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Emerging Tech / Feed

Technology is changing and evolving faster than ever, and as it does, our community members are looking for the next big thing to revolutionize their conservation tech work. To chat about your favorite new tools that are just emerging in the field and discover innovations you haven't yet heard of, join this group!

discussion

Moveapps: EMAC23 Coding Challenge

Andrea Koelzsch

3 March 2023 7:58am

Motivated by having been named a Conservation Tech Award grantee in 2022, we are launching the EMAC23 coding challenge to Equip MoveApps for Conservation.Pick one of five use...

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Lars Holst Hansen

3 March 2023 3:12pm

Super initiative! I hope you get a lot of entries to this coding challenge!

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Link

The WILDLABS Variety Hour: February 2023 - YouTube

Stephanie O'Donnell

3 March 2023 11:24am

Last week's Variety Hour is now up on youtube. It was a great session - we covered Moveapps, an awesome community project building marine biologgers, chatgpt and google earth engine vs microsoft's planetary computer. Thanks everyone who came along!

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discussion

Block chains and NFTs in wildlife conservation

Janet

16 February 2023 11:17am

Hello humans,I'm looking to understand more about blockchains and NFTs in conservation, any link to information will be appreciated, thank you

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Stephanie O'Donnell

16 February 2023 12:18pm

Hey Janet! 

We had a slightly intense discussion at one of our recent variety hour shows, which I belive @Netty_Cheruto already sent your way. But in case anyone else spots this thread and has the same question, it's here: 

What specifically were you looking to learn more about? If it's just about NFTs and blockchain in general, the work the Unearthodox team (formerly known as the Luc Hoffmann Institute) are doing might be worth having a look at. They got in contact with me recently to share their project ‘Digital Disruption and Future of Conservation NGOs project’ and the digital toolkit that has recently been launched as part of this project.

The project is focused on exploring the potential of emerging digital technologies, including blockchain, to transform conservation practices and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of conservation NGOs. The project aims to understand how these technologies can be used to benefit the conservation sector and support the work of conservationists around the world.

https://luchoffmanninstitute.org/digital-disruption-and-the-future-of-conservation/

The digital toolkit has been designed as a basic introduction to blockchain concepts and their potential use for nature conservation. It includes information and resources to help conservation practitioners understand the opportunities and challenges of using blockchain technology in their work. 

https://luchoffmanninstitute.org/digital-disruption-for-conservation-toolkit/

If you have specific questions, pop them in a reply and I'll see if someone from their team can pop in here and answer them!

Steph 

Linwood Pendleton

24 February 2023 12:24pm

Hi Janet,

 

I've written quite a bit about this from the perspective of conservation and conservation science finance.  You can see some of the articles here www.moonjellyacademy.org and more on my LinkedIn pages.

 

LP 

Janet

27 February 2023 9:45am

Hi all,

Thank you so much for sharing the resources, these are quite insightfull

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article

The Variety Hour: 2023 Lineup

Stephanie O'Donnell

15 February 2023 11:29am

You’re invited to the WILDLABS Variety Hour, our monthly community event connecting you to the exciting projects, research, and ideas that are happening in conservation tech right now. Brought to you with the support of...

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funding

Amazon Sustainability Accelerator

Stephanie O'Donnell

15 February 2023 10:22am

Are you building a sustainability start-up and want to maximise your impact? We want to support you! We are looking for startups developing sustainability-focused products or recycling technologies that help keeping...

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discussion

Suggestions for user research/co-design methodologies

Sicily Fiennes

9 November 2022 11:32am

Hi everyone, I'm wondering if anyone on here has an experience with user research or user testing for conservation technology 'products'? Please get in touch, I'd love to discuss...

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Tiffany Lee

31 January 2023 3:01pm

Hi,

I'm the UX researcher at Rainforest Connection (RFCx). I use research methods such as interviews, usability testing, and card sorting to understand scientists' pain points and needs while using the bioacoustic monitoring platform, Arbimon. 

In terms of tools, I use Figjam for brainstorming and mapping, Notion for a research repository, Zoom for interviews, and Figma for prototyping. I'm exploring how to use ChatGPT to speed up my process too! I use it to draft recruitment emails, summarize transcripts etc. I try to use tools that are either low-cost or that RFCx already has subscriptions of. 

Since I'm a UX team of one, I also partner with University student groups/practicum courses to let UX students take on some of our projects. 

Feel free to reach out; I'm always happy to chat.

 

 

Yanna Vogiazou

10 February 2023 1:06pm

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes 

Apologies for the very late response to this thread, are you still looking for advice on user research and co-creation methodologies? I see there is a lot of support here on tools already ;-)

I would recommend running some sessions with low fidelity prototypes as early as possible, definitely before investing in any development! You can do this with a variety of tools, but paper prototypes can also be great if you are trying to compare very different concepts. You can use sketches to run more of a co-creation session, so that you encourage your users to define the data insights that they need explicitly and explore together different ways of visualizing & interacting with the information.

I normally do 1-1 interviews to define needs and identify potential barriers, before prototyping. But, you might be further ahead in the design process by now. 

If you still need some advice on defining the key use cases or the data visualization with users, I would be happy to offer a quick chat over zoom on how to go about it.

I am an independent service designer / user researcher with 14 years of experience in the tech industry, based in Europe :-)

Hope this helps!

Yanna 

Jessie Oliver

14 February 2023 1:21am

Hi @Sicily_Fiennes,

Over the past several years, I have explored how to design engaging and useful tools for the exploration of audio recording to locate calls of a particular bird species (i.e. Eastern bristlebirds). I worked to understand the practices of a species recovery team, as well as their experiences trialling audio recorders and analysis. Additionally, I explored knowledge of birders and broader audiences, and how this relates to them making sense of audio recordings and broader nature media (e.g. distribution maps and photographs of birds). My methods to understand these included semistructured interviews, artifact exploration (very low fidelity prototyping), and ethnographically inspired participant-observer fieldwork. I also took some inspiration from design research approaches such as contextual inquiry, cultural/technical probes, and more. My background prior to being a design researcher was in ecology, conservation, and environmental education, so I drew from that expertise to understand a little-known bird species and the role of technology in supporting people in becoming familiar with it. Most of my work was positioned within the field of Interaction Design, publishing via Human-Computer Interaction, Designing Interactive Systems, and Computer Supported Cooperative Work outlets (i.e. rather than UX/UI). If interested in knowing more, perhaps have a look at papers I was the first author on that are listed here, and a few videos here. My research highlights the importance of understanding the situation, knowledge, experiences, and needs of different groups of people to design enticing and useful technologies that foster learning, cooperation, and integration into existing practices. In my experience, people are sometimes compelled to be more open and creative when not interacting with technologies that can be perceived as expensive and polished products. 

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discussion

Deep Sea BRUVS Development

Titus

28 January 2023 1:41am

Hi everyone. Titus here from the Philippines.  We are currently working on creating a deep-sea dropcamera similar to Pau Anta's but modified for a BRUVS setup. We have most...

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Harold Tay

11 February 2023 3:07am

Hi Titus,

If the usual syntactic foam sources aren't available, an option may be to add an empty dry housing or use a larger housing for the BRUV, just to provide the buoyancy.

You can make your own syntactic foam from glass microballoons and epoxy resin, but this will require experimentation and testing.  For sub-surface buoyancy, you could also use a jerry can full of cooking oil, or a coil of polypropylene rope.

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article

We need more people using Earth observation data

Cassie Anderson

24 January 2023 4:51pm

The role of no-code geospatial software in the fight against climate change

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discussion

Interview for Technologies in Conservation

Nikolas

24 November 2022 10:07am

Dear Wildlabs community, my name is Nikolas and I am a Master's Student from Lisbon. Like many of you, I grew up with a great passion for the wildlife that we are surrounded...

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Carly Batist

16 January 2023 2:42pm

I'd be happy to chat with you if you wanted! My expertise is within passive acoustic monitoring particularly. The Conservation Tech Directory might be useful for you in identifying relevant actors within the space.

Pen-Yuan Hsing

17 January 2023 5:12pm

My original background is in ecology and conservation, and am now in the elected leadership of the Gathering for Open Science Hardware which convenes researchers developing open source tech for science. I am not working on a specific piece of technology right now, but am happy to contribute some higher-level views for your interview if that helps.

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