes (David Weinberger and James Onken), invited talks, workshops, session presentations, poster session and receptions.  The hotel had a spectacular view of the Charles River, and was within easy walking distance of Harvard, MIT, Northeastern University, Boston University and Fenway Park.  Registration was up and workshop attendance was also up.  What a great week.  A great thanks to Kristi and Melissa – they did a spectacular job along with our conference planners, Designing Events, and our sponsors.  Presentations will be posted on-line shortly.

Contest Winners.  The VIVO Conference had two contents this year – an application contest for software using or creating VIVO data, and a linked open data contest to showcase VIVO linked open data.  The winners:

• Application Contest Winner:  Justin Littman, George Washington University, for ORCID2VIVO
• Linked Data Contest Winner:  Nick Benick, Harvard University, Tim Lebo, RPI, Griffin Weber, Harvard University.  Cross-Linking DOI Author URIs Using Research Networking Systems
• Linked Data Contest Winner: Roberto Garcia,  Jordi Virgili-Goma, and Rosa Gil,  Universitat de Lleida. Research outputs in VIVO format, including extensions for research impact
• Linked Data Contest Winner: Chris Barnes, University of Florida.  UF Linked Open Data 2008-2015.  18M triples in one file posted to the web

Congratulations to all the winners for their outstanding work!

VIVO 2016.  VIVO 2016 will be held in August in Denver Colorado.  Julia Trimmer of Duke University will serve as conference chair.  Mike Winkler of the University of Pennsylvania will serve as program chair.  Please welcome Julia and Mike.  I know they will do a great job.  Would you like to help with the conference?  No experience is required.  We will have a year long task force focused on the conference.  Volunteers are always welcome!

Outreach and engagement working group.  The Outreach and Engagement working group will have its second call tomorrow.  Calls are every four weeks on Tuesdays at 1 PM eastern US time.  See the working group page for call details.

Joint Leadership Group/Steering Group Meeting. The VIVO Leadership Group and Steering Group held a joint meeting along with Duraspace leadership, Wednesday afternoon at the conference.  The group reviewed the progress of the project, the budget, hiring, plans for the remainder of the year, and the membership drive.  I want to thank all the members of these groups for spending their afternoon discussing VIVO.  The group is active, creative, and very engaged.  The project is on sound footing and making strong progress as a result of the superb efforts of the VIVO community.  The Leadership Group meets quarterly.  Their next meeting will be a conference call in November.  The Steering Group meets weekly, and after one week off for the conference, they will be meeting again this Friday to review the conference, and consider items for the fall.

What's next.  The fall should be a busy time for VIVO.  Here are some highlights:

• VIVO Workshop at TIB Hanover, Germany, September 9.  Sold out 80 seats in 2 days!  Ina Blümel and Lambert Heller are the organizers.  And expect to hear more news regarding VIVO in Europe in the coming months
• Software development sprints start in the fall
• An ontology event will be organized in the fall to develop processes for ontology development and further develop the relationship between the software and the ontology
• Membership drive.  We will be asking for your support of the VIVO project
• New web site.  We will be replacing vivoweb.org with a modern, mobile-first, responsive design web-site oriented toward telling the VIVO story
• Site survey.  We will be asking you about your VIVO.  Our new survey is greatly simplified – we'd like to hear from as many VIVO sites as possible.  The survey will be coming soon

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon
VIVO Project Director