In September 2024, we asked the WILDLABS community to participate in the 2024 Network Survey. The Network Survey provides an opportunity to share thoughts, ideas, and feedback for the future of WILDLABS. Year after year, these results help us better understand how you engage with WILDLABS, what programmes you find helpful, what we can do to support you better, and more. After receiving 182 responses with balanced representation across conservation, research, and technology perspectives, we’re grateful and excited about continuing our work in a way that maximises impact.

Transparency is a key value of our organisation, and we strive to ensure that the research results end up back in the hands of our community. When it comes to the Network Survey, we want the community to know how we use your responses. Here is a summary of what we gleaned from the survey and how we’re going to move forward: 

1. Diversity in respondents

What we heard

We were pleased to see a relatively even representation between academics/researchers, conservation practitioners, and engineers/developers. “Other” roles included those that did not fit into existing categories, such as volunteers, educators, community managers, business developers, consultants, students, and project coordinators. These results show that WILDLABS truly is a convening point for actors across the conservation technology sector!

Additionally, we received 182 responses from users in 39 countries, with about a 2:1 gender ratio of men to women. While respondents primarily came from the United States and the United Kingdom, we saw a great spread of diversity and representation from Latin America, East Africa, South Africa, Asia, and Oceania. Respondents also self-identified their career stage and primary role, showing us that network membership is split evenly between students/entry-level, mid-career, and senior-career individuals.

What we’re doing about it

Demographic data is essential to helping us track our global reach. As an international network, it’s critical to make sure that our programmes and initiatives are accessible and equitable. Tracking these metrics over time allows us to draw upon resources to bolster regional communities and outreach toward underrepresented groups in the sector. With these statistics in mind, we remain committed to prioritizing equitable access to events, speaking opportunities, and funding initiatives, particularly for women and those in underrepresented areas in conservation technology.

We also plan to continue deepening our engagement through launching more regional groups (alongside the existing Latin America and East Africa Communities) and services to help strengthen conservation tech engagement, coordination, and community on the ground. Additionally, we’ve started translating important announcements into Spanish and French, and have consulted with our community and platform development team on the best way to make the website multilingual. 

2. People have valuable experiences on WILDLABS that impact their work positively 

What we heard

When we asked what forms of interactions people experienced through the WILDLABS network, the most common responses were:

• I have found new information that helped with my work.
• I have exchanged useful ideas and knowledge with other community members.
• I have gained new skills, knowledge, or connections from events run by WILDLABS.

Respondents also shared moving anecdotes of how WILDLABS has positively impacted their work, including:

• Recruiting new team members
• Learning about new approaches in conservation technology
• Establishing new collaborations
• Connecting with experts
• Gaining clarity on topics

“Through WILDLABS, I found solutions to many questions that were initially unclear to me. For example, after seeking help to understand climate justice, WILDLABS members shared their insights, which fueled my passion and deepened my knowledge.”

“Direct collaborations facilitated through WILDLABS have led to significant opportunities to use and develop innovative conservation technology. WILDLABS is my number 1 go-to place to seek help re: designing, testing and troubleshooting new ideas. It is also literally the best place to come and learn about new approaches to any area in conservation technology.”

“We recruited 2 team members from job postings in WILDLABS. It is also a great venue to connect with the community.”

What we’re doing about it

We love to hear stories of success and fruitful collaboration that were facilitated by or discovered through WILDLABS. This upcoming year, we’re prioritizing the implementation of a system to measure impact through a variety of avenues, including improved platform analytics, social network analysis models, and turning anecdotes into measurable insights. Your positive, real-world experiences help us build an evidence base for our work, ensuring that programmes like Variety Hour, Virtual Meetups, Office Hours, in-person events, and the update and maintenance of our platform continue into the future. 

3. Wishlist for platform updates

What we heard

The new platform we launched in 2022 was a massive leap in accessibility and ease of use from the original website format we used from 2015-2022. The improvements have been widely appreciated, and we’ve also received valuable feedback on areas that could further enhance the user experience, including ease of navigation, formatting posts, search functionality, and login processes. We also heard some exciting ideas for learning functionality, a tracker to show how far you are from achieving a badge, a visual map for the directory, and more.

What we’re doing about it

We’ve just released some updates and features to enhance the website’s usability, making it more intuitive, easier to navigate, and full of valuable resources. In February 2025, we introduced a more streamlined navigation bar to make exploring the website easier. 

Then, in March 2025, we launched a new course functionality that allows members to enroll in and create their own courses on conservation technology! We received many ideas for course topics people would like to see, including telemetry training, machine learning for data analysis, R and Python, introductions to Wildlife Insights and MegaDetector, and more. If you’re interested in adding a course to WILDLABS, learn how to create one.

While we aren’t able to deliver on every wishlist item just yet, we’re excited about these new feature rollouts! All feature suggestions are added to our GitHub repository to help us keep track of which features our community is requesting. 

Some suggestions, such as a space to post open source projects or a publication repository, already exist through features like The Inventory and our Resources functionality. These suggestions show us that we can do a better job communicating these offerings and making sure they are more easily accessible and widely used. 

4. Usefulness of our programmes

What we heard

When we asked you to let us know which of our programmes, content, and initiatives were most useful, the top five were: 

1. Discussion forums
2. Funding and matchmaking
3. Community research
4. Articles, news, career opportunities
5. Virtual events

What we’re doing about it

We plan to make sure that these key impactful initiatives and content types continue! This means working to build more partnerships that result in funding opportunities, running surveys like the State of Conservation Technology, facilitating community-based research through Virtual Meetups, hosting monthly Variety Hour calls, and, of course, sharing resources and enabling discussions on the platform.

The team is also noting which programmes are not making as big of an impact on your work, and we are thinking creatively and strategically about how to make our resources as helpful as we know they can be. 

5. What should we keep doing? Where should we be in 5 years?

What we heard

When asked what deliverables were most important to you in the future, you said: 

• Facilitating collaboration around tech solutions
• Engaging technology specialists
• Leveraging partnerships for funding
• Horizon scanning and research

When picturing what WILDLABS should be doing in 2030, most open-ended answers fell into three categories:

• More of the same
• Global expansion
• Increased coordination and influence

What we’re doing about it

As we hit 10 years of WILDLABS, we’re thinking strategically about what the next decade has in store for us and our growing community. The community’s feedback and ideas are a tremendous help in grounding us in the core deliverables of our work: uniting the sector to maximise collaboration that results in conservation impact. 

The timing of these survey insights coincides with ongoing conversations with our steering committee, where we’ve renewed shared buy-in and aligned on goals and a long-term strategy. These strategic conversations are underpinned by a new era of growth and maturity in the sector, requiring WILDLABS to respond to shifting needs. We’ve identified three key priorities to help guide our strategic growth in the next five years:

• Strategically scaling WILDLABS’ core sector services: Meet growing demand for critical community services that accelerate conservation technology impact.
• Advancing conservation technology for decision-making: Provide sector insights and cross-silo convening to drive advancements in integration, standards, and decision-support, including for 2030 goals.
• Bridging global services to local implementation: Build out regional programs and partnerships to support local capacity building and bridge access to global resources.

These focus areas will help guide our programme development and investment priorities as we progress on our growth trajectory, all while maintaining the community-first mindset and philosophy that has gotten us to this point. 

Thank you for continuing to be a part of this community and sharing your thoughts, experiences, and ideas with us. You are the heart and soul of this network, and your participation in this survey and in the network is invaluable.

Photo credit: Stuart Pritchards