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!
Date: Wednesday, 25 March 2026 | Add to calendar
Time: 2pm US EDT / 6pm UTC (90 minutes)
Zoom link: join the call
Speakers:
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.
Continue reading “Upcoming CSCCE training courses to enhance your community engagement and content design skills”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.
Continue reading “CSCCE Community Book Club: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team”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.
Continue reading “Infrastructure update: CSCCE switches to Zeffy for training sales”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.
Continue reading “An update to CSCCE’s Project Management for Scientists Bootcamp (PMB)”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).
Continue reading “Zulip Tools Trial Recap – Find out more about this open-source community platform!”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!
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!
Continue reading “December community call recap: An online potluck filled with reflection, (re-)connection, and…cats!”CSCCE Tools Trials are synchronous opportunities for STEM community managers to test out a new platform and/or explore how that platform can be used to support community engagement (e.g., our GitHub series).
Generally, CSCCE Tools Trials emerge from ongoing conversations in our community of practice (hosted in Slack). Recently, several of our members have expressed an interest in learning more about Zulip – an open-source platform with a lot of similar functionality to Slack – as well as the OS constituent relationship management (CRM) platform CiviCRM. So, we’re bringing back Tools Trials in Q1 of 2026 to get to know these platforms better!
The first Tools Trial we’ve scheduled will focus on Zulip, but keep an eye on our Events calendar for more trials coming soon! If there’s an open-source platform that you think STEM community managers should know more about (especially if it’s something you’re an expert in using and would be willing to present about or demo), please let us know by emailing info@cscce.org.
Date: Wednesday, 21 January 2026
Time: 11am US EST / 4pm UTC (90 minutes)
Speakers:
Next week, we’ll be hosting our final Quarterly Skills Share (QSS) session of 2025! These sessions are a regular part of the CSCCE Community Manager Certification Program that are both an opportunity for knowledge-sharing among peers, and a regular check-in at which we share news and updates.
One of those updates is that we have SEVEN more CSCCE-certified community managers to celebrate!
Rieley Auger (Global Land Programme), Sophie Bui (National Center for Supercomputing Applications), Yan-Kay Ho (Open Bioeconomy Lab & Reclone – Reagent Collaboration Network), Allie Lau (American Physical Society), Zoë Leanza (Sage Bionetworks), Johanssen Obanda (Crossref), and Curtis Sharma (Research Data Alliance) all completed their program requirements, and at next month’s QSS we’ll all get to celebrate their graduation!
This blog post highlights our newest grads’ paths through the program, as well as some reflections on what they learned during their time with us. And, for those less familiar with the program, we’ve also included a brief summary of what it involves.
Continue reading “Seven more STEM community managers have completed the CSCCE Certification Program!”