Today is Community Manager Advancement Day (CMAD), and this year the focus is on professional development for community managers!
What is CMAD?
If this is the first you’re hearing about the annual celebration of community managers, a little background. CMAD was created in 2010 by Jeremiah Owyang, a technology professional specializing in the intersection of technology and human behavior. Community members are encouraged to send messages of thanks to their community manager (using the hashtags #CMAD and #CMGR), and organizations that support community managers often host events or release resources to mark the occasion and explore the year’s theme (for example, last year we hosted a community call on 2021’s CMAD theme of resilience).
This year’s theme: Professional development
This year’s CMAD theme is all about professional development, and one of the benefits of CMAD being early in the year is that it’s not too late to set some intentions for your own self-care and growth over the coming months.
We know that with busy and often changing roles taking time for your own professional development can be hard to commit to. And yet, it’s so valuable both from a practical and emotional perspective – learning new tactics and strategies doesn’t just help you improve at your job, it connects you to others and enables you to compare experiences and approaches and build ongoing, supportive relationships.
So, whatever time you have to spare, here are three professional development options you can benefit from in the CSCCE community – why not sign up / make them happen today?
- Find a coworking buddy. If you’re a member of our Slack workspace (request to join here) you can post requests (or answer calls) for coworking sessions in the #coworking channel. Coworking is a great way to work through challenges with a colleague who gets it, find an accountability partner to make sure you get that report finished, or learn new tips and tactics from someone in a similar role to your own. This guest blog post by coworking pros Stefanie Butland and Naomi Penfold explains more about how it works.
- Join a working group to learn from and with others AND build something together that you get a citation for. We currently run a working group on community champions programs in which we’re creating a series of tip sheets, and later this quarter we’ll be launching a new working group to research community roles across the STEM ecosystem. To get involved, email info@cscce.org.
- Pre-register for a course. We have several new offerings coming later this quarter, but you can pre-register now! Tickets will go on sale as soon as we have our new training team member(s) in place so they can join us, too.
Shoutout to all scientific community managers!
It wouldn’t be CMAD without some appreciation from the CSCCE team for all the community builders in our own community! We know that you are all working so hard to support your communities, and that often your work goes unseen or under-appreciated. So, give yourself a moment to lift your eyes away from your laptop, take a deep breath, and reflect on your successes. You are vital, you are skilled, and you are very much appreciated!