With the challenges facing biodiversity in the UK, such as offsetting, climate change and dealing with non native species, it is clear that tactical responses to current issues will have to be informed by using appropriate data, both for policy and local decision making. The National Biodiversity Network (NBN) is a collaboration of organisations which are all committed to sharing biodiversity data and making it freely and publicly available. The organisations involved are drawn from the public, voluntary and commercial sectors. They range from government agencies, research organisations, local record centres, conservation charities and local and national recording groups. The NBN Gateway is the internet portal that allows anyone to access this information, freely and easily, and it currently holds more than 80 million species records. This number is increasing on a monthly basis as more organisations see the benefits of sharing their wildlife data. The NBN Trust is delighted to announce that it is holding a special event on Wednesday 20th March 2013. The event, “A quarter of a billion records project – celebrating the present, looking to the future”, will celebrate the NBN partnership, the tools that have been developed so far and will look forward to what can be achieved in the future, as we aim to reach 250 million records in the coming years.