Welcome to the GFIS Blog!

On the 6th of August, The Global Forest Information Service had the pleasure to be part of the 39th International Forestry Students´ Symposium with the theme, Multiple and Sustainable Use of Forests.

This event, IFSS 2011, runs for 15 days from August 4th through August 18th in Finland.  115 forestry students from 27 countries from around the world joined together to discuss the issues which affect them, while making friends and contacts they will have for the rest of their lives. GFIS was given the opportunity to host a lecture to address this diverse group of future foresters.

GFIS Communications Officer Michael Huck, traveled to Turku, Finland to address this group on the topic of Global Online Forest Information Management. In this information era, there is no common means to share and manage information in the online medium. However, with the advent and adoption of GFIS as an aggregator of forest-related information there has been a growing trend to conform to standards set by GFIS and used by key industry providers. The students learned about the syndication of online information, through the form of RSS feeds and how they tackle the problems associated with barriers to effective information search. Many of the lecture participants who had not heard of GFIS before were thrilled to know that they can find information from the world´s leading organizations in one online place.

The students learnt how to fully utilize the services GFIS offers such as how to search for a specific piece of information and have the results turned into an RSS feed which they can then subscribe to ensuring they are kept up-to-date and informed on their information that truly matters to them. A great enthusiasm was shared when the students heard about the Education information type on GFIS. The students spoke of their desire to be able to know what is happening at other forestry schools around the world, so that they could be able to take and share ideas, gain more opportunities for collaboration, find other students who are doing similar research, and bring awareness to their own programs and schools.

Many of the students vowed to start contributing information from their own schools via GFIS and doors were left open for continued discussion between enhanced future cooperation between the International Forestry Students Association (IFSA) and GFIS to work towards bringing more services to cater to the student demographic.

The Global Forest Information Service is happy and proud that it could be part of IFSS 2011 and bring a topic that we care deeply about to the forefront of these student´s perspectives.

A copy of the presentation can be found by clicking here.