RDA 18th Plenary Meeting

24 September 2021 : The RDA Virtual Plenary 18 (VP18) draft programme is now available at https://www.rd-alliance.org/rdas-18th-plenary-meeting-programme, with a revised plenary date of 3-11 November 2021.

Approximately sixty breakout meetings will be taking place, in addition to numerous networking, poster and panel sessions.

Note, a separate email is in the process of being sent to group chairs who are leading working and interest group sessions, as well as to those who will be leading BoF sessions, which includes details about requesting schedule changes and repeat sessions.

Lastly, registration is open at https://rdavp18.eventbrite.co.uk, with an early bird rate available until 25 October 2021.  Be sure to register soon to secure this reduced rate.

As communicated in late May, International Data Week 2021 (IDW), planned to take place this November, was postponed to 20-23 June 2022 due to the continuing global COVID-19 crisis and aftermath. RDA has decided, however, to still hold Plenary 18 in a virtual format from 3-18 November 2021.

RDA’s 18th Virtual Plenary Meeting: Final report

Fully virtual, fully global.

RDA Plenary meetings are the twice-annual meetings where the members of the RDA meet to discuss possible new topics through Birds of a Feather (BoF) meetings, hold Working and Interest Group and Community of Practice (CoP) meetings, and conduct RDA business. These plenary meetings serve as important milestones in the life of the Work of RDA, especially in terms of achievements and outputs.

From March 2013 until October 2019, all RDA plenary meetings were in person events with remote participation facilitated.

Since March 2020, RDA has organized three fully virtual plenary meetings in collaboration with the local organisers (March 2020 – Australia, November 2020 – Costa Rica, and April 2021 – Scotland). The 18th Plenary Meeting was the first plenary to be fully owned and organised by the RDA Secretariat, responsible for the daily global operations, without support from local organisers.

To facilitate participation by the RDA’s global membership, meeting components were organized across a series of international time zones. All sessions were recorded and available to registered participants on the Plenary event platform, Whova, until mid-December when they are freely available to the complete RDA community and public via the plenary web pages.