To close a turbulent year for many STEM community managers, we hosted our seventh annual end-of-year community potluck on Tuesday, 16 December 2025. Lou and Katie lightly scaffolded the call in our usual “appetizers, main courses, and desserts” format, and we are grateful to everyone who attended and shared so generously.
This blog post is a brief summary of the call – although we are being mindful not to share any personal information. We do not record calls like these to protect the ability of participants to be open about their experiences, if they want to. If you’re curious to learn more about how we facilitate community calls, send us an email – we’d be happy to chat!
Pressing pause for a moment
Knowing that the lead up to the holidays can be a busy time for community managers (and, honestly, everyone!), we started our potluck call with an intentional pause. If you’d like to try this for yourself (and you only need 3-5 minutes!) here’s a brief summary:
- Turn off your notifications or close your laptop for a moment – and if you find it helpful, play some soft, lyric-free music.
- Sit tall in your chair or lay down on the ground. Take a deep breath, and shift your position if you feel constricted. You can close your eyes, if you like.
- Take a few moments to orient yourself – notice the sounds of the room, the places your body contacts the Earth, the scents.
- Then start to focus your attention on your breathing. Take a deep breath in through your nose and notice how it feels for your lungs to be full. Take a deep breath out (you can open your mouth), and notice the emptiness. You could find rhythm in your breathing by counting slowly to 4 for each inhale, each exhale. This can also help if you find your mind wandering or ruminating.
- After about 12-18 breath cycles (you can count them if you want, or choose a piece of music that’s 3-5 minutes long as your guide), start to bring some small movements into your body.
- Slowly, return to your day by gently opening your eyes, finding some small movements in your hands and feet, and re-connecting with the online world.
Appetizers
This year, our appetizer course was a “popcorn” around the room reflection on 2025. We were delighted to have more participants than we expected, which made for an abundant appetizer course. But, in our opinion, dips, chips, and tasty amuse bouche are the best part of any potluck anyway, so we loved spending most of our time here (OK, dessert people might disagree…)!
As people signed in, we asked them to share three(ish) words, emojis, or phrases to describe the past 12 months, and during our popcorn intros, they had the option of adding a little more context to their choices. Some beautiful reflections highlighted how hard 2025 has been for so many people, and how much professional support individuals have gained from being part of the CSCCE community of practice or joining one of our online trainings.
The intros also revealed a surprisingly high number of participants joining from the Pacific Northwest, and several new cat parents!
PRO TIP: If you’re using Zoom and participating in a popcorn intro session, you can re-order people’s faces or avatars in gallery view. Once one person says hello, move them to the top left. Then, continue moving people as the intros continue. In this way, you’ll easily be able to tell who hasn’t gone yet (because they’ll be below and to the right of you), and therefore who you can still popcorn to!
Main course
With only 10 minutes or so left in our time together, we moved from reflecting on 2025 to looking ahead to 2026. In a table in our shared notes doc, participants responded to the main course activity by answering the following questions while thinking about the year ahead:
- What’s something you have a question about?
- E.g., I am curious about best practices in survey design as I need to do some engagement planning.
- Is there a decision you need to make?
- E.g., I need to decide whether now is the right time to launch a champions program.
- Are you going to have to make a choice?
- E.g., This is the year that I need to decide my career path. I’ve been a community manager for 5 years, and I think it might be time to try a more senior, management role.
- Is there a specific goal you’d like to accomplish?
- E.g., I would like for our community to grow to 1000 members, but with a focus on encouraging more international participation.
As people wrote down their thoughts, others chimed in in comments to identify common ground or share reciprocal skills and knowledge. We also heard several great ideas for future CSCCE community calls and Tools Trials, so keep an eye on our Events calendar in the new year!
Desserts
This year, we asked everyone to “bring a dessert” to the potluck, but unfortunately we ran out of time to “eat” our desserts together! The prompt was to bring “something that inspired you in some way over the last 12 months,” and that could include a book, a podcast, a song, a painting, or even a recipe for an actual dessert! Contributions included:
- Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World by David Epstein
- The “Soft Office” Spotify playlist
- Meditations for Mortals by Oliver Burkeman
- A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts
- And a modifiable recipe for cranberry curd tart!
Connect with CSCCE in the new year!
On Wednesday, 21 January at 11am EST / 4pm UTC we’ll be hosting a Tools Trial to explore the open-source community platform Zulip. You can find out more information about the trial in this blog post – and please do share with your networks, it’s open to anyone!
As noted above, we’re planning some additional community events for Q1, and we’ll also be announcing our 2026 training schedule when we come back from our holiday break. To stay informed, consider joining our Slack-based community of practice for STEM community managers, or sign up to receive monthly newsletters.