some thoughts on Cititzen Science: it needs a system

Thursday, 29 October 2015 18:42

Currently in Barcelona, Spain, the yearly European Citizen Science Association summit is taking place. As not only an interested person in science and ecology but also as founder of SPOTTERON, events like this always result in following the various posts, tweets and streams online the whole days. At #ecsabcn In her keynote, Libby Hepborn from the Australian Citizen Science Association mentioned a something, which immediatly grabbed my attention.

@CSAustria also tweeted that statement:
"Libby Hepburn @CitSciOZ would like a "tripadvisor" for #citizenscience tools."

Libby Hepburn @CitSciOZ would like a "tripadvisor" for #citizenscience tools. #ECSAbcn
— citizen-science.at (@CSAustria) October 28, 2015

Well, thats exactly what we are trying to do. SPOTTERON is by concept and should be in reality an easy to use, always maintained plattform for citizen science applications on computers and smartphones. Its not an easy thing to develop nor is it easy to get projects and initiatives on board, but we still believe that the approach of building an ever-maintained system is the right path to go.

We keep trying to get the word out. If you are a scientist or project lead, who is planning to release a project in the fields of citizen science, please get in contact. The more projects we can do, the better we can constantly improve the system called SPOTTERON. We all benefit from this concurrent development.

The current version 0.1.8 of the SPOTTERON smartphone apps like "Project Roadkill" @ www.roadkill.at or "NaturVerrückt" @ www.naturverrueckt.at is already in daily use by many users. Spots get sent in every day and our partners, like the Team from www.roadkill.at at the BOKU Wien, the university for life science here in Vienna, are glad they use SPOTTERON and its ongoing improvement. I hope i dont lean to much out of a window if i just write: ask them. They know those benefits from first hand.

And also, if we together get SPOTTERON to the place it should be as a widly used system for well done citizen science apps, your users benefit too by a common usability and by the new features, we introduce to them on a regular basis. It will be indeed is like trip advisor for citizen science. Lets do it, get on board.

Philipp, www.spotteron.com