At the end of September 2024, the second NFDI4Objects Community Meeting took place in Mainz, hosted by the Leibniz Center for Archaeology (LEIZA) and Mainz University of Applied Sciences. More than 170 participants gathered from September 25 to 27 to discuss current developments in research data management (RDM) and gain insights into the consortium’s work.
Scenes from the icebreaker on Wednesday evening at Lux: Kai-Christian Bruhn and Dirk Wintergrün (Klassik Stiftung Weimar), the spokespersons for Task Area 6. Photos: Vanessa Liebler, CC BY SA 4.0
The National Research Data Infrastructure (NFDI) supports access to and the sustainable use of research data throughout Germany. Mainz University of Applied Sciences is involved in this initiative not only through NFDI4Objects but also through other institutes. For example, the Institute for Media Design (IMG), the“MotionBank” project, and the Institute of Architecture (AI) are particularly active in the NFDI4Culture consortium.
Lennart Linde, a staff member in Task Area 7 (pictured left), and Timo Homburg (on the left in the photo on the right), developer of the NFDI4Objects website; photos: Vanessa Liebler, CC BY SA 4.0
For the icebreaker event on Wednesday evening, Susanne Weissman, President of Mainz University of Applied Sciences, hosted a gathering at the LUX Pavilion, where over 100 participants took the opportunity to engage in conversations and network. On Thursday and Friday, nine short presentations and 39 poster presentations followed, including a presentation by the HERMES Data Competence Center.
As part of the event, Kai-Christian Bruhn, deputy spokesperson for NFDI4Objects, led workshops on the fundamentals of research data management and training in RDM. Students and researchers were able to learn about concepts such as data organization and backup strategies and discussed issues related to the use of open educational resources (OER) and the development of training standards.
A highlight was the evening event on Thursday, which was also attended by Minister Clemens Hoch. It featured a keynote address by Barbara Ebert, Executive Director of NFDI4Biodiversity, on the topic “Making Data Diversity Manageable.” In addition, the redesigned NFDI4Objects website was presented; it was built according to the Common European Research Information Format (CERIF) and the NFDICore ontology and was developed primarily at i3mainz.
