A Forum for OOI’s Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) Community

The OOIFB Pioneer Mid-Atlantic Bight (MAB) Array Community Workshop brought together scientists, resource managers, educators, and other interested parties to learn about the capabilities of the newly relocated Pioneer Array. The workshop generated interest in new instrumentation, including plankton imaging with an Imaging FlowCytobot (IFCB) on the Pioneer Central Surface Mooring. Potential users were looking for ways to ask questions, share results, and provide a community of practice for OOI’s IFCB data. One recommendation was for OOI to provide an online forum. This was recently implemented on OOI’s community forum on Discourse.

The forum, called “IFCB Community” can be accessed on Discourse, linked from OOI’s Data HelpDesk webpage. Within Discourse, “IFCB Community” can be found from the drop down menu under “categories”. The newest topics appear first by default. To access a topic in the forum, simply click on the topic. You need to log in (with a free account) to comment on or add a new topic. OOI welcomes the use of this new forum as a place for the community of OOI IFCB Data users to share methods and results, troubleshoot data issues, and create a dialogue with colleagues.