March’s Community call – community ambassador programs

Our next CSCCE Community Call is on Wednesday 18th March at 2pm Eastern. Join us to discuss the outputs of two of the community engagement fellows program (CEFP) projects about community ambassador programs.

After the presentations there will be time to ask questions and learn from others who’ve launched and/or managed ambassador programs.

Join us for March’s community call on ambassador programs in science. Image credit: CSCCE

Community ambassador programs

To advance the mission of the community with which they’re working, community managers often turn to ambassador programs. Also known as community champions or fellows, these more engaged users can help with beta testing, advocating for the community’s work, recruiting new members, launching specialized projects or other specific activities.

Nurturing a successful ambassador program can be a helpful way to scale your community’s activities – but what does running such a program involve? How should you recruit your ambassadors? And what motivates them to participate and stay engaged? Join us in March’s community call to explore some of the data about what these programs look like in science.

The work of the CEFP project teams

During their fellowship year, the CSCCE community engagement fellows form project teams to focus on a particular area of scientific community engagement that they’d like to explore in more detail. In both our 2017 and 2019 cohorts we had a team that focused on ambassador programs. In this month’s community call, members of both teams will be reporting out on what they worked on – with time for attendees to discuss their findings.

Advocacy Ninjas – This CEFP2017 project team created a survey to learn more about existing scientific community ambassador programs. Their report summarizes their findings including funding, staffing and the selection process for ambassador programs

Busy Bees – The CEFP2019 project team was interested in the ambassadors themselves – what motivates the more active members of scientific communities and how can this knowledge help community managers and other staff scheduling programming for them. They’ll walk us through some of the preliminary findings of their survey.

March’s call

Topic: Community ambassador programs – what do they look like and what motivates the participants?

Abstract

Join March’s Community Call to:

  • Learn more about the survey of community ambassador programs carried out by the CEFP2017 project team, the Advocacy Ninjas
  • Learn more about what motivates community ambassadors from an early analysis of survey data gathered by the CEFP2019 project team, the Busy Bees.
  • Discuss existing ambassador programs in scientific communities
  • Meet and connect with others running scientific community ambassador programs

Speakers

CEFP2017 project team: Advocacy Ninjas

  • Allen Pope (presenting)
  • Rosanna Volchok (presenting)

CEFP2019 project team: Busy Bees

  • Toby Hodges (attending)
  • Naomi Penfold (presenting)
  • Kathryne Woodle (presenting)

How to join

March’s call will take place on Wednesday 18th at 2pm Eastern.

Our calls are hosted in Zoom – simply click here and we’ll see you in the webinar!

Video or not? You’re welcome to turn on your webcam if you like but fine if you prefer just to use audio.

We’ve been running short on discussion time in recent calls so this month we’re trying an experiment – a 90 minute call where in the first hour we’ll hear the presentation and have focused Q&A on those two projects and then for the remaining 30 minutes we’ll have more general discussion of ambassador programs and our own experiences of them. Come for the hour – or for the full 90 mins, as your schedule permits!

Please note: We’ll be recording the calls so that others who couldn’t make it can catch up later.

Additional info about our community calls

  • Our community calls usually take place on the third Wednesday of every month at 2pm Eastern.
  • Can’t make this call? Check out the outline schedule of future calls here.
  • Wonder what we’ve talked about in previous calls? The archive listings can be found here with recordings shared via our Slack group.
  • Not yet in our Slack group? Request to join here.