Persistence and Progress

Portfolio

Persistence and Progress

By Ben Craker, Portfolio Manager

When it comes to the methodical, detail-focused work we do through the working group process at AgGateway, the headline news is more often about the solid progress each working group is making towards their common goals. And that’s the theme of this month’s portfolio update: persistence.

While there are no big announcements of completed work right now, several teams are continuing to make incremental process toward a wrap-up at the annual meeting in November. Also following the round table discussions at the mid-year meeting we are getting ready to kick off several new projects. Be on the lookout for a call to participate for Working Group 36 on GTIN usage in seed messaging.

WG27 | End-User Identification is working to consolidate more feedback into the whitepaper that will serve as the primary output from the group. The document helps clearly articulate the perceptions, use cases, and constraints all the participants have shared. This foundational understanding is key to getting the industry on the same page when it comes to uniquely identifying a farm entity.

WG31 | Field Ops Controlled Vocabulary will be trying a little different format, the team is spread across a lot of time zones making meeting scheduling difficult, so they are trying to work through some of the refinements to the proposal for representing field operations a bit more asynchronously. If it works, it might help set the template for future working groups with participants all over the globe.

WG34 | Field Boundary - Obstacles has moved to tweaking an initial proposal of the data model changes needed to support obstacles within ADAPT Standard. The team is working to finalize the proposal as well as the controlled vocabularies used to categorize obstacles.

WG35 | Data Stewardship Metadata is getting its footing after running into some similar time zone and scheduling issues to WG31. The team has a plan laid out and are starting to systematically work through requirements based on the key use cases. The group made a couple use cases showing how data flows and who has control and access based off one of the main scenarios in the ADAPT Standard documentation that will be the basis for the initial review of what existing elements might be able to address data stewardship concerns.

The staff and members are engaged in numerous discussions both inside AgGateway and with other parties in the industry that are identifying future areas of work. Nothing that is ready to be discussed here yet, but there are some potentially big projects on the horizon so if you have any thoughts on lab test data, field operations reporting, or data ethics drop me a note, it would be great to make sure all members interests are taken into account as we dig in on these future working group topics.

As usual, if you have any questions on the activities of any of these working groups, an idea for a new group, or want to get engaged feel free to contact me (ben.craker@aggateway.org), or sign up for a working group here.