The Research Data Alliance (RDA) seeks to build the social and technical bridges that enable open sharing and reuse of data, so as to address the cross-border and cross-disciplinary challenges faced by researchers. This September, the RDA will be hosting its Fourth Plenary Meeting in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Ahead of the event, iSGTW speaks to Gary Berg-Cross, general secretary of the Spatial Ontology Community of Practice and a member of the US RDA advisory committee. Berg-Cross is also co-chair of the RDA working group on data foundation and terminology.