This is a recurring Genomic Knowledge Standards (GKS) Work Stream session for transparency and broad input. Each cycle, we review recent progress, present the roadmap ahead, and open the floor for community priorities. The session has a track record of producing real outcomes. The GKS Starter Kit initiative, for example, came directly out of a prior roadmap discussion.

The core of the session addresses a problem that every standards product shares: implementation resources are always scarce. Every GKS product would benefit from more implementations, and we suspect the same is true across every Work Stream. We will share the approaches that have worked for us to ease the barriers towards implementer engagement, including hackathons and think tanks, registered implementer communication, and Open House webinars. We will talk about distinct approaches taken by long-standing GKS product teams and also those used by product teams entering GKS from the Large-scale Genomics Work Stream, such as the Variant Call Format (VCF) and Whole Genome Sequencing Quality Control Standards (WGS-QC). We also want to hear what has worked for products of other GA4GH Work Streams and invite product teams across GA4GH to bring their perspectives, as we will dedicate the bulk of our community discussion time to this topic.