PEDP’s September Retreat
The Public Environmental Data Partners came together with urgency in November 2024 to preserve and protect critical federal data and tools that were at risk of being removed from public access. Since then, our coalition of dedicated volunteers and members has archived 269 datasets that are vital for climate adaptation and community decision-making.
As a community of folks spread across the United States and Canada, we’ve developed a remote culture of collaboration and respect. We meet virtually every week, connect online, and even occasionally see each other in person at datathons and conferences. However, we felt an urgent need to connect in a more substantial way, to deepen our relationships and strengthen our sense of community and purpose. We recognized the importance of refreshing our shared vision, and as a group of people with a diversity of skill sets and backgrounds, we wanted to gather just to get to know each other better.
So, last month we did just that! Members who were able came together for a two-day retreat at Preservation Park in downtown Oakland, California.
About 20 folks were able to join in person and many more attended remotely. Some of the topics we covered included improving the onboarding process for new members, refining our values and mission statement, mapping out projects for the coming year, and envisioning our future goals and impact. Our time together was energizing, clarifying, and gave us a forum to identify our strong points of alignment as well as respectfully and encouragingly understand our points of difference. Getting to know each other better was also a success. By sharing meals, coffee runs, and a beautiful walk around Oakland’s Lake Merritt, we nurtured the relationships that sustain our work and make the continued growth of this coalition possible.
We’ll carry the energy from our retreat forward with our data preservation, tool development, and advocacy work, such as backing up CDC’s Vaccine Data Code Sets and EPA’s Toxic Release Inventory and restoring the full functionality and hosting of the Climate and Economic Justice Screening Tool, EJ Screen, and other federally-created software. To make it easier for newcomers to contribute to these projects and more, we’re also prioritizing operational improvements, such as establishing open source project conventions and processes across the PEDP code ecosystem on Github. Our action-packed couple days together allowed us to refocus and re-energize for our work moving forward, and we look forward to continue growing and incorporating the invaluable learnings from our retreat.
Thank you to everyone who has supported us over the past year, and we look forward to seeing where this work takes us in the future. To those interested in learning more, please consider getting involved, donating to our efforts, or reaching out for more information.
