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The Living Data Conference will take place from 21–24 October 2025 in Bogotá, Colombia, bringing together biodiversity networks, researchers, and practitioners worldwide to advance standards, promote interoperability, and measure progress towards conserving and restoring biodiversity. The programme of the event will focus on three main themes: building data-sharing standards, linking diverse information sources, and assessing global conservation progress. BMD will contribute to five sessions: 

"Data model for global implementation of open Digital Specimen & the status of specimen digitization" (Session ID 6786653) will be held on 22 October at 2:00 PM. This session will introduce the open Digital Specimen (openDS) framework and its alignment with FAIR principles, demonstrating how standardized data models, controlled vocabularies, and MIDS specifications will enable interoperable, scalable, and semantically consistent management of digital specimen data across global biodiversity and earth science infrastructures.

“Disentis Roadmap: A Decadal Roadmap for Liberating Global Biodiversity Knowledge from Literature” (Session ID 6802499) will take place on 22 October from 2:00 PM. This session will focus on strategies for unlocking biodiversity knowledge from literature, including connected knowledge bases and automated semantic workflows, and participants will be able to demonstrate how their work contributes to the roadmap’s vision.

“Long Live Biodiversity Data: Knowledge Transfer and Continuity Across Research Projects” – this symposium will be held in two parts: the first session (Session ID 6788879-1) on 22 October at 10:45 AM, and the second (Session ID 6788879-2) on 23 October at 10:45 AM. These sessions will explore how research data can remain impactful beyond project lifespans through open data, effective science communication and international collaboration. 

“Challenges and Solutions for High-Throughput Biodiversity Monitoring” (Session ID 6798023) will be held on 23 October from 4:00 PM. Co-organised by BMD coordinator Niels Raes (Naturalis Biodiversity Center), the session will explore innovations in biodiversity monitoring using camera traps, audio devices, eDNA, drones and AI species identification, focusing on data management, standardisation, ethical considerations and sequence data applications.

Registration for both in-person and virtual attendance is open.