CSCCE hosts the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program for open-source projects

Regular readers will know that at CSCCE we’re interested in supporting the people and processes that power collaborative projects in a range of contexts across the STEM ecosystem. That often looks like working to train community managers and project leads, or building custom solutions via consultancy. And sometimes it looks like bringing together related projects via a targeted program. The most recent way we’ve been doing that is through our new program, Birdaro – aimed at the decision-makers working on open-source projects.

Birdaro is both a modular training program and an emerging online hub of resources, specifically for open-source projects. And at the end of September we welcomed the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program – 60 participants representing 24 projects – into the CSCCE online classroom.

For this pilot training cohort, we constructed a 12-week module on “governance and documentation” – topics that participants indicated a strong interest in during the application process. In five CSCCE-led Mini-workshops over the past few weeks, we’ve covered interpersonal and group dynamics and their intersection with governance structures and collaborative decision-making processes. And during weekly lightning talk sessions, each project team has shared short presentations on a range of topics including: scaling team work, working across multiple languages and time zones; organizing community events to scale project contributions; and developing and implementing governance structures in different organizational contexts.

Next week, we’ll move on to the second half of the program, when we’ll shift our focus to codifying the norms of how projects work by creating documentation to support participation and collaboration. In this six-week series of workshop-style sessions, participants will create a “playbook” or handbook for their staff teams and/or volunteer contributors, maintainers, and community champions.

In this month’s newsletter:

Find out more about Birdaro’s governance and documentation training module
Learn about the 24 projects and 60+ participants in the program
Connect with us about the future of Birdaro!

About the Birdaro training program

The Birdaro logo in white on a blue to purple gradient with a flock of birds in silhouette.

The pilot training program

The pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program is a 12-week training program taking place from the week of 22 September through the week of 15 December 2025. Based on the preferences and interests of applicants accepted to the program, we’re focusing on governance and documentation in this inaugural training program module.

A white icon depicting a cog, a folder, and a document with check marks on a blue to purple gradient background.

The governance and documentation module

This module of the Birdaro training program, the first in a series that will connect to create a multi-faceted training for OS practitioners, includes a series of 5 Mini-workshops covering the interpersonal and group dynamics that underpin governance choices and a multi-week course on creating collaborative documentation. Each project team also presents a lightning talk in the program, facilitating connection and knowledge sharing.

A collage of all of the logos of the projects participating in the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program.

Meet the participants

The pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program brings together 60 participants from 24 projects, which span different locations, sizes, stages of maturity and organizational homes.

A white icon depicting an envelope, a telephone, and a speech bubble on a blue to purple gradient background.

Connect with us about the future

If you’re interested in learning more about what could come next for Birdaro and how you can support us in the development of future training program modules, new resources, and/or additional activities to support the scientific open-source ecosystem, we’d love to hear from you.

Send us an email

About the projects taking part

In a series of blog posts, we introduce the various projects taking part in the pilot cohort of the Birdaro training program.

Introducing the pilot cohort part 1

In this post, we’re featuring several projects from research institutions, including a couple of OSPO (open-source program office) or OSPO-like projects: OpenWellness, movement, Open Source with SLU, and the Community Software Facility at NCAR.

Introducing the pilot cohort part 2

In this post, we’re featuring the following open-source software, hardware and data projects that “live” within US federal agencies and national labs: The US Department of Energy Systems Biology Knowledgebase (KBase), Kokkos, asar, the Fisheries Integrated Modeling System (FIMS), and the USGS Science Data Management Tools and Software.

Introducing the pilot cohort part 3

In this post, we’re featuring the following open hardware and open data projects: COSMIIC, the Reagent Collaboration Network (Reclone), CKAN, the Dataverse Project, and Soil Data Rescue and Harmonization (SoilDRaH).

Introducing the pilot cohort part 4

In this post, we’re featuring the following open-source software tools for STEM research: The R Project, RSpace, AsyncAPI, OpenRefine, and scikit-learn.

Introducing the pilot cohort part 5

In this post, we’re featuring the following open-source software tools: CIB Mango Tree, MNE-Python, ArviZ, icepyx, and OpenMRS.

CSCCE

c/o Community Initiatives,
1000 Broadway Suite #480,
Oakland, CA, 94607, USA
—
info@cscce.org

Forward this to a friend!

Donate to CSCCE

You are receiving this newsletter because you expressed interest in CSCCE. Unsubscribe | Update preferences