You are invited to WOW events

Please join us for a WOW meeting online, and if you are in SA come along to the WOW garden party!

Online WOW community meeting

The Wild Orchid Watch project was created at the University of Adelaide in collaboration with orchid enthusiasts and citizen scientists from across Australia. From 2021 WOW will be managed by citizen scientists.

You are invited to join WOW project leaders and orchid enthusiasts for an online meeting to discuss the future of WOW, Wednesday 25th November, 6.30pm - 8.00pm. Please register your interest here and we will send Zoom instructions on the day of the meeting. We would love input from orchid enthusiasts Australia-wide!

Items to discuss include:

• Community involvement in the management of the WOW project and app

• Formation of a steering committee

  • roles and skill sets required

• Curation of Australian native orchid observations on iNaturalist

Please note, to ensure the meeting is productive and enjoyable for all, there will be a limited number of people on this Zoom call. If registrations exceed this limit we will let registrants know and schedule a second meeting.

You are invited to our end-of-year party!

Thursday 26th November, 3.30pm - 5pm in the beautiful grounds of The Waite Arboretum. Drinks and snacks provided.

Entry via Andrewartha Gate, 30 Claremont Avenue, Urrbrae, South Australia.

More information and RSVP here

Gardening Australia segment

Did you see WOW on Gardening Australia?

You can watch the Citizen Orchid segment here.

Thank you to the wonderful Sophie Thomson for working with us to promote the WOW project. Thanks also to the Gardening Australia ABC producers and staff who were a pleasure to work with.

Thank you for using the WOW app!

More than 1300 Australian native orchid observations have now been collected using the WOW app, then stored and identified on iNaturalist. Over 500 WOW app users have registered on iNat. Thank you to all the WOW early adopters. Install the WOW app on your mobile device by typing app.wildorchidwatch.org into your internet browser.

Thank you in particular to the WOW app users who have encountered bugs in the app, who reported errors and hung in there with our tech team as we problem solved together.

The progressive web app (PWA) is a relatively new technology, which will be an advantage to the WOW project in the long term (and many other projects, as all technology developed for this project is open source and available for anyone to use). The technical development process has required extensive expertise and problem solving in collaboration with citizen scientists.

Find out more about PWAs on our website FAQs here.

Would you like a WOW Photographic Scale Card?

Great to see WOW scale cards in orchid photos appearing in the WOW project via the app and other online forums - we have now posted more than 1250 photographic cards across Australia!

If you would like a couple of WOW cards for yourself or a bundle to give out to nature photographers in your organisation (eg. Landcare or “Friends of” groups), please send us your postal address and we will mail them to you. info@wildorchidwatch.org

All the best,

The WOW team. info@wildorchidwatch.org