Bring your perspectives on how to "Describe Life" to the 7th annual event on TaxonWorks, its community, and the broader world of biodiversity informatics.
What
Our 7th TaxonWorks Together 19-21 May 2026. Join us for 3 days of activities centered around building the collective TaxonWorks community within the broader context of biodiversity informatics around the world, highlighting what's new, changed, and on the horizon. Activities range from highly guided, to un-conference style, with informational (demos, new features, participant presentations) and conversational (e.g. round-table, Q & A) opportunities mixed throughout. As always, we invite new audiences to join us to gather insights for tailoring future directions, our topics will range from those involving TaxonWorks directly (how can we improve), to grand-challenges facing our collective communities (e.g. data quality, semantics and standards, sustaining communities, agency).
Expect lots of opportunities to ask questions, meet others, and to contribute to the conversation. Your feedback and contributions will make a difference.
When
19 - 21st May 2026
- See Schedule.
- Here already? Please add your event idea for TWTogether 2026 (click "New Issue").
- Can't wait to participate? If you want to share a longer perspective at TWT 2026 on the role of taxon pages or how the process of taxonomic circumscription might evolve propose it to us! See Contact us.
- Now! Plan your 3-minutes 1 slide presentation. Each day an open session where you can emphasize what's important to your biodiversity informatics world, whether TaxonWorks related or not.
How
All sessions virtual (Zoom) and free to attend. Registration is required. Space may be limited.
Do more
Who
Taxonomists, students, ecologists, curators, collection managers, software developers, biodiversity information scientists, para-taxonomists. If you have questions about TaxonWorks this is a great time to ask them. If you have a vision to share, this is the place. Whether you are very familiar with TaxonWorks or new to our community, all are welcome.
Speakers
Schedule
Contact us! If you would like to participate, we'll discuss with you how you might fit in.
May 19th - Advances from our community and Hands-on activities
Time expressed in your local timezone (UTC)room setup
Organizers and speakers test screen-sharing and microphones. Headsets for all are encouraged and result in best / better sound quality.
Welcome
- Matt Yoder
- Deborah Paul
Discover in our welcome more about the scale, scope, and activities you'll experience at TWT2026.
Community Highlights 1 - Our Community Drives Advances in Tooling
Hear directly from those adopting and helping to develop TaxonWorks. Get insights from the nuances and culture change perspectives they share.
- Ana JešovnikMammals, insects, research and teaching collections data-captured in one database
- Jakob Jilg, Samuel Brown, Jennifer GironBeetle Folk - Advances in Anatomical Part Integration
- Brian FisherAntWeb - Facilitating Community Curation of Routine Data Updates at Scale Drives Improvements In TW tooling
- Maria Marta CiglianoOrthoptera Species File - From 100 to 1MY - Research/maps project Facilitates and Drives Innovation
- John AbbottOdonata - Names integration with the GeoEOD project
Our First Roundtable Topic X
Break
Taxon Pages Update
See live examples in use and learn more about new capabilities and upcoming features possible using our TaxonPages software to share data in any Project using TaxonWorks software as their database.
(this session to be confirmed) GBIF Hosted Community Portals Lightning Intro and Round table
Given the GBIF Hosted Data Portals, we would like to talk with those who worked on developing and implementing how those were or are going to work (software stack, etc). Why do we want to know? The Species File group has used a similar / parallel method for producing
What's New?
So much to share from the research software engineers and our talented and adventurous adopters adding features and functions to TaxonWorks and more. Join us to get a deep (fast) dive into what is new and hints and what might be next.
Lunch
Workshop - Hands-On with TaxonNames
Getting (taxon) names into a database takes careful thought and work. New features for doing this expand on ways to improve common workflow challenges. See informative visualizations, experience drag-to-move names in classifications, and try your own ping get names ingested from outside APIs (e.g. Catalogue of Life).
Global Names, Checklists, OpenRefine
Review, Wrap, Preview Tomorrow
May 20th - What's in progress and what about (aiming for) staying aligned? Then, Does TW do that, and how?
Time expressed in your local timezone (UTC)To be defined.
May 21st - Exploring BAIodiversity AInformatics followed by Focus on the SFG Community
Time expressed in your local timezone (UTC)To be defined.
Awards
The third TaxonWorks Annual Awards! To help celebrate over 11 years of development behind TaxonWorks and its community we look forward to this fun light-hearted event that recognizes the diverse contributions to our community. We ask anyone connected to our network to nominate folks. Winners all receive TaxonWorks swag. Please join us in congratulating everyone and thanks for your nominations and awardee updates coming from the broader community.
Contact
Send email to dlpaulillinoisedu or chat (Matrix/Element) with a member of the Species File Group.