Re-introducing the CSCCE blog – An orientation to what’s here and how you can contribute!

CSCCE’s blog is a wealth of information on scientific community management. But, we realized, for many folks new to CSCCE, that information is somewhat buried in the archives. So, this week we decided to take a look back* at some of the blog posts we’ve** shared over the years, curating them so that you can easily find certain topics or collections, and invite you to add your thoughts as a guest blogger. 

A photo of dozens of books open to random pages. Some of them overlap.
Photo by Patrick Tomasso on Unsplash

About the CSCCE blog

Our blog was conceived as a place to share ideas, research, and opportunities for connection at the intersection of STEM and community building. Today, we also use it as a place to share news from CSCCE, and publicize or recap some of our community events. The types of articles we host include: 

  • Community call announcements
  • Community call and tools trials recaps
  • News and updates from our SIGs and working groups
  • Announcements about opportunities such as professional development trainings and job openings
  • Community manager interviews
  • New resources and how they were created
  • What we’re reading
  • Conference and workshop report outs
  • Guest blog posts (see below for more examples of these)

Most of our posts are currently written by CSCCE staff (Katie and Lou, generally!), but over the years we’ve shared guest posts from members of our community of practice, fellows from our two CEFP years, and from former AAAS staff members. We would love to see more guest posts over the next 12 months, so if you have something you’d like to share, let us know (info@www.cscce.org). We’re also happy to cross-post articles that are appearing on other sites if they are relevant to our mission. 

Guest blog posts share observations, activities, and connections

We love featuring the voices of our community members on our blog. Over the years, we’ve published dozens of guest posts on a range of topics. We’ve picked out some of our favorites here, and curated them by topic to help you find something you’re interested in. 

Being a community manager

Events and networking

Community management tips and tricks

Personal reflection

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Photo by José M. Reyes on Unsplash

Recap posts are packed full of resources and reflections

A cornerstone of CSCCE community programming is our monthly community call. We know that many of our members find it challenging to carve out the time to attend these calls in real time, and for some, time zones make it impossible! So, our recap posts are an attempt to share the essence of a call for anyone who couldn’t make it. Even if we don’t include a recording of the call (e.g., if the topic is sensitive or the majority of the call is spent in breakout activities), you can expect a synthesis of ideas as well as links to any resources that were shared by presenters or participants. Check out these recap blog posts for more on: 

Resource posts offer a window into our (co-)creation process

When we release a new resource, we almost always post a blog post that describes how it came to be, why we decided to make it, and who was involved in the creation process. While many of our resources are created by CSCCE staff, we also work with members of our community of practice and other collaborators on certain products. Check out these posts to learn more about how we work: 

Some other gems from the vault

Last but not least, we wanted to highlight a few other posts or series that have stood the test of time.

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Photo by Amador Loureiro on Unsplash

Work with us on a guest post!

As we noted above, we’d love to hear from you if you’re interested in writing a post for the CSCCE blog. It could be a book review, an essay inspired by a podcast you heard, or a reflection on a piece of programming you put on for your community. Or, it could be something completely different. Reach out to info@www.cscce.org and let us know what you’d like to write about!!

*Since 2019, the CSCCE blog has lived here at CSCCE.org. But, it began life as the Trellis blog at AAAS. We’ve done our best to make sure there are no broken links as a result of this transition, but if you find any, please let us know!

** “We” refers to the many different people who have written for this blog, not just the current staff of CSCCE.