During the week of the 11th December 2023, GBADs held a series of Workshops in Liverpool, United Kingdom. This allowed time for representatives of the GBADs’ themes to come together to work on technical issues within the programme Monday and Tuesday, and have more strategic discussions on programme challenges Wednesday – Thursday, with a round up on Friday. Wednesday 13th – Friday 15th December, Melinda Varfi (UFacilitate), facilitated three days of sessions and exercises with visual harvesting from Carlotta Cataldi (UFacilitate) to allow all of the team to discuss, contribute and present work to the wider team .
Monday 11th December
Deb Stacey (University of Guelph) kicked off the Workshop introducing the data processes and controlled vocabularies for the programme. This was followed by a presentation on the Data dictionary and parameters by Ellen Hughes (University of Liverpool). Next there was a guided discussion, led by Kassy Raymond (University of Guelph) on how to define and standardise input parameters. Afterwards, a discussion about what the programme wants to move forward with and the next steps in GBADs. The afternoon session, led by Theresa Bernardo and Kurtis Sobkowich (University of Guelph), took the form of an interactive discussion designed to map the GBADs modelling activities. The discussion after was useful for the team to get a better understanding of the programme’s modelling activities and gave people some more clarity. This led into the roundup of day 1 and planning for day 2.
Tuesday 12th December
The day started with a review of the first day for our new comers and swiftly moved into Kassy presenting the user personas and the process. A day, which mainly focused on the Informatics team, saw the group discuss with the wider team the models and model coding for GitHub, as well as the licensing and model input forms. The morning gave the wider team time to ask questions and discuss with the Informatics team. The afternoon, which focused on changes in the model and the outputs and pipe lining within the model, rounded up day 2.
Wednesday 13th December
Day 3, which was the beginning of the facilitation of Melinda started with the team discussing what they are trying to achieve from the few days of meeting and identifying the guiding principles bringing the team together? This led into a discussion on of Yield Gap & Animal Health Loss Envelope (AHLE) and a presentation by Will Gilbert (University of Liverpool). This led to key points on the misunderstanding that exist around the AHLE model and what further refinements may be needed, allowing Will time to explain it to the group and help them gain more understanding, which can help with the communication of this internally and externally in 2024.
The Afternoon saw Ellen chair a session on Data Analytics and what key parameters are needed to calculate the AHLE. This allowed small groups to discuss what parameters they think are key and then communicate this back to the wider team. With plenty of discussion, this gave the team a better understanding of what key parameters to agree on, which ones are core to the estimates, and how to communicate this in 2024. The final session was a virtual discussion with, Chip Bailey (Mandeville Advisors LLC) on Business Development with the aim of the group to come to an agreement on what to use in the future of GBADs, and allow space for more questions on how to make GBADs better going forward.
The Informatics team ran a ‘Hackathon’ session alongside the workshop during Wednesday and Thursday, which gave them and others, time to prototype items that had been discussed in days 1 and 2, ask quick questions, and be able to work collaboratively on the GBADs Knowledge Engine, and other GBADs products.
Thursday 14th December
The penultimate day of the Workshop started with presentations on the Population Model & constraints by Mieghan Bruce (Murdoch University), and Brecht Devleesschauwer (Sciensano). The 2nd session of the day focused on how GBADs can communicate better internally and then enhance some of GBADs’ key concepts externally. This session, led by Joao Sucena Afonso and Mike Cooper (University of Liverpool) allowed the team to share experiences of communication and how they can improve as a team to communicate with each other. An interactive session on external communications allowed the group to split into smaller teams and focusing on a key concept of GBADs to then communicate back to a ‘Special Guest’ who may have different knowledge and expertise in GBADs or not even be aware of GBADs, Economics, Mathematic Modelling etc. A discussion on communications was needed and the programme will now look into incorporating the discussions and actions into the future of GBADs linking to the User Persona work led by Kassy in day 2.
In the afternoon, there was a facilitated open space for discussions this gave time for discussions and communicating each other’s thoughts and ideas on 4 different topics, definitely one of the successes of the week! Finally, Jonathan Rushton (University of Liverpool) gave a quick discussion on ‘Going Global’ and what the programme has as a global framework, products and agreements. A discussion was had on how to strengthen this, and how to communicate the ongoing work more.
Friday 15th December
To end the week of workshops and meetings, The Informatics team presented a review of the results from the “Hackathon” and allowed the wider team to hear back on the successes of the week, learn more on that the team had achieved during the week. The final session, led by Hannah Davies (University of Liverpool), was a fishbowl conversation on the future of GBADs and everyone is involved within the programme and how they can all make it a success. An exciting end to the week with a lot of work to look forward to in the future!
A big thank you to everybody who was involved and we look forward to seeing what the future holds. If you would like to learn about the week or GBADs in general, please contact gbads@liverpool.ac.uk