The Living Atlases Community: Communication and documentation

Managers and developers from organizations within the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) network nodes using the Atlas of Living Australia (ALA) modules have created the Living Atlases (LA) community. Since the beginning, two of our priorities have been the technical guides and communication inside and outside our network. A community can not be sustainable without useful technical documentation, as members must work by themselves as much as possible. Without communication, a community cannot grow either. 

More than one year ago, the Living Atlases community hired a technical coordinator, Vicente J. Ruiz Jurado. With the help of other participants, he greatly improved our technical documentation with the Living Atlas Quick Start Guide and increased communication with remote support sessions. The helpdesk, through the use of the LA Slack channel, has been improved as well. 

We have also increased our visibility on the Internet with our website and our Twitter account. Over the last few years, we have focused our work on end-users, with dedicated workshops, including exercises made by participants for their users and two videos showing how a Living Atlas works (How to search and download biodiversity data in an Atlas and How to use regions/spatial module in an Atlas).