The NISO Plus Forum is a new, in-person event that will provide a bridge between the virtual NISO Plus conferences—an opportunity to continue some of the conversations we started at the last conference and connect them to the next one in concrete and meaningful ways. With thanks to the American Geophysical Union (as well as our other sponsors) for their support, this year’s conference will be held at the AGU headquarters in Washington, DC on September 20, 2022. Future Forums will be held in different locations around the world, enabling us to engage more deeply with the global information community.
Participating in the NISO Plus Forum gives you the opportunity to share your area of metadata expertise and interest with the information community and advocate for it to move towards becoming a NISO project.
Goal
To identify two or three vital areas in need of attention from the community for each area: metadata structures, metadata exchange, and metadata identifiers. These areas of focus will be used to build a track of sessions at the NISO Plus conference in February 2023.
Process
We will spend the day in a series of World Cafe style workshop discussions, where we will work together in small groups to examine each of the three metadata areas: structures, exchange, and identifiers. By the end of the day, through a series of questions that guide us towards areas of common concern, we will have identified topics to be moved forward for future NISO work, including as topics for a metadata track at the NISO Plus 2023 conference (February 14-16, 2023). This process will ensure that everyone who attends has a chance to work with all the other attendees, maximizing your opportunities for in-person networking and collaboration.
Schedule
8:30am Breakfast/Coffee/Networking 9:00am Welcome and Overview of Day 9:30am World Cafe Session One - Identifiers 10:45am Coffee Break/Networking 11:15am World Cafe Session Two - Exchange 12:30pm Lunch and Researcher Provocations 1:45pm World Cafe Session Three - Structures 3:00pm Refreshment Break/Networking 3:30pm World Cafe Session Four - Gather, Report, Outcomes 4:45pm Closing Remarks 5:00pm End of Day
Speakers
While most of the day will focus on hands-on activities, we will also be hearing from several researchers about their needs and priorities. Dr. Ana Heredia (consultant), Dr. Kathryn Kaiser (University of Alabama – Birmingham) and Dr. Diana E. Marsh (University of Maryland) will join us for a series of provocations over the lunch break.
The 2022 NISO Plus Forum is intended for information professionals with an interest in metadata, who have enough seniority to understand the external challenges and opportunities and enough functional expertise to understand challenges and opportunities specific to their organization. This includes product managers, community managers, department directors, heads of functional units, and others—from publishers, libraries, vendors, government agencies, and more.
Where the NISO Plus Conference is about breadth and scale, the NISO Plus Forum is about depth and scope. Registrations will be strictly limited to 100 attendees, in order to ensure maximum interaction and conversation for a day of in-person, active, collaborative work on metadata—identifying actionable areas of needed activity and the next steps necessary to move them towards solutions for the information community.
Registration is now open! Tickets are $199 for NISO members and $249 for non-members. Sponsorships (which include a free registration) are also available. Registrations are strictly limited to 100 attendees. You’ll also have the option to support the Society for Scholarly Publishing’s Generations Fund by purchasing a ticket to their fundraising event on AGU’s roof terrace on the evening of September 20.
Since this is an in-person event and attendance is limited, we know that not everyone who wishes to attend will be able to do so, and we are looking at options for continuing these conversations between the NISO Plus Forum and the NISO Plus Conference in February 2023. Please sign up for NISO Plus emails and/or follow us on Twitter or LinkedIn for updates.
PLEASE NOTE: The NISO Plus Forum is our first in-person meeting since the start of the pandemic, and we want to make it safe and welcoming for all. We will therefore be requiring all attendees to provide proof of vaccination or a negative covid test result (taken within 48 hours of the event) on arrival at the venue. Masks must be worn indoors other than during breaks and lunch. We will be monitoring the situation closely and we reserve the right to alter or update these requirements, including to require additional precautions, including – but not limited to – rapid tests for all attendees. We will advise all registered attendees of these requirements no less than two weeks before the event.
Cancellations: You can cancel your registration at any time up to two weeks before the NISO Plus Forum and we will refund you in full (less a $25 administration fee). After that, no refunds will be made, however, you are welcome to transfer your registration to another colleague at any time up to and including the day of the event. Schedule subject to change.