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The WILDLABS Community Base is the ideal place to get oriented with the all that our community platform offers, hear about news and opportunitys, and to meet new friends and collaborators. 

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Join us for Tech Tutors: East Africa

WILDLABS Team

18 January 2023 9:13am

The WILDLABS Tech Tutors are here to answer your ‘How do I do that?’ questions of conservation technology. This season, our expert speakers will cover tools and topics that help address conservation challenges unique...

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discussion

WILDLABS Platform Updates

Filip Hnízdo

31 May 2022 9:20am

Hi everyone, I'm Filip, director at Octophin Digital, a little digital agency building things for the wildlife conservation sector. The WILDLABS team have been working with us to...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

11 October 2022 5:22pm

Sneaking into Filip's serious platfrom thread here to share that we just charged past 1,000,000 pageviews! We've seen a big uptick since we launched the new site back in May, so Filip's team definitely filled the brief of making the wealth of information held in our community easier to find and explore. Feels like a solid milestone we should celebrate :D 

Filip Hnízdo

22 November 2022 6:52pm

Hi everyone! 

You may have noticed already but we've been hard at work here in the Octophin Digital team on a completely refreshed discussions system for WILDLABS that we've been rolling out over the last two weeks. I didn't want to write about it until a few bugs were sorted out but here's that update.

We didn't quite get the discussions user experience right at launch (especially when it comes to replies / sub threads) so we hope this new version is a lot easier to use.

November 2022 (several deployments so no clear date this time!) 

Discussions

  • Better signposting of buttons to reply to a thread or a specific comment
  • Quick, no page refresh comment editing system
  • Inline form to post a reply to a comment on a discussion
  • Deep linking to specific replies to a comment from a notification
  • Inline, collapsible display of comment replies, displaying avatars of who's replied
  • Options to expand or close all reply threads
  • Faster lazy loading of discussion threads without a flash at the start
  • Many other design and interaction changes
  • We've pushed in some replies imported from the previous version of the platform that were replies to replies to replies(...) so they are now simply listed in date order on the reply thread rather than nested so deep it was hard to find them. Replies are (hopefully uncontroversially) now limited to one level deep.

Hover states 

  • Thank you to @valeria in the Octophin team for adding many lovely hover states to things across the site that will hopefully make exploring WILDLABS more enjoyable.

Feed

  • Sorting on the site feeds (including group feeds) was stacked in favour of new content rather than updates to discussions. A new comment on a discussion will now pop a discussion to the top of the feed so you can quickly see what is new around the site. The feeds can still be filtered to specific types of content in case you want to filter out discussion updates.

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I hope the above changes make the site much more usable. As always, please pop any feedback over to the WILDLABS team in the New Platform Help: Troubleshooting & bugs discussion. A gigantic thank you to @JakeBurton in the WILDLABS team for a mammoth amount of testing, feedback and suggestions for the above.

Filip Hnízdo

13 January 2023 3:16pm

Hi everyone!

Happy 2023 and a slightly unusual bug fix to mark the first WILDLABS Platform update post of the year.

Our emoji / reaction system broke due to the library it relies on, Twitter's Twemoji, going down (for reasons discussed in the tweet link below). We have had to fall back to native browser emoji while a replacement / mirror of these is slotted in. This may mean emoji display slightly differently for you in the picker, more resembling your current device / browser.

Thank you to @Alasdair for sending me the below tweet which helped work out what was wrong:

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Link

Crowdfunding Aerial Baseline Study of Ghost Gear in Koh Phangan, Thailand

Sol Milne

18 December 2022 11:06am

We are developing a project in Thailand, using drones to locate lost & discarded fishing gear across Koh Phangan, Thailand.
We're 86% there & only need $1500 to get us over the line. If you can help us, we would really appreciate it!
This project uses drones to create a baseline survey of lost fishing gear & document effects of entanglement on marine species.
We are working with Core Sea & Koh Phangan Sea Guardians to develop a locally led method for ongoing monitoring for discarded fishing gear, using drones.
Thank you, Sol, Tania & Kat

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discussion

Workshop Invite: Building Partnerships between Conservation Tech and the UK Space Sector

Stephanie O'Donnell

22 September 2022 3:50pm

Hi everyone, In collaboration with our partners over at the Satellite Applications Catapult, we are hosting an in person workshop to build strategic partnerships for...

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Vance Russell

5 December 2022 3:10pm

Hi Steph,

If it's not too late, I'm very interested in this workshop.

Best,

V

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Link

WILDLABS Digest: 4 November 2022

Stephanie O'Donnell

4 November 2022 3:42pm

A new issue of our community digest just went out! Check it out to discover a big platform update, and a summary of all the latest content from across WILDLABS in one easy to scan place!

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Organisational Development Learning Hub

Laura Owens

25 October 2022 10:36am

Within the open-access Learning Hub, you can find interactive e-learning courses and recordings of online training webinars; all are original and completely free to access. Includes Good Fund Management, Conflict Resolution, Organisational Governance, Risk Management, and more.

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Learning Hub

Below you will find links to both interactive e-learning courses and recordings of online training webinars, all of which are original and completely free to access.

Capacity for Conservation
event

Organisational Resilience Festival

Laura Owens

18 October 2022 8:15am

From 7 to 11 of November 2022, Fauna & Flora International (FFI) and the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) will be hosting a global online Organisational Resilience Festival.  

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discussion

Conservation Technology Event - UK, late 2020

Rowan Remi Friedman

16 March 2020 1:51pm

We are putting together a pilot Conservation Technology event for late 2020 in London, UK. It aims to bring together a wide range of expertise to discuss, present and workshop...

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Cris Thompson

1 September 2022 11:14am

Ha!

We really should come back to this!

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discussion

Conservation Tech Directory - new update!

Carly Batist

29 August 2022 2:38pm

New directory update from @gracieermi & I! And an extra special one as we've just passed our 1-year anniversary! Super exciting to see how far this has come! Check it out:...

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Liz Ferguson

23 September 2022 5:26pm

Congrats on the milestone Carly and Gracie!

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discussion

Your favorite conservation tech blogs and writers

Ellie Warren

21 September 2022 9:17pm

Hi all! We're looking for great new conservation tech writers and content creators to bring to our WILDLABS audience! So we want to know what you like to read when you're...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

26 September 2022 8:15pm

Eugh me too! Ellie's been working with him to see if we might have him blog here as well.. *FINGERS CROSSED*!

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discussion

Variety Hour: What do you want to see?

Stephanie O'Donnell

15 September 2022 12:46pm

Hi everyone, We're settling into our new event format - we hope you're all enjoying having a regular monthly space to catch up as much as we are! I'm looking ahead at our...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

20 September 2022 9:43am

This is super interesting feedback Akiba, thanks a lot! I'd been leaning towards making sure we heard from new voices and projects, so hearing you'd like to hear updates from projects we've heard from before is helpful - that's going to shift how I think about the invitations. 

I'm in agreement about having a space for commentary/debate about current events (eg changes at microsoft, impact of new legislation). I'm keen for us to experiment with formats other than the safe presentation then Q&A and have space for exploring more controversial topics. To this end, next session we're going to include an 'in conversation' section with a pro Web3/NFT expert, as I think there is a lot of hype in this speace, and a lot of questions about the real applications and impact of these types of projects. I'm definitely curious to see if we can get someone from Microsoft to come on and chat to us about implications of their changes for conservation projects. 

Super interesting - lots to think about. Thanks Akiba!  

David Savage

20 September 2022 2:51pm

Of course, Ellie has been knocking it out of the park with the quizzes!

I think the variety of speakers has been really good so far, though I think it could be really interesting to bring in people to talk about failed projects, along the lines of what Akiba asked about in terms of failures.

I'd also like to second Akiba's point about the IRA and climate funding as a potential source of funding/collaboration for conservation tech folks. I have some contacts in that area and could try to reach out if there's interest.

Carly Batist

26 September 2022 7:53pm

Agree with all previous points!

My additional input would be that I think there is a lot of opportunity for conservation finance + conservation tech to come together, as I feel like the two camps don't do that enough. That sort of ties in with the NFT type stuff and climate change stuff. 

Sort of related to previous input as well, but we just had Climate Week here in NYC and I was pretty shocked by the pretty utter lack of biodiversity talk. Everything was climate-centric, but the biodiversity & climate crises go hand in hand so I would love to see more inclusive & collaborative work at this intersection! Would be great if we could have speakers around this space at variety hour as well. 

Final thought - might be nice to get some updates on supply chain issues & hardware manufacturers e.g., FieldKit, Audiomoth, etc. I feel like there is a lot of confusion still out there about where things stand now and how far away people should expect before they can place orders. I've seen soooo many requests for Audiomoths on Twitter - some sort of rental/loan program would be great with regard to this, but that's a different conversation :)   

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funding

NSF Activate Fellowship

Carly Batist

26 September 2022 7:22pm

The Activate Fellows supported by NSF will be scientists & engineers from a variety of backgrounds & regions across the U.S. who will translate research breakthroughs to new products & services with broad...

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New Platform Help: How do I...?

Stephanie O'Donnell

6 May 2022 9:36am

Hi wildlabbers, Through our annual survey, you've told us (for literally YEARS) that your vision for WILDLABS is that it become the online home for...

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Stephanie O'Donnell

1 September 2022 8:57pm

Ha, I literally said the same thing after posting my last link - 280 is so much less than you think. We're going to increase it a bit. We are still going to keep the editing tools minimal, that was purposeful. We don't want every type of post to behave exactly the same as it gets confusing. Links are intended to be straightfoward and quick, a link with a short description or commentary. Anything else you should be starting a proper discussion or creating a longer post. 

Carly Batist

7 September 2022 4:20pm

Another potential thing to add - maybe getting more specific than country on location? Like adding state/province/city? To make the member directory searchable on a smaller geographic scale. I've seen lots of posts recently on Bioacoustics Stack Exchange, AI for Conservation Slack, & others looking for people based in a particular region or city and it got me thinking about how the WILDLABS member directory could provide that. Just a thought! 

Jake Burton

23 September 2022 3:36pm

Thanks Carly! I'll pop this on the list of features to discuss with developers. Putting broader regions on the existing list might be possible. It could also be useful to get more specific but it might require re-working how the filter works or adding more filters. Maybe at some stage we could have a big wildlabs member map (although that might potentially lead to some data privacy issues). 

In the meantime some people put their city in their bio, which is searchable on the members section.

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WILDLABS Digest: 23 September 2022

Stephanie O'Donnell

23 September 2022 12:05pm

Our latest WILDLABS Community digest has just hit inboxes! Don't have time to keep up with everything that's happening in the conservation tech world? This email is for you!

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