discussion / Community Base  / 17 September 2018

WILDLABS Virtual Meetup Series – Call for Input

The WILDLABS team is planning a series of virtual meetups for members to engage in conversations on conservation tech solutions that bridge our community groups. With a focus topic for each event, these meetups will allow experts to share a bit about their work, help non-experts learn about new advances, and provide a platform for discussion from all interested parties. We hope they will create opportunities for you all to learn, share, and collaborate in a space that is complementary to our platform’s usual function.  

As we’re still in the early stages of planning, we’d like to ask for your feedback on what you want to hear and talk about. Our current topic ideas include:  

  • Wireless/LoRa systems 
  • Drones (potentially with a focus on applications in marine/freshwater environments?) 
  • Approaches to Innovation 
  • New innovations in wildlife tracking and how the emerging efforts fit together 
  • Non-lethal management/ aversion tech approaches 
  • Open tools for conservation 
  • Acoustic monitoring 
  • Something camera-trap related (any ideas?) 

Do you have suggestions or questions about a topic listed above? An idea for a new topic we haven’t thought of? Would you like to help lead one of these discussions, or do you have someone else in mind that might be well-suited for the role?  

Please comment below or message us with your ideas ( @TaliaSpeaker or @StephODonnell ), so that we can do our best to tailor this series to your interests.  

Thank you!




I'm a GIS Analyst working in  Nigeria and also a member of the Society for Conservation GIS. I am intrested in the virtual meet up.

[email protected]

It would be great to have a virtual meetup on using very high resolution satellite imagery for Wildlife monitoring :) 

It's probably already in there amongst the other topics (e.g. New innovations in wildlife tracking and how the emerging efforts fit together), but a bit of discussion on how best to collaborate, share resources and spread design and testing loads without doubling up etc., would be fantastic. I'd be really interested in seeing our growing community focus efforts on developing cost-effective, modular, open-source designs using a similar principle to Arduino (i.e. a common base or concept module that we can all build around), rather than re-inventing the wheel so-to-speak. Having said that, I also realise that this sort of approach can have limitations and I certainly don't want to stifle ideas and development. Anyway, this is going to be a fantastic chance to brainstorm and discuss. Exciting!