From April 24 to 26 2024, the NFDI4Biodiversity All Hands Conference - the central meeting for all members of the project - took place on the premises of the Directorate General of the State Archives in Munich. The conference focused on the concrete progress made by NFDI4Biodiversity in recent years, as well as the challenges and plans for 2024 and 2025. Together, the participants looked at what has already been achieved to improve data availability in the community - and which steps need to be taken next. Of course, this also includes the necessary target definitions for a second funding phase from fall 2025.

Two speakers from DataPLANT were invited in order to intensify the exchange between the biology communities and to identify further common interests for the second funding phase. There were a number of poster presentations that provided starting points for realizing future joint ideas in data management, community support during the entire life cycle, but also for interaction in the overall NFDI. In addition, cooperation in areas such as the community approach (e.g. news desk) and knowledge bases, where a stronger exchange is certainly advantageous. There could possibly also be a joint platform with other live science communities. This applies to the joint cross-NFDI coordination and coordination in the organization of hackathons or workshops. Even though the two NFDI consortia are very complementary, there are a number of potential mutual additions to the tools and services supported. During the conference we got in contact with Base4NFDI service liason officers to promote the idea of a software repository for the whole NFDI and the DataPLANT DataHUB as a resource for a wider community. Overall, it was a very intensive and productive exchange.