iNat-evangelizing

[Tait Sougstad]

After ~6 months of using iNaturalist, I've been baffled at how small the use base is in my home community of Montana. We have myriads of land managers, conservation groups, academics, birders, etc., etc. It's amazing to me that I'm not seeing every Bio-science major in the state using the app. I know there are specialists out there who are involved in various Web 1.0 type platforms, and I want to recruit them all to iNat. As we've seen over and over again, one enthusiast who spends his or her break times scanning for things to identify can add a ton of value to the community.

I almost just started sending out emails willy-nilly, but I put the pause on it to think of a way to organize my effort to make it more effective. So far, I think I'm going to collect contacts for heads of each of the nodes and create a form email introduction that I can tweak for each group's possible interests. I'm considering offering to give presentations at professional or club gatherings.

So, now, I'm asking for advice. Are there any publicity packs I should be using? Are there any tried-and-true methods or strategies? What else could I do to maximize the reach?

Tait

Billings, Montana

[Colin Purrington]

Ibid, but in Pennsylvania.

[Scott Loarie]

Hi Tait,

Thanks for kicking off a conversation about this. I'm posting some
random ideas down below. But I'd love to take steps towards shared
publicity packs / strategies as you mention. Would be great if this
thread could help move us in that direction.

But as for random ideas:

a) organizing a Bioblitz / Meetup

Try to get a mix of existing iNat users in the area
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations?place_id=16&view=observers
and new people. Journal posts and projects are pretty good tools for
organizing and capturing what went down. Examples:

Ecological Society of America meetup Carrie just organized in New Orleans
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/carrieseltzer/17634-meet-up-in-new-orleans-on-august-6-and-stickers
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/carrieseltzer/18119-the-first-esa-inaturalist-mixer

Utah meetup I organized a few months ago with a personal journal post
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/loarie/16797-naturalizing-around-salt-lake-on-june-23rd
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wasatch-june-23rd-inat-meetup
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/wasatch-june-23rd-inat-meetup/journal

also getting some orgs involved in existing events like
http://citynaturechallenge.org/ can be effective ways at getting
people to give iNat a try

b) organize a workshop with or presentation to an institution that
might be a good fit

We have a smattering of handouts and presentations hanging around, but
I'd love to work towards getting these in a more sharable / organized
format.
Here's a recent baby step I did towards this where I included a link
to the figures in slide form:
https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/inaturalist-stick-and-leaf-insects-working-group/journal/18007-inaturalist-for-stick-and-leaf-insect-phasmida-citizen-science
I'd be happy to spend some time getting some presentation / handout
templates cleaned up if that would help

c) blogs social media

We've done a few iNaturalist blog posts meant to kick off a
conversation about iNat use in a particular place
https://www.inaturalist.org/blog/13330-inaturalist-in-argentina-inaturalist-en-argentina
maybe you could write a journal post or guest blog post about iNat in Montana?

Also tell your friends, iNat-evangelizing from someone within a
community is generally much more effective than someone from the
outside doing the same e.g. here's a recent conversation among a FB
moth community discussing the merits of iNat with some nice pitches
from iNat users who are also parts of that community
https://www.facebook.com/andrew.reago/posts/10214222485428410

d) need Swag?

We'd also love to come up with a nice sharable system for people
getting the iNat swag they need. Carrie's taken a baby step in that
direction with stickers as described here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/journal/carrieseltzer/17634-meet-up-in-new-orleans-on-august-6-and-stickers

Thanks,

Scott

On Wed, Aug 15, 2018 at 9:13 AM, Colin Purrington
<colin.pu...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Ibid, but in Pennsylvania.
>
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--------------------------------------------------
Scott R. Loarie, Ph.D.
Co-director, iNaturalist.org
California Academy of Sciences
55 Music Concourse Dr
San Francisco, CA 94118
--------------------------------------------------

[Derek Shiels]

Hi Tait,

I had similar thoughts after using iNat for a year. I've given one presentation at a regional Midwest Stewardship conference and will be giving another presentation for a national landtrust conference this fall. I am just sharing how I and others are using the platform and using it as an opportunity to iNat-evangelize to land managers.

-Derek (@calloftheloon)

[Tait Sougstad]

That's great, Derek. Do you use a powerpoint or anything, or just give some talks?

I've started by doing some web searches to turn up target groups and get any contact information I can. "Montana naturalist", "montana conservation", "montana birding", "montana entomology" have turned up many organizations I had never heard of. I knew about the Montana Natural Heritage Program (which I think now gathers information from iNat), but not the Montana Institute on Ecosystems or many other conservation groups. "About" or "contact us" pages often have email addresses or contact forms.

Once I have a list I'm satisfied with, I'm going to put together a one- or two-page information PDF (maybe one exists somewhere) and a form email that I can tweak and modify to suit the audience. After that, it's just the grind work of shooting out emails and trying to persuade people it is worth their while, whether organizationally or personally.

I have several arguments for busy people:

• Science: iNaturalist provides a platform for interactive science. Researchers have used data on iNaturalist to initiate or contribute to published works. They can also use the platform to engage citizen scientists to assist in research (help me find this taxon! what is being observed in this area over time?) Every class that includes identification skills should use iNat as a platform for it's students.
• Conservation: Conservation begins with understanding the ecosystems needing conserved, which begins with learning the names of the taxa in the ecosystem. iNaturalist shows what people are seeing in areas of interest, and is a nursery of conservation thought. Every conservation group should have alerts set up for any taxon or area they are keeping tabs on, and conservation professionals should be engaged in the community.
• Land Management: Similar to above, but especially for their areas of official responsibility. Every USFS, BLM, NPS, etc. agency should have alerts set up for their area, and has an educational and scientific interest in helping citizens identify observations. Every trailhead should have an iNaturalist sheet encouraging people to post observations and help others identify, so that every hike becomes in part a science expedition.
• Enthusiasts: I think the only reason every amateur birder, entomologist, botanist, etc. is not on iNaturalist is because they just don't know, yet. iNat is the obvious social platform for these hobbies. Even as a neophyte, it has been an endless source of delight as I see people discover new and interesting taxa across the region, expand the ranges of observation, share results from remote expeditions, and give me the ability to help others while developing and honing my own knowledge and skills. As I talk to people, it is most difficult to convey this sentiment. My "plant identification thing" is one of many nerdy quirks people have become accustom to, and I get weird and awkward responses when I try to explain that since I started learning to identify, every moment outside is a treasure hunt. My daily commutes to work are filled with discoveries as each group grows and flowers in turn. Audubon and native plant societies should be the most receptive to this line of thinking.

My emails will include an offer to present to the group they are associated with, and I can use that as a platform to identify if there are conferences or meetings I can get invited to in order to maximize the reach. I have a family with littles, and I work full-time, so I don't have unlimited time. But if I can make my targets efficient, perhaps I can pass the passion on to others and get the Northern Rockies some much-needed attention.

I've also been considering starting an "iNaturalist Montana" blog to make posts about notable observations, events, organizations, efforts, etc.

Also, I recently learned about the Illinois Native Plant Society "Botanical Big Year" projects, which are simply brilliant. Kudos to everyone involved. I'd like to get one going, hopefully in conjunction with the Montana Native Plant Society, and maybe other permutations with other interest groups (Montana Birding Big Year [a redundancy, I know] with the Audubon Society, Bug Big Year with the MSU Entomology Group, etc.) It would be great to be able to track how those kinds of programs (any program or effort, I suppose) generate new and sustained users (thoughts from developers?) I suspect they are fairly effective, as they coordinate efforts around the platform, generate some buzz from publicity, and most importantly get people using the platform.

Tait

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[GanCW]

Same here, there are so many people wasting their observations on social media so I decided to evangelise iNaturalist. I did a talk in Malaysia early this month, one for the public in Singapore last week and will be doing another talk for the Nature Society Singapore members next week.

Those of us who have used iNat for a while take many things for granted but new users are always baffled by the myriad of features in iNat.

I structured the talk cum workshop into 3 sessions :

The first session is to get people to upload data - iNat introduction, share how I use iNat, give an example of how observation is being used for research and show how to upload and edit observations.

The 2nd session is on managing one's observations, how to use iNat's machine id, compare and advanced filtering to id observations, how to use a journal to facilitate record and data retrieval.

The 3rd session is on places, projects, identification, data export, tags, annotations and custom URLs .

[lelliott]

I've tried to engage folks on Facebook to keep them from throwing away their valuable observations, with minimal success. I did an informal survey from the FB Missouri native plants group, trying to figure out why they don't use iNat and presented a brief summary of the findings (attached image) within a presentation I did for the Missouri Geography Alliance.

[Colin Purrington]

Another reason people might prefer to post their nature pics to Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. is simple psychology ... those platforms are engineered to generate likes, retweets, and feedback, all of which trigger a dopamine kick. The same photograph posted on iNaturalist might never get a fave, might never elicit an interesting comment from an expert, and (sometimes) might never attract ID thoughts. It can be a tough sell for those who already get a comfortable dopamine fix via traditional social media.

[Tait Sougstad]

Thank you for your observations, GanCW, lelliott and Colin. (No iNat pun intended!)

GanCW, thanks for the description of your presentation. I agree that there is a lot and that we need to orient people so they know what the possibilities are, and what the benefits are. That probably does take multiple sessions, if you can find the right venue. I think it will be hard to pack that into a 30 minute staff meeting in the middle of people's day. The best would be to get it on everyone's devices and have accounts set up so that you can immediately send people out to take a picture of a dandelion or yarrow or something easy to find and make their first observations. Or have clients set up to browse local observations in grid view and have people start identifying immediately to get a flavor for it. It all takes time, though!

lelliott, These are botanical enthusiasts and professionals who have these reasons, or just regular folks who just kinda' like plants? I can't imagine that an enthusiast wouldn't thrill with the idea that they could 1) post pictures for and interact with an audience who can more fully appreciate them, 2) search an area and help others identify things, and 3) find out where people are finding the rarer treasures. But, it's good to know what people are saying.

Colin, I agree with what you are saying, and I think that iNaturalist could incorporate some features that would give a similar hit without going full Facebook. I've built up a little iNat community of people I look to and interact with by being persistent and cultivating the habit of checking people's profiles, but most people are not willing to give that kind of a chance. The first several months on iNat were kind of lonely, and I wondered if anyone ever used the site, until someone swept through and identified half my posts. Then I discovered how to use the grid view on the "explore" function and it's a daily habit to check for new posts on Montana (and surrounding states when things are slow.) Again, it took a while to find that stuff, but I get about as much of a "high" going on an identification spree as I ever did when I was on Facebook. It's hard to stop! If iNat would capitalize on behaviors like that by designing the interface to default there, directing people to the places of maximum engagement, I think people would get hooked a little faster and stick around longer.

However, for the sake of this thread, it's good to know how to train people to get them plugged in where they thrive.

--

[GanCW]

The best way to evangelize iNat is to target those who are already taking photos or keeping checklist as they will be able to see the benefit of having their photos id and easily searchable.  My goal is to 'convert' this group of naturalists and have them evangelise the benefits of iNat to their circle of friends. 

[Sam Kieschnick]

I've really enjoyed reaching out to the naturalist community where I live/work in Dallas/Fort Worth for the past few years.  I've found out that commenting on observations, especially for new users, is extremely valuable.  It's a "welcome to the community!" sort of thing.  This is something that you can do without actually having to go out to the masses.

Now, if you do want to go out and physically meet with folks, that's even more powerful.  I've found that visiting places that are already doing naturalist-y things are relatively open to including a new tool like iNaturalist to their toolbox.  So, if there are nature centers or nature/environmental groups, then I think that introducing the tool is effective.  There are some other online presentations that folks have done that you can build off of:

https://www.slideshare.net/search/slideshow?searchfrom=header&q=inaturalist

Also, if you can get a media nibble, that can give a pretty nice splash of activity!  Even with local papers or magazines, writing up a little op-ed or article on this neat tool that engages folks with nature can be most effective.

Most of all, stick in there!  I've noticed that with some folks, iNat just isn't a good fit and isn't the tool for them, and facebook or another photosharing site is what they'd prefer.  That's totally fine.  For others, iNat is THE tool of nature journaling and social network that fills the gap.  :)

~Sam

[Derek Shiels]

Thanks Sam, for mentioning that. I was going to write that I have received powerpoints from Sam and others (see the link Sam provided), which served as jumping off points for creating my own. -Derek

[Tait Sougstad]

Yeah, thanks Sam! DFW has some sweet naturalist initiatives. I'd love to get a Nature Exchange set up for my area like you guys have. I have family in your area and they gush about it. Stuff like that is prime soil for iNaturalizing. :) I bet working with local conservation outreaches (zoos, audubon centers, arboretums, nature parks) to hang up iNaturalist fliers and posters would help direct traffic as well. Also, if you can get a director or staff member "converted", we can probably work with them to set people up on iNat for nature walks or bioblitzes or whatnot. 

--

[Tony Iwane]

Just wanted to share a video montage I made from the iNat meet-up in Texas this past spring - there were folks from Arizona and California there as well: https://vimeo.com/286463430 Here's a link to the project for the trip: https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/southwest-texas-inat-a-thon It was a ton of fun and kind of surreal to be around 20 people all speaking in iNat terminology. 

I agree with Sam (who's done a lot to help build a great community in Texas, along with many other great iNatters) that if you continue plugging away and add IDs, comments, and plan some meet-ups you'll build a good community in Montana. GanCW's idea of tapping intoa  group of folks who are basically already iNatting is a good one. I did a talk at Idaho State University for Prof. Charlie Sexton and suggested that tapping into a cohort like photographers at Yellowstone might be a good way to start. Mark McGrouther's Australasian Fishes project did really well in part by getting the word out to underwater photographers.

Tony Iwane

[Charlie Hohn]

Yeah, when i first got on iNat i was pushing it pretty hardcore to everyone i met. I found if people needed a lot of convincing, they probably wouldn't stay on the site anyway. Now I just use it often and talk to people about it and also share the links with people when relevant and that seems to have better results in my case. The biggest boom for us was when a local nonprofit, the Vermont Center for Ecostudies, put some time and money into advertising and outreach to get people on iNaturalist (as well as some other citizen science platforms such as Ebird). Basically, people seem more likely to stay if they think they found it on their own. :)

Right now i personally am more interested in recruiting more 'power users' and IDers (either officially trained experts or "super-amateurs") because at this stage i think those are the people we need the most. Of course that's just my take and others may disagree.

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[Tait Sougstad]

That reminds me: Do birders seem to prefer eBird over iNat if they are already on that platform? Can users cross post from eBird? Seems like a potential road block to getting more birders. I tried a birding platform a few years ago but it was pretty clunky.

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[Tony Iwane]

eBird's awesome but records data differently than iNat, so observations can't be cross-posted between the two platforms.

Tony Iwne

[Charlie Hohn]

I'm not a birder but i think because most birding is by sound and sounds are a pain to observe on inat, and also because ebird is so established, and in addition it's really hard to get good bird photos via the app... it's a hard sell to get ebird users onto iNat (nor do most people go the other way and abandon iNat for Ebird at least as far as I can tell).

The bottom line is both datasets go to GBIF and the methodology of both are really different, so they aren't really competitors just means to an end.  But... i'm no birder so i barely ever use ebird.

[Upupa epops]

I'm a birder and even though I absolutely love iNaturalist and probably spend too much time on it, I much prefer eBird for birds for a number of reasons. I think it's perfectly designed for the way people tend to observe birds, and it allows you to get absence data. With plants or insects there are just so many around that it doesn't seem possible to get a complete list every time I go out. Birds are large and easy to see and identify at a distance, so you can get closer to seeing all of them in an area, but it's too difficult to get photos of them to post every one I see to iNat. It doesn't feel right posting non-photo observations to iNat... 

I could see them sort of working as competitors if iNat wants to have more bird observations, because I don't post birds to iNat even when I have photos as they're already on eBird.

But eBird doesn't support any other group of organisms other than birds. So you can still target all the birders who are out in the woods and taking pictures of other interesting things they find along the way, or when birding gets boring in the summer and they look for butterflies and dragonflies instead.

"The first several months on iNat were kind of lonely, and I wondered if anyone ever used the site"

I can see this being an issue for some newcomers if they don't give an ID to their observations. "Unknown" observations can remain unidentified for months because there is such an overwhelming number of them for an identifier to go through, and new people are more likely to make them.

[mkken...@gmail.com]

I am a keen promoter of iNaturalist and it would be very useful if we were able to share and reuse/adapt existing promo material.

i have a powerpoint that i could share. Last year as part of Canada150 there were a number of posters that were created - perhaps these too could be shared and then others could translate or revise the text. is Google SlideShare an option? How does iNaturalist currently compile info and draft new guidelines?

This morning i contacted a local river association and suggested that their junior rangers program include an iNaturalist component. In the US have the National Parks been approached to see if they are interested in adding iNaturalist as an additional junior ranger badge?  (perhaps this would be a good way to develop content that could be shared with youth groups?)

As iNaturalist is growing rapidly it would also be useful to draft a set of guidelines re sharing of info -- as a data manager i would like to promote use of DarwinCore terms whenever possible and to discourrage everyone from making up their own terms/tags to go with observations. This is related to this posting topic as someone mentionned sharing with eBird in another post.

it is possible to share the same observation with iNaturalist and eBird or with HappyWhale or with other groups. However a field should indicate that the observation has been shared and the identifier to the shared record should also be provided. if, for example i share a photo of a moth or butterfly with another expert group and they provide me with an identification i should include a new field called 'IdentifiedBy'.

[mkken...@gmail.com]

I contacted eBird back in the spring and they indicated that they do not consider iNaturalist as a 'rival'. The two sites offer different things. on iNaturalist you can share whatever you like - i often ignore chickadees and bluejays but may take photos of crows and i might take a photo or two of plants at the same time. If i was contributing to eBird i believe that i should list all birds observed at a given location within a given time period.

In my opinion iNaturalist can be used as a learning tool - as more and more photos are taken of birds one can learn their names and then feel confident that they know enough to contribute to eBird.

Once you learn the bird names then the next iNaturalist activity could be to take photos of males/females/juveniles, etc. then photos with different behavior (flying, sitting, feeding, etc)

Last winter i contacted a number of iNaturalist contributors who had uploaded photos of whales and inquired if they would be willing to also share their observations with HappyWhale. one of the benefits of this is that the person who saw the whale can now track their whale around the globe.

My hope is that we can encourage people to get outdoors exploring and then sharing their observations. we don't need to curb enthusiasm by restricting who they share with but rather get organizations to work together and identify common practices that will flag shared/replicate observations and also highlight extra info that can be gained by contributing to various sites.

[mkken...@gmail.com]

here is an example of posting to two sites:

https://inaturalist.ca/observations/15999758 --> on the lower right you will see link to eBird

https://ebird.org/view/checklist/S28900021

[Charlie Hohn]

I actually wish there were an ePlant type thing. I do create a lot of plant species lists that are meant to be more or less comprehensive (with plants you never really can do that in most areas because they can't all be identified at the same time of year, by the time an aster flowers the violets are gone, etc). I do sometimes put those lists on iNat without photos but it isn't ideal. Otherwise i have them on a work database but some are sharable but no real place to do so.

[GanCW]

I agree with you. Hard sell may turn people off.  Like you I now focus on getting a powers users and expert. My selling point to the expert is that their time and effort doing id on social media would be better spend on iNat where their id can be used by more people and to train AI and they get to see more interesting observation.  I just managed to bring in a butterfly expert which as a result of his id has brought in more butterfly watchers to iNat.

[GanCW]

It will be easier to move newbie to iNat if iNat can import photos from Facebook/Instagram and allow one-click post to social media.

[mkken...@gmail.com]

isn't it easy to upload from Facebook to iNaturalist?

[Whitney Mattila]

I haven't tried (I'm more a Twitter person), but if it requires some amount of computer knowledge, even if it's basic, that could be where the bottleneck lies.

If it might help, maybe a plug-in could be developed in the future to make this process as easy as possible, while making sure every photo uploaded has a date, location, etc to avoid any potential headaches. :) I don't know how difficult this would be, tho.

[Tait Sougstad]

Oh, I like that idea, Whitney. You can already use your FB login as your iNat login. And there are already ways that people can plug in to the FB API as an "app" or whatever. Making it so FB users can initiate an iNat post with the click of a button would be a great cross-platform connection, especially if it could plug iNat in the post (ie. "Posted to iNaturalist" text linked to the observation.) Same with the other platforms that people can use to login to iNat, Flickr, Twitter, Google, etc.

On Wed, Aug 29, 2018 at 12:44 PM Whitney Mattila <wbma...@gmail.com> wrote:

I haven't tried (I'm more a Twitter person), but if it requires some amount of computer knowledge, even if it's basic, that could be where the bottleneck lies.

If it might help, maybe a plug-in could be developed in the future to make this process as easy as possible, while making sure every photo uploaded has a date, location, etc to avoid any potential headaches. :) I don't know how difficult this would be, tho.

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[Christian Schwarz]

I have had really good success evangelizing iNat in a few ways:

1. FB is great at incentivizing sharing through likes, etc. So! Ask folks in natural history-themed facebook groups to post to iNat first, and then share the link to FB.
A few more steps, but at least some folks follow through and make it a habit.

2. I also go the opposite direction – if there is a particularly notable (rare/beautiful/nicely documented) find posted to FB, I ask the original user to go post it on iNat.
There are a few subtleties to this:
1. I mention the original poster by name. This notifies them with the text "___ mentioned you" which is more direct and motivating than a simple comment without their name.
2. I use pre-loaded text on my phone for this purpose. I use the Text Replacement feature so that I can just type "pcat" and hit enter, and my phone autocompletes with the following message:
"Please consider adding these photos to www.inaturalist.org – thanks!"
3. I explain to them why the photo(s) depict something notable, and why it would help people like me (who study phenology and biodiversity).

Have fun!

[Ricky Jones]

Hey Tait,

I'm an undergrad at MSU in the LRES (Land Resources) department. I use iNaturalist quite a bit and would love to figure out how to get more people in Montana using it. I think being at MSU I have access to a lot of people who could spread the word efficiently, or at least get you in front of an audience of interested folks.

I'd love to help get you connected with professors or other people of interest in this area, I'm pretty involved in the outdoor community.

Thanks,

Ricky

[Tait Sougstad]

Hey, thanks Ricky! @mctoshack spoke with me about participating in an Adventure Scientists butterfly survey earlier this summer. I love what you guys do!

I would love to get in contact with any of the bio-science faculty at MSUB and see if there would be an opportunity for a presentation. I don't have to be the one doing it, if anyone else out there is motivated and comfortable with public speaking.

And if you know anyone who would be interested, I've been pondering setting up a loose iNaturalist Montana group to coordinate some of these efforts. Pass on my contact info if they would like to be involved.

--

[Ricky Jones]

Thanks Tait! I wish we had some sites for you out in Billings. iNaturalist has been a very useful tool for us here. I'll see if I can get anyone on campus interested in this and if so, I'll pass along your info. I would be interested in a group here to get together and do BioBlitz days.

Maybe we can meet somewhere in the middle, like the Beartooths or something!

Talk soon,

Ricky

[Tait Sougstad]

Some projects local groups or individuals could take on:

Put iNat bookmarks in identification books at their local libraries

Put up signs at parks and trailheads (with the consent of the orgs responsible of course!)

--

[Colin Purrington]

I finally got around to typing up some reasons why people should give iNaturalist a try:

https://colinpurrington.com/2018/08/reasons-to-use-inaturalist/

[Ian Toal]

That's really a good, comprehensive list which should appeal to all interested naturalists. I would change a few things, but I don't believe it would actually improve what is there. 

Can we copy this and send it to other people?

Ian

[Chris Cheatle]

One minor comment, the 250,000 users count is likely an over-estimate. There are over a million accounts that have been created on the site, but that includes inactive ones, spammers etc.

The site averages about 80,000 active users, active being defned as contributing something in the last 30 days.

https://www.inaturalist.org/stats

80,000 is still an impressive number.

[Colin Purrington]

Chris, that's a great point. I've edited the number of users to 80,000 active ones. Thanks.

[Colin Purrington]

Ian: https://colinpurrington.com/2018/08/reasons-to-use-inaturalist/ is a stable link. Share away! 

[Ian Toal]

Thank you!!

[Tait Sougstad]

People checking out field guide books at the library are prime targets. If anyone is a savvy visual designer, I'd love to see someone make a PDF to print out iNat bookmarks. I would bring them each time I go to the library and stick them in the field guides.

[Ricky Jones]

What if we printed QR codes from species pages on iNat, and put them in the field guides? Like this one for yellow salsify:

RICKY JONES  |  TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR  |  406-624-3320 Ext. 713

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[Tait Sougstad]

Yeeeesss. That would be a great option to put on a bookmark! A mystery QR that leads into the website.

I've also had an idea of making a bunch of species identification signs, small but durable, to put at plants around the city. My design idea has been revolving around the "Hi, my name is" badges, as in "Hi, my name is Yellow Salsify (Tragopogon Dubius)!" I was already thinking of putting a QR code to the iNat page on those. Install them at plants along walking paths to increase the community biological knowledge.

[Ricky Jones]

I'm hesitant about putting  signs around natural areas. Some people enjoy the unknown of nature, placing the signs gives them no option but to see something apart from the environment that they are observing. I suppose it would depend on the area that the signs are in. Is that getting too deep here?

There have to be other guided nature trails in the area with signage right? What if you just added iNat tags/QR/bookmarks to existing signs with the owner's permission? The accuracy and specificity of the plant life won't be there like it would if you used the exact species ID placed next to the plant. It will however serve the same purpose of getting people interested, but leave it to them to begin using the app and identifying the rest of the surrounding flora and fauna.

RICKY JONES  |  TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR  |  406-624-3320 Ext. 713

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[Tait Sougstad]

I agree with your sentiments. You'd want to put them in places already developed, not wilderness areas. And keep them maintained by tracking where they are and moving them around regularly to different specimens so that it stays fresh and doesn't become litter.

A standard QR that leads to iNaturalist.org would be good to have for any print out, too.

[Ricky Jones]

Oh this sounds like a great application for the Internet of Things (IoT) if you've experienced that yet. Beacon technology could play a major role here. With the ability to negate the signage altogether and just push notifications to users who sign up for it or have their bluetooth on.

Well worth looking into, I've dabbled with Beacons in the past but never anything useful.

RICKY JONES  |  TECHNOLOGY COORDINATOR  |  406-624-3320 Ext. 713

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[Whitney Mattila]

I like the idea of the 'hi, I'm (local wild plant), and using that as an introduction.

Instead of putting them next to actual plants, however, why not use an image of that plant (provided it's under the right license and/or has the photographer's permission). I know people get interested in what local plants are, and these can be placed in public areas online and offline very easily.

[Christophe Jenny]

You've been tweeted (but you already saw it)! @MusaDiversity

Christophe