Ignite Open Innovation (OI) Forum

Series of talks and open discussions to inform the USGS Open Innovation Strategy

Let's Celebrate Citizen Science Month, Earth Day, and Take Your Kids to Work Day!

Take Your Kids Teleworking with Citizen Science to Understand Our Earth

Thursday, April 23, 2020 at 11:00 AM - 12:00 PM ET

April is Citizen Science Month!
April 22 is the 50th Anniversary of Earth Day!
April 23 is Take Your Kids to Work Day!

Disruption to daily education is affecting nearly 1.5 billion learners around the world and nearly 30 million students in the US, as more teachers and teleworking parents are having to shift to doing educational activities at home. Citizen Science allows people of all ages to contribute to science virtually anywhere, making them fun social and educational activities that contribute to science while maintaining safe "physical" distancing. You and your kids can help advance scientific knowledge by asking questions, reporting observations, conducting experiments, collecting data, or developing low-cost technologies and open-source code online, on a mobile phone, at home, in your backyard, or outdoors! In this Ignite Open Innovation (OI) Forum, Eleanour Snow, Erin Posthumus, Sally Cook, and Erin Korris will share citizen science projects and other educational resources that have been developed by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), other federal agencies, and other partner organizations.

Federal Crowdsourcing and Citizen Science (FedCCS) Community
"All Things Geo Crowdsourcing"
Thursday, April 30, 2020 at 2:30 - 4:30 PM ET

Elizabeth McCartney (USGS) - National Digital Trails and GaiaGPS

Will Mortenson (NGA) - NGA Open Mapping Enclave (NOME)

Tom Gertin (State Department) - MapGive to Develop Open Geographic Data

Chris Clasen (NGA / GMU) - NaviGator Geographic Game With a Purpose

Kim Stephens and Katie Picchione (FEMA) - FEMA Crowdsourcing Unit Maps

Scott Kaplan (NGA) - Civil Air Patrol GIS Use of Crowdsourcing Tools

Join Federal Crowdsourcing & Citizen Science (FedCCS) Community Listserv

(Federal Government Only)

Past Open Innovation Community Meetings

March 16, 2020 - Jefferson Chang

February 26, 2020 - Sheree Watson and Sophia B Liu

What does Open Innovation mean?

Open Innovation: Open Innovation is an umbrella term that refers to participatory methods and techniques for obtaining ideas, expertise, and resources from the public, organizations, and experts in an open way.

Citizen Science: The public participates voluntarily in the scientific process, addressing real-world problems in ways that may include formulating research questions, conducting scientific experiments, collecting and analyzing data, interpreting results, making new discoveries, developing technologies and applications, and solving complex problems.

Crowdsourcing: An open call for voluntary assistance from a large group of individuals for gathering ideas, observations, or services. Many crowdsourced efforts use rigorous procedures to ensure data quality, such as checking for agreement from multiple volunteers or developing verification protocols.

Challenges & Prize Competitions: An approach to federal contracting that promotes innovation by offering a monetary or non-monetary reward upon completing a specific objective or task. Prize competitions are a proven way to increase innovation for the public, private, and philanthropic sectors. Incentivized, open competition is a standard tool in many agencies’ toolboxes for delivering more cost-effective and efficient services, and advancing agencies’ core missions.

Civic Hacking: A creative and collaborative approach to problem solving. Hackathons are gatherings that encourage meaningful engagement between technology developers, designers, data scientists, subject matter experts, civil society, and other relevant stakeholders, making them great places to understand our users, build volunteer community and capacity, as well as recruit new talent. The goal is to produce quick and creative solutions, learn new tools and skills, and meet new people.