Hybrid FAIR workshop unites Iberian imaging communities

On November 4, 2025, PPBI (Portuguese platform for bioimaging) and Euro-BioImaging co-organized a successful FAIR data workshop for the Portuguese and Spanish imaging communities. Held as a satellite event of the SPAOM 2025 Conference, the session brought together 14 facility managers and scientists from both countries to explore best practices in FAIR data management and exchange experiences. To make participation as accessible and inclusive as possible the workshop took on the hybrid format.

Best of both worlds

Unlike common hybrid events, where on-site activities are live-streamed for remote participants, who often feel less engaged, this workshop took a different approach. The trainer, Euro-BioImaging’s FAIR Image Data Steward, joined remotely to deliver lectures and moderate discussions across locations. Inputs and interactions from both locations were integrated in real time through live polling tools, ensuring equal participation and an inclusive debate.

For the collaborative exercises, on-site participants worked in small groups using pen and paper, with local facilitators providing technical support and coordinating the exercises. Simultaneously, online participants collaborated in similarly sized breakout rooms, using digital tools for the same tasks before regrouping with onsite colleagues for a shared discussion of the results.

This way, the hybrid format offered flexibility and choice, whether participants preferred the social energy of traveling and using tangible materials, or thrived in their familiar home environment working with digital tools. By reducing travel-related emissions, this workshop format aligned well with the sustainability objective of the EVOLVE project, which supported this event, and reflected Euro-BioImaging’s core commitment to sustainability.

Continuing the conversation

The feedback from both sides was highly positive, with participants not only praising the workshop's accessibility, interactivity and learning value but also recommending it to their colleagues. With adequate technical setup as a prerequisite, this workshop demonstrated how thoughtful design can make collaboration across distances effective and engaging as hybrid learning becomes more common in scientific communities.

What did you like most about the course?

"The option [between] present/online and the exercises."

"It covered a broad range of topics [and] it gave a great amount of information on how to start to learn more."

Two workshop participants

Euro-BioImaging is dedicated to continuing courses in these formats for its Nodes and partner communities, promoting an inclusive space where staff and researchers can learn and grow together regardless of location. If your Node(s) would like to host a similar course, contact us to plan it together. One challenge yet to solve though, as the organizers concluded with a smile, is finding a way to overcome screen-fatigue to share a truly steaming online coffee.

"[My biggest takeaway is] that it is a growing demand that one needs to catch up with the topic and implement in facilities."

Workshop participant