EPOS MSL data catalogue - Vision, Mission, Strategy and Workshops

Direction and positioning

A catalogue can become a search page without a clear purpose. Upon starting at MSL I received different explanations and interpretations on what MSL is and does from the core team members, which made clear that our team would benefit to make our message within more coherent and clear by formulating mission and vision statements. We needed to agree on who MSL serves, how it relates to EPOS, and what progress looks like beyond dataset numbers.

Throughout several sessions, all memebers stated what they think MSL is about and worked through the differences and commonalities. We discussed researchers, repositories, and labs as separate audiences, introduced the notion of different stakeholders, the path from publishing to harvesting and rediscovery, and the language for the About and contribution pages.

Vision: We strive to create the best earth science laboratory data service to support Geo-scientists in their scientific endeavor and to facilitate knowledge exchange between them.

Mission: Our mission is to support your research into Earth system behavior, by providing you with data, models and expertise on rock properties and processes, building on standards and tools developed with the community.

Conference workshops

The general audience I have been in touch with throughout my time at MSL has never been exposed to general design practices. The importance of my skills became an important lever to facilitate communication between the governing entities within MSL and to organize a clearer prioritization of coming features and the orientation of the effort.

In one instance I facilitated and organized a workshop at an international conference with the various members of the whole MSL effort. The underlying goal was to bring everyone together, clear out communication on what MSL is or should be and by doing so reignite engagement across all participating parties in this European project.