researchers at NCEAS and the new National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) and the National Ecological Observatory Network (NEON) are forging ahead with research that relies on shared data. Data shared as benchmark data sets (e.g. [10]) can kick-start innovation by providing well defined challenges to computer scientists andinformaticsexperts.Theresultingtechnologycanspeed progress by ecologists and evolutionary biologists. With substantial benefits for individuals, scientific communities, and society as a whole, the time for data sharing has come. It is up to us as individuals to take advantage of the manyopportunities to sharedata, tomake use of that data, and to support the development of related tools and data manipulation techniques.