Centre for Ecology and Evolution

  Autumn Symposium 2012

Smarter Science: The Power of the Crowd!

Organizers: Prof. Kate Jones (University College London, Zoological Society of London), Prof. Jonathan Silvertown (Open University), Dr. Paul Jepson and Prof. Kathy Willis (Oxford University)

The way we do science is changing rapidly, as social media, gaming and using crowds to solve problems changes who can take part and how they can participate. Crowd-collected data are also posing new analytical and visualization challenges. Here we take a look at the current state of this area to draw lessons for the future of research in ecology, evolution and conservation.

The event is open to all interested and is free but we will have to charge £5 (£3 students) on the day for teas, coffees and biscuits. Posters and Demos welcome (you can fill out the details when you register).

Directions can be found here.

PROGRAMME

8:30-9:15AM COFFEE

9:15AM            Introduction (Kate Jones)

Session One:Crowd sensing (Chair: Paul Jepson)

9:20AM            Mike Dodd (Open University) Treezilla: The Monster Map of Trees: A new citizen science platform from the home of iSpot and the Evolution MegaLab.

9:40AM            Michael Pocock (Centre for Ecology and Hydrology) One moth versus the crowd: the story of Conker Tree Science.

10AM               John Tweddle, Poppy Lakeman Fraser and Lucy Robinson (Natural History Museum) OPAL Bugs Count: smarter science or just a bit of fun?

10:20AM          Scott Laurie (Stanford University) iNaturalist - crowd sourcing biodiversity conservation.

10:40AM          Alex Rogers (University of Southampton) Smartphone-based Biodiversity Monitoring: Mobilising the crowd in the hunt for the New Forest Cicada.

11 AM                TEA AND COFFEE

11:20AM          Toby Hammond (University of East Anglia) Ashtag – tracking fungal disease spread across the UK

 Session Two: Innovative Approaches and Crowd Tools (Chair: Jonathan Silvertown)

 11:40AM         Matthias Stevens (UCL) Extreme Citizen Science: Concepts & Projects

 12PM               Paul Jepson (Oxford University) Opti-hunting: a technology inspired vision for enrolling the hunting ‘crowd’ in conservation

 12:20PM          David Aanensen (Imperial College) EpiCollect

 12:40PM          Thore Graepel (Microsoft Research Cambridge) The Smarter Crowd: Measuring and Boosting Crowd Intelligence

 1PM                 LUNCH (Posters and Demos)

 2:00PM            Chris Sandbrook (Cambridge University) Can digital games and virtual worlds help us to save nature?

 Session Three: Crowd Thinking (Chair: Robin Freeman)

 2:20PM            Phil Brohan (Met Office) New uses for old weather

 2:40PM            Kate Jones (UCL, ZSL) Becoming Batman: using citizens to detect signals in 2 million files

 3PM                 Bob MacCallum (Imperial College) DarwinTunes - a simple model of cultural evolution via crowd selection

 3:20PM            Kirsty Kemp, Greg Skolidis and Gabe Brostow (ZSL, UCL) Cameras for conservation at the bottom of deep blue sea

 3:40PM            COFFEE AND TEA

 4PM                 Alasdair Davies (ZSL) Cameras in the cloud - citizen science of the future.

 Session Four: Crowd Management (Chair: Kathy Willis)

 4.20PM            Nadia Richman (Zoological Society of London) Reliability of crowd memory

 4.40PM            Lucas Joppa (Microsoft Research Cambridge) Motivating the crowd

 5PM                 Jonathan Silvertown (Open University) Who is an expert? The iSpot solution

 5:20PM            Concluding Remarks (Kate Jones)

 5:30PM            Drinks at The Albert Pub, NW1 8JR