Hei* ,

A letter full of thank you's and highlights from 2020:
Happy Holidays and thank you for all the Citizen Science!

‍This year was one of the most difficult ones for all of us, with the Corona Virus pandemic, lock-downs and social distancing. But nevertheless, 2020 also brought good things and many new Citizen Science projects on the SPOTTERON platform. We loved the exciting work tasks and the diverse project topics which we have been allowed to design and develop in this strange year.

One thing we can take from 2020 is that working together has no borders. With digital technology, we can share and collaborate even if a meeting in "real life" is not possible. We learned that conferences like ECSA2020 can be wonderful and inspiring experiences, even when taking place in the virtual space. We participated in the session about "Designing Citizen Science App Technologies in Practice" - be sure to watch the video on our Blog! We are very grateful for that chance, thanks a lot!

But this general mindset of integrating the online world in our daily lives is also something that can benefit Citizen Science in general. We have received feedback from Citizen Scientist about how helpful Citizen Science Apps can be as a motivator to go out and explore the world, especially in social lockdown situations. And it impacts your emotions when you, as a Citizen Scientist, suddenly discover a Red List species right in your home city - what a moment!

Despite the Corona Crisis, together with research partners from Europe, Australia and South America, we have been able to launch a wide palette of Citizen Science Apps in 2020. Within just one week we have built a complete Citizen Science App together with the University of Edinburgh: CoronaReport aims to collect data about psychological health during the pandemic. This was quite record-breaking! 

Many other projects joined on the SPOTTERON Citizen Science platform, from bird observation programmes over geosciences to ecology projects and arts & culture: 

‍Yes, 2020 was a good year for Citizen Science and the growing family of partners on the platform. Thank you very much for your trust, all the talks, meetings, exchange of ideas, and for being able to work in this dynamic and essential field! ❤ It is wonderful to be part of this movement.

‍NEW FEATURES FOR CITIZEN SCIENCE PROJECTS ON THE PLATFORM

In 2020, we have extended SPOTTERON further and co-created new features in the course of the year with the help of the projects on the platform. The new privacy mode for Apps allows users to decide themselves, who's able to see their contributions or their map coordinates, and with Custom Map Views, project organizations and users can display map areas and the data points from regions of interest. We also have developed a new extension for the Spot Update feature, which can now suggest nearby Spots to Citizen Scientists for fostering chronological spot updates and timeline observations in the Citizen Science Apps.

Another big feature from 2020 on the SPOTTERON platform is the "Check & Lock" system, with which research and administrators of Citizen Science projects can validate data and lock it, so the data points can not be changed anymore by the participants in the App. This allows keeping a citable data-base in scientific publications and papers while rewarding Citizen Scientists for correct observations. A very important step!

But not only new features and project apps have been in the focus. The underlying system of SPOTTERON has been further improved and optimized to ensure the best possible stability and performance of the Citizen Science applications and tools.

‍THE DESIGN MAKES THE DIFFERENCE

On the design side, we have completely overhauled the intro slides for all projects and improved the content areas in the apps with a unique image separators style - and well, we participate in the writing and the design of all charts and diagrams in the upcoming "the Science of Citizen Science" book, made possible by the COST action CA15212 in the European Cooperation in Science & Technology (COST) initiative. What an honour! Oh, and we designed the poster for the SemantiX Earth Observation project in the AGIT 2020 conference poster competition. First prize! Nice.

LET'S DO HORIZON 2020
CITIZEN SCIENCE APPS

Another thing happened in 2020. We have been actively participating in Horizon 2020 calls this year and guess what - we are now partners in confirmed projects! There will be more news on that topic in the upcoming year when the first building blocks are in development and the project's websites go online - but for now, we just want to extend our gratitude to the project teams behind those proposals and also to the European Union for such a wonderful research funding program! We are looking forward to the experience of being an active partner and let's see if there are also new partnerships emerging from the current Research & Innovation Call to drive the EU Green Deal...

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WELL, ENOUGH RETROSPECTIVES.

Let's keep up a good spirit in these last days of 2020 and be optimistic for the next one! The holiday season is a good time for gathering strength and getting some rest or refill our energies, so to say. To celebrate this, we have designed this year's edition of the SPOTTERON holiday card for you! We wish you all the best and Happy Holidays! And.. thank you for all the Citizen Science. 

We will be out of the office over the holidays and officially back on the 11th of January 2021. See you on the other side! ;)

 For support of your Citizen Science Apps and technical help please send an email to support@spotteron.net - our team will be ready to assist also during the holidays.

Stay healthy and best regards from Vienna!

Your SPOTTERON Team

‍ *Hello in Norwegian

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