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Abstract: The third meeting of the North American Nodes took place in Washington DC at the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History the 23-24 July, and was co-hosted by the Smithsonian, U.S. Geological Survey, Integrated Taxonomic Information System, Consortium for the Barcode of Life, Encyclopedia of Life, and NatureServe. Twenty three persons participated in the meeting with an additional seven online participants, representing a total of 22 organizations. The North American Nodes agreed to develop a regional strategy, based on the goals expressed in the GBIF 2012-16 Strategic Plan. Major objectives of this regional strategy are to foster joint collaboration between organizations on informatics development, content mobilization and use, and community engagement. Node managers and invited speakers identified plants and invasive alien species as possible candidates for a regional thematic focus, and plan to utilize the region's strengths in genomic and taxonomic expertise to continue furthering the GBIF network. Recognizing that the role of the Node is to 1) coordinate regional-level activities, 2) ensure flow of information and communication between the region and other bodies, 3) play a key role in promoting GBIF regionally, and 4) engage participants in GBIF programme of work; a key challenge for North America (unlike most other regions) arises from its structure. Because the continental node includes only two nations with many institutions from varied backgrounds (e.g. academic, govt and NGOs), it is a challenge to establish a truly unified regional strategy (particularly without a dedicated, full time coordinating body). To this end, it could be helpful to consider additional membership categories in GBIF that would allow for more fine-grained representation of the institutional data providers. The Node recommends exploring options to clarify the role of organizations (and not just international organizations) in the GBIF to ensure that their interests and priorities are not overlooked. The pathway for coordinating data flow from diverse organizations through to GBIF is not necessarily always clear at the regional level.