Believe it or not, a quarter of 2022 is already behind us. So, we’re looking ahead to what’s coming up in our monthly community calls over the next three months.
If you’ve never been to a CSCCE community call, these are monthly virtual gatherings (kind of like a webinar, but more interactive!) for anyone interested in building communities in STEM. Most participants on the calls are members of our community of practice, and we regularly invite members to present or lead discussions. Calls are scheduled for 90 minutes to allow conversations to blossom and diverge, but we also appreciate 60 minutes is typical for virtual meetings and so if you have to leave at the top of the hour there’s no need to apologize.
We do not routinely record calls, however if there are formal presentations we make those available after the fact on our YouTube channel. Our rationale is that by not recording the calls we afford more opportunity for participants to speak candidly in a protected space, and, to ensure people who are unable to attend benefit from shared learnings, we publish blog post recaps within a week after the call.
You can find a record of our past community calls, including recaps and recordings, here.
Coming up in Q2 of 2022
Wednesday, 20 April at 11am US EDT
Community/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platforms
CRMs are database-driven tools that offer a mechanism for tracking activity within a community. However, many of the tools available today were created with a sales and marketing lens and lack some features community managers might find useful. In addition, they can be pricey, making them inaccessible for communities operating on a tight budget. In this month’s call, we’ll hear from three members of our community of practice who are using different platforms, highlighting the pros and cons of each. We’ll also talk about what we’d like to see, collectively creating a requirements document for the ideal community management platform.
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Wednesday, 18 May at 11am US EDT
Revisiting virtual events
In 2020, thanks to a grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, we hosted a series of tools trials and created resources to support the pivot to virtual convening. Two years on, and online is the norm for many of us still, with hybrid events becoming more common. In this month’s community call, we’ll take some time to consolidate our learnings in two community writing sprints. The first will be to develop a virtual events glossary (which will live on our website as part of our growing STEM community management glossary), and the second will involve revisiting the fourth part of our virtual events guidebook and refreshing the resources it includes.
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Wednesday, 29 June at 11am US EDT
Summer social!
This will be our third annual summer social, a chance to get to know members of the CSCCE community of practice as well as our staff team. We’ll be putting together some activities to facilitate connection, holding space for reflection on the first half of the year, and hopefully having a little fun along the way!
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How to join our calls
In the calendar listings you’ll find a unique Zoom link for each call. We also include the Zoom links on the community call webpage, and in each individual blog post. If you have any difficulty at all, or would like to propose an idea for a future community call, please contact info@cscce.org.