Denmark
The worldwide situation is in all aspect difficult and problematic at the moment. We wish the best for everybody out there to stay safe and take care. INSIGNIA keeps going and that does challenges us in some ways. We have started to meet in different way. At the moment we do test different types of online tools to meet.
A project is only perfect if you can disseminate the ideas and the protocol of the project. That you are in close contact with the Citizen Science beekeepers. Keep them updated and allow them to make questions, so that we all do understand the project in the very best way. So that we can perform our best, so that the INSIGNIA project will be a success in the end.
Original we had the idea of making a physical meeting, to meet, to teach each other to know, to discus, to teach each other and to support each other. Teambuilding you could say! Psychical meeting will always be the best. But in this Corona times, it is just not possible.
The Danish INSIGNIA citizen scientist did have their first online meeting on the 07. April. As a new online tool, we used ZOOM. We have to say that ZOOM is a very good and easy to use tool. Unfortunately, there are some critical security issues on this program, that we have to consider in the future.
We are 9 Citizens Scientist and an adopted Norwegian one as well. To be sure to keep our Citizens Scientist running all the season we actually have 5 reserve Citizens Scientist. That might be many, but nice to have them, so that if one of the running Citizens Scientists do fall out, we can use a local reserve.
In our meeting we did demonstrate the background of the project, the preliminary results from 2019 and the protocol for 2020. We nicely did dedicate a camera of a computer for demonstration purposes. That did work very well.
We will make another meeting right after the first sampling, to clarify problems that does arise during the sampling. We will establish a closed INSIGNIA-BEE DENMARK closed Facebook group, where questions can be given, discussed and where everybody can post pictures and daily INSIGNIA life experiences.
The Danish team is as ready as it can get. Already now thanks to our very eager Citizens scientist.
And for sure, online meetings is a new important tool that we will use a lot more in the future.
Flemming Vejsnæs
