What a great conference.  The eighth annual VIVO Conference was held at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City, August 2-4.  We had outstanding keynote presentations by Christina Pattuelli and Jodi Schneider, invited talks by Katy Frey, Jim Hendler, Dave Eichmann, Ying Ding, and Rebecca Bryant, as well as a featured presentation by Julia Trimmer and Damaris Murry.  But there was quite a bit more – five workshops, 27 contributed presentations, and sixteen posters rounded out a very full program.  Thanks to all the presenters!!

If you presented at the conference and have not yet uploaded your presentation or poster to figshare, please go ahead and upload.  Mike Conlon will follow up regarding posters and presentations not yet uploaded.  We hope to have a complete collection on-line and available in OpenVIVO.  We look forward to seeing your presentation or poster uploaded.  Thank you for your attention to this.

Thanks to all who attended – we had a great opportunity share our experiences and thoughts about where VIVO should head next.

A hearty thanks to all our sponsors.  We greatly appreciate the support of  Platinum sponsors Clarivate Analytics, Elsevier, and Intelligent Medical Objects, Silver Sponsors Symplectic and The Rockefeller University Press, Bronze Sponsor Greensight, Institutional Sponsors Weill Cornell Medicine, Cornell University, Virginia Tech, and the University of Pennsylvania, Welcoming Reception Sponsor Weill Cornell Medicine, and Poster Reception Sponsor Clarivate Analytics.

A final thanks to the conference organizing committee, led by Alex Viggio, Conference Chair, and Violeta Ilik, Program Chair.  What a great job.

And a very special thanks to the great folks at Weill Cornell Medicine: Terrie Wheeler, Paul Albert, Nicole Poldiak, Marian Puglisi, and all the staff that created a warm welcome and such strong support throughout the conference.  

Mark your calendars.  VIVO 2018 will be held at the beautiful JB Duke Hotel in Durham, North Carolina, June 6-8, 2018.  Paul Albert is Conference Chair.  Eric Meeks is Program Chair.  Please share your thoughts with Paul and Eric regarding your ideas for the conference!

New Steering Group Members.  The Leadership Group elected three members to the VIVO Steering Group.  Dean Krafft of Cornell was elected to a new three year term.  Lauren Gala of the University of Pennsylvania joins the Steering Group along with DJ Lee of Texas A&M University.  Please join me in welcoming them to the steering group!

Development Call.  The Development Interest Group will have its call this Thursday, at 1 PM US Eastern time.  The group will discuss the Jena 3 upgrade planned for 1.10, required upgrades for the triple store, and utilities included in 1.10 to perform the upgrades.  Here's the webex link: https://goo.gl/qSnUE5 We hope to see you on the call.

Credential Model.  Interested in adding professional licenses, credentials, and certificates to people in your VIVO?  The documentation now includes a credential model to show how these items are presented in VIVO.  Use the model with your favorite ingest tool to add these items to people in your VIVO.

Thoughts about VIVO?  We are always looking for new ideas for VIVO.  We'd love to hear from you.  Please write us at info@vivoweb.org

Go VIVO!

Mike

Mike Conlon 
VIVO Project Director
Duraspace