Erik Schultes, Luiz Bonino, Catharina Wasner and Xavier Engels participated in multiple sessions of the 14th Plenary RDA conference held in Helsinki. Highlights include:

• On October 22, the RDA co-located event organised by GEDE covered emerging solutions for both the “top” and the “waist” of the “hourglass” approach to data infrastructure. In the morning session, the FAIR Convergence Matrix, a tool

  

  under development by a GO FAIR working group that maximizes re-use of FAIR implementations, was presented as well as the initial analyses of overlaps between the “FAIR Implementation Profiles” of more than 30 research communities. An engaged discussion followed focusing on both theoretical and practical issues. The afternoon session focused on the active progress in combining the FAIR Principles with Digital Objects. With a little augmentation by Erik, the meeting poster says it all:

• On October 22, Erik Schultes participated in the RDA Funders Forum, and presented the status of the FAIR Funder Implementation Study. The RDA Funders Forum plans to make closer engagement with IGs and WGs a more regular part of the Funders Forum.
• On October 25, Erik Schultes participated in the Kick-Off Meeting of the InteroperAble Descriptions of Observable Property Terminology (I-ADOPT) Working Group. The objective of the group overlaps heavily with the FAIR Convergence Matrix: to improve research data interoperability through the harmonization of observable property descriptions with a community agreed terminology framework based on existing approaches and terminologies.
• On October 25, Erik Schultes participated in the Birds-of-a-Feather session on “Professionalizing data stewardship” and presented recent GO FAIR activities around the emerging Data Stewardship Competency Centers (DSCC) Implementation Network which covers many of the same topics.
• On October 25, Erik Schultes participated in the Joint Meeting for Food Systems, and once again introduced the FAIR Convergence Matrix.