First Birthday Series: Behind the scenes of community programming

For our “First Birthday Series” of blog posts, we are taking some time to reflect on CSCCE’s community of practice, which turned one year old on 21 October 2020. Our first post summarised the community “by the numbers,” and is a fun run-down of just how far we’ve come. In this post, we go a little deeper into the strategy and philosophy behind our programming. This post was jointly authored by Communications Director, Katie Pratt and Center Director, Lou Woodley.

A community of community managers

We are in a unique “meta” position at CSCCE in convening a community of community managers. That means members of our community of practice already know the potential value that’s waiting to be released when people with experience, knowledge, and ideas that are valuable to others in the group are brought together. Part of our job as community managers is to devise programming that supports the realization of that value, and that signposts to members what might be possible together. That’s true for CSCCE staff, as well as for our members as they support their own communities, although what that programming looks like will be specific to each community’s context.

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CSCCE’s Community Participation Guidelines now available

This week we’re thrilled to share CSCCE’s Community Participation Guidelines with our community. These guidelines are the result of several months of careful consideration, and were co-created by members of our community of practice in a dedicated working group. 

In this post, we, the members of that working group, outline our process. Over the coming weeks, we’ll also share additional blog posts in which we reflect on some of the nuances of preparing community participation guidelines. We are doing this for two reasons: We want you to know how we ended up here, and we want our experience to assist you as you develop similar guidelines for your community. 

If you have any questions or comments, please don’t hesitate to reach out to info@cscce.org

The CSCCE core values, which informed our community participation guidelines. Image credit: CSCCE
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October’s community call recap: Culture change in scholarly communications

Our October community call focused on the role of community in instigating culture change in scholarly communications. We heard from three members of our community of practice, each with a unique perspective and community to manage. 

And, we celebrated the first birthday of CSCCE’s community of practice! Exactly one year ago, on 21 October 2019, Lou invited the first members to join our Slack workspace. It’s been a productive and exciting year, if somewhat unpredictable, and if you’d like to review our first year “by the numbers,” check out the first in a series of birthday blog posts

Our October call focused on culture change through the lens of scholarly communications. Image credit: CSCCE
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It’s our first birthday! The CSCCE community of practice in numbers

Happy birthday to us! This week CSCCE is celebrating one year since the launch of our community of practice.

In this blog post, we offer a snapshot of our last year by the numbers. In the coming weeks, we’ll also delve a little deeper as we release a series of posts about our accomplishments, lessons learned, and goals for the future.

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CSCCE collaborates on launch of new Carpentries program for community champions

Over the past months, CSCCE Director Lou Woodley has been working with the Carpentries to develop a new community champions program, “The Carpentries Community Facilitators Program.” The first module of the program, which Lou co-authored, aims to empower community members to influence Carpentries programming by channeling community feedback to leadership teams.

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Welcome to Camille Santistevan – CSCCE’s Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist

Our team is growing! This week we welcomed Camille Santistevan to CSCCE, who, as our new Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist, will work with center Director Lou Woodley to consolidate and expand our suite of trainings and associated materials. 

She will also co-lead the  fall training modules that we’re piloting with members of our community of practice, and work with the team as we plan out the next steps for our flagship training, the Community Engagement Fellowship Program.

About Camille

Camille comes to CSCCE from The City University of New York, where she has worked as Associate Director of Public Relations for the Advanced Science Research Center (ASRC) since 2014. In her time there, she helped build a community of researchers from across the University and at a variety of career stages who used ASRC’s facilities and equipment. She was also instrumental in developing and delivering a science education curriculum for the center, while overseeing numerous outreach and engagement programs and events. 

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Virtual Events! Announcing a new guidebook from CSCCE

With the COVID-19 pandemic came a global shift to remote working and virtual events. Because of this, over the last few months many members of the CSCCE community of practice have become experts in planning and facilitating a range of virtual event formats. 

We wanted to celebrate this knowledge and make it more widely available, and so over the last few weeks we worked with several members of the community to consolidate our expertise into a freely-downloadable guidebook to virtual event formats. 

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We’re hiring! Are you our new Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist?

As we continue to grow our programming and the trainings that we provide to clients, CEFP fellows, and others interested in scientific community building, we’re now ready to recruit a Lead Trainer and Curriculum Development Specialist. If you’re interested (or know someone else who might be), read on! 

In this role, you’ll lead the consolidation of existing materials and creation of new materials for CSCCE’s community engagement training curriculum. You’ll also be working closely with our Center Director to deliver a wide range of trainings for clients and CEFP fellows – both remotely and in-person. This is an exciting opportunity to shape the leading scientific community engagement curriculum and support many others in their vital community engagement work. 

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July’s Community Call: Planning and evaluating accessible virtual events

On Wednesday, 22 July 2020 at 2pm we’re hosting our next monthly community call. This month’s call will focus on virtual events, a topic that is likely on the minds of many scientific community managers at the moment. 

We’ll cover three key aspects of organizing virtual events: planning and preparation, access and accessibility, and evaluation, both before and after your event. With three experts from our community of practice presenting, and ample time for discussion and Q&A, this month’s call promises to provide actionable information for you and your colleagues, so we hope to see you there! 

Join July’s call to learn more about running effective virtual events. Image credit: CSCCE

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Announcing our new Resources pages and Zenodo Community collection

The past few weeks have marked an important next phase for CSCCE as we started releasing some of the materials that CSCCE staff and community members have created over the past months and years.

We’re delighted to announce the first of a growing number of Resources pages on the CSCCE website – starting with pages for “Being a Scientific Community Manager,” “Diversity, equity and inclusion,” and “Online communities and communication tools.”

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