Solutions for nature conservation and sustainability research
Last Friday, the IUCN World Conservation Congress 2021 started. For me an excellent opportunity to learn about the state of the art of data collection in nature conservation. Let me just give a list of all the sessions that I thought would give some insight into the state of the art of digital tools, databases and methods
urtles and their nests is about ten years old or limited in their possibilities. I am considering developing new database software. In this text, I am calling for input from sea turtle NGOs and individual experts about their work practices and for feedback on the outline that comprises the bulk of this text
Variety in data-editors During my work on the SWINNO project and its database I noticed how the assistants who did the data work, I call them data editors, have different strategies of entering data. Also, they know the rules that govern the entry of the variables in various degrees, they have different ways of dealing... Continue Reading →
June 2020 At Osa Conservation (where I am currently doing volunteer work), sea turtle research has been going on for at least ten years. Data about the sea turtles, their nests and the hatchlings, is written down in note books during the beach patrols. Later, this data is collected in one or more spreadsheets. Over... Continue Reading →
FileMaker Pro's export command and its script step do what they must do with plenty of options (CSV, tab-text, xlsx, FMP, xml and more; and many possible encodings for both Mac and Windows). However, on the programability and user experience side, one could wish for more. But for some of these problems workarounds are possible.
I ran into the pun 'Weeks of coding can save hours of planning' somewhere on the FileMaker community forum (now the Claris community forum). Found it hilarious! Today, I realized that I have been way too eager to come up with smart solutions for programming problems and started working before searching. It is a type... Continue Reading →
Rubber Boots Data 