In the past few years I have followed RDA and other international communities on FAIR data and open science with great interest. So of course I was aware of the plenary and excited to finally get the chance to participate and meet up this year. With my RDA / EOSC Future domain ambassadorship in the arctic data community, this visit was not just about participating in the RDA Plenary, but also about the collocated EOSC Future event and meeting the RDA team and fellow domain ambassadors in person.

The thought of going to Gothenburg felt almost too easy and comfortable, just a few hours train ride from home in Denmark and not as enticing as some of the previous RDA Plenary locations. We had even been warned of the climate beforehand, some would say rightly so... That being said, the stay really was great and most of all, absolute brilliant facilities for the RDA Plenary. Gothenburg was also a positive and welcoming experience that I would like to visit again soon.

Arriving at Chalmers and Lindholmen Conference Centre - 1.

Arriving at Chalmers and Lindholmen Conference Centre - 2

Reception at City Hall

EOSC Future Event

Being a newcomer to EOSC Future and still learning what it's all about, I didn't beforehand fully understand what was on the agenda here and if it would be of use to me. But soon we were into deeply relevant topics, and I found myself eagerly asking questions and commenting via the online system. I will highlight one talk that especially caught my interest:

[The Elephant in the Room: The Role of Big Commercial Cloud Providers (Hans Pfeiffenberger)](https://www.rd-alliance.org/sites/default/files/2023-03-20%20RDA20-EOSC%...)

I, and I believe many others in data management, can relate to the challenges discussed here:

* Scientists are always short on time and naturally seek the easiest solutions.
* Publicly/EU funded and managed portals and technical solutions have a hard time competing with easy solutions offered by tech giants.
* Pr. project non-continuous funding leads to redundant work and multiple projects taking on the same challenges.

RDA / EOSC Future: Global research Commons: Europe and beyond

Taking a break and catching fresh air outside the venue, during evening networking dinner

DataCite Connect
Since engaging more and more in data management, open data and implementation of FAIR principles as a repository manager, DataCite has stood out as a really cool and down-to-earth player in the field. First, I love the service they provide in form us allowing us to easily mint PIDs via their APIs. But whats really cool is the community feeling they build and inclusive user events that they frequently arrange online. The DataCite Connect was a chance to participate and meet in person. Unfortunately it was collocated with the EOSC Future event, and as RDA / EOSC future ambassador I had to prioritize. But I managed to sneak out to a visit at the DataCite Connect, and was not disappointed - a packed room, lightning talk, poster boards for giving your input, merchandise and lovely cookies.

A quick visit to the DataCite Connect event

It's the little things that matters... Branded community building

Plenary and Pathways
With sessions in multiple rooms at all times (counting off memory, around 6+ rooms), the pathway planning was a good tool to structure which sessions to seek out. There was interesting topics in all pathways, but with a technical background and interest in solutions and initiatives that are tangible and also of high relevance to my RDA ambassadorship in the arctic data community, I decided to mainly follow two paths:

* FAIR, CARE, TRUST - Adoption, Implementation, and Deployment
* Research Software

It's so important to bring research software forward as a first class research output. And this is closely related to also making science open and results entirely reproducible. Happy to see so many people working on these topics, and hope I can contribute in the future.

Research software is a critical part of research

Reproducibility

Hybrid Experience
I was really impressed with how well the combined in person and virtual experience worked out. I was there in person most of the time, but did the last day virtually so experienced it from both sides. Menti polls and questions asked online from both in room and virtual participants and handled by moderators made everything work seamlessly and without noise and disturbance in the big plenary hall. During the smaller sessions, google docs for comments and input also worked well for me.

Thanks to organizers and participants
A big thank you to all the hardworking organizers and technicians doing on-scene and behind the scenes work and making P20 Gothenburg such a smooth and professional event.

The plenary certainly met expectations - it was a hectic, positive, knowledge-and-networking loaded week in professional settings,  with so many committed people.