CSCCE Blog Editor, Author at CSCCE

CiviCRM Tools Trial Recap: Curate your data to nurture your community

On Wednesday, 25 March 2026, Lauren Collister (IOI) and Yo Yehudi (OLS) joined members of our community of practice to share how they use CiviCRM to support their community management work.

In this blog post, we share a brief recap of the session, including recordings of Lauren and Yo’s presentations, as well as some links to resources to help you get started with Civi (or another CRM of your choice!).

We’d love to continue our exploration of open-source tools for STEM community managers, so if there’s a tool you use that you’d like to demo, let us know by emailing info@cscce.org.

New resource for Zulip community managers: A CC BY Quick Start Guide template

In January 2026, we hosted a community Tools Trial on the open-source community platform Zulip, which some communities are using or considering as an open-source alternative to Slack. It was a really informative session, and our expert speakers did an excellent job of highlighting how the platform works, how to manage a migration from Slack, and how you as a community manager can make life easier for your members, as well as showcasing some of Zulip’s more “advanced” features.

You can find a recap of the call in this blog post (which includes recordings and resources), but that’s not the only outcome from the Trial! We worked with speakers Samantha Wittke and Danny Garside to create a CC BY Zulip Quick Start Guide – and it’s now available for download and reuse!

DOWNLOAD THE ZULIP QUICK START GUIDE

Congratulations to our newest CSCCE-Certified community managers!

Each quarter, we celebrate the participants who recently completed the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. As a modular program, individuals graduate on their own timelines, and this quarter we’re celebrating two people who progressed through their requirements side-by-side: Jody Peters (University of Notre Dame / Ecological Forecasting Initiative (EFI)) and Pooneh Sabouri (Florida International University / STEP UP).

In this blog post, you can read more about these dedicated STEM community managers and their time in the program, as well as an early look at what we’re learning about the impact the program is having on the individuals who take part. If it inspires you to learn more about certification with us, please send an email to training@cscce.org (please note: completing Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF) is a prerequisite for the program, and registration is currently open for our next cohort!).

MEET ALL CSCCE-CERTIFIED COMMUNITY MANAGERS

Tools Trials 2026: Join us to learn more about CiviCRM

For our second Tools Trial of the year, we’re continuing our theme of open-source platforms that support community engagement by hosting a session about CiviCRM!

ABOUT THE CIVICRM TOOLS TRIAL

Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2026 | Add to calendar

Time: 2pm US EDT / 6pm UTC (90 minutes)

Zoom link: join the call

Speakers:

Lauren Collister (IOI)
Yo Yehudi (OLS)

Upcoming CSCCE training courses to enhance your community engagement and content design skills

Registration is now open for two of CSCCE’s multi-week training courses: Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF26W) and Content Design (CODE26Sp).

In this blog post you can find out more about each training (but please reach out to training@cscce.org if you have any questions), including various resources to support your participation.

In service of our ongoing commitment to “shining a light on the less visible,” we’ve also included some information about what it means for us to run live, cohort-based online trainings like these, and why it’s so important that we fill each cohort we offer.

CSCCE Community Book Club: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team

Coming up on Wednesday, 11 March 2026 at 11am EDT / 3pm UTC, we’re planning a live, 90-minute community book club session co-hosted by CSCCE community member Jody Peters (University of Notre Dame / Ecological Forecasting Initiative community manager).

The book club will focus on The Five Dysfunctions of a Team by Patrick Lencioni, a short fable that is used to explore a model outlining five things that are essential for a healthy, collaborative team (or working group, steering committee, or sub-community). If you haven’t read the book yet, but are curious and would like to join us for our book club session, rest assured, it’s not a long read (or listen!). If possible, we do ask that you read the book before the call, but we will also offer a recap of the key themes at the beginning of the session.

Infrastructure update: CSCCE switches to Zeffy for training sales

As of January 2026, we’re pausing our use of Eventbrite for handling registration and payment processing for our trainings and switching to Zeffy. We began using Eventbrite several years ago as a simple solution for course and Mini-workshop registrations made using a credit card. Over the years, Eventbrite’s functionality has changed, and so with the transition to a new year, we’re giving a new platform a shot!

This blog post is intended to walk you through the new registration interface in Zeffy, including a couple of nuances that make it slightly different from Eventbrite. If you have any questions about Zeffy, or you’re having any difficulty registering for a course or Mini-workshop, please contact training@cscce.org. We will continue offering registration via invoice if that works best for your organization.

An update to CSCCE’s Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB)

In 2025, we launched a new general registration project management training designed specifically for STEM (and STEM-adjacent) professionals. The training debuted in two parts: an introductory Mini-workshop (also known as PMI) and a three-week, six-module bootcamp (aka PMB). In 2026, based on feedback from participants, we’re combining these two parts (PMI + PMB) into a single training offering (that also includes a new orientation option – see below for more).

In this blog post, you’ll find an overview of the training, as well as what these recent changes mean for individual registrants, private cohorts, and participants in the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program. If you have any questions at all, please reach out to training@cscce.org.

Zulip Tools Trial Recap – Find out more about this open-source community platform!

On Wednesday, 21 January 2026 CSCCE hosted a Tools Trial to support our community in learning about the open-source community platform Zulip. The Trial, like the many we’ve run before, offered basic information about the platform, and then explored different use cases relevant to community managers – including migrating a community from Slack into Zulip.

In this blog post you’ll find a brief summary of the call, as well as a curated list of resources relevant to anyone interested in setting up a Zulip instance. And you can watch the recordings of our four expert presenters: Philip Durbin (Dataverse), Maria Doyle (Bioconductor), Samantha Wittke (CSC – IT Center for Science, Finland), and Danny Garside (Digital Research Academy).

2025 in review: Ongoing support for human infrastructure in STEM and open source

2025 was another busy year for CSCCE as we continued our work supporting community managers in STEM, and expanded our collaboration with open-source projects.

Threaded throughout our work is the idea that we can effect change on three levels: we can impact the careers of individual community managers by offering skills-based training and free resources; work with individual organizations to embed core practices and vocabulary through consultancy and training; and through this work, encourage ecosystem-wide recognition of the importance of community managers and related human infrastructure in STEM.

In this blog post, we take a look at some of the highlights of the last 12 months, which touch on all three levels. But before we do that, a quick “by the numbers” summary of CSCCE’s year!

A graphic highlighting some of CSCCE's accomplishments from 2025, including: 1000 community members, 250+ learners, 14 new resources, 11 CSCCE-certified community managers, 2 new courses, and 1 new program. — Image credit: CSCCE