A Look Back at EcoDoR Day on January 20, 2025

On Monday, January 20, the IRD, on the Agropolis campus, hosted the Montpellier EcoDoR data workshop for a study day bringing together data professionals from the Montpellier site: data librarians from the University of Montpellier’s SOAR (Open Science and Research Support) department, and representatives from the 11 site partners working on research data.

After coffee and croissants, followed by a welcome from our hosts—Jean-Christophe Desconnets—and finally a presentation of the program of festivities by Laure Lefrançois, head of the SOAR department (UM’s SCD), we were ready to get to work: a brainstorming session to identify expectations and questions, followed by answers to the questions raised.

On the lunch menu: canapés, petits fours, and greenhouses to top it off! After the cold buffet, visitors were divided into small groups to tour the imposing glass-and-steel chapels, where African and Asian rice seedlings and wild coffee plants thrive in a tropical heat that feels more real than nature itself, capturing the interest of the day’s visitors.

The afternoon was devoted to a “world café”—a series of constructive workshops where participants could share best practices, questions, and proposals on the topics addressed by the EcoDoR workshop’s working groups: creating a one-stop shop for researchers, pooling training opportunities on research data, providing support for drafting data management plans (DMPs), and promoting our data ecosystem.

Participants in this first event certainly had little chance to get bored, and we are already working on organizing another study day—this time dedicated to the community of researchers and faculty members—which is scheduled to take place next spring and which we hope will be just as successful.

More details will be posted here on this news feed!