A new paper published today in Nature Microbiology, co-authored by CSCCE staff members Camille Santistevan and Lou Woodley, reports on the success of the National Microbiome Data Collaborative (NMDC) Ambassador Program.
The success of this pilot cohort of NMDC Ambassadors highlights the outsized impact community champions programs can have in culture change initiatives that rely on a change in community norms – in this case, the definition and adoption of metadata standards to aid the reuse of microbiome data. In this blog post, we offer a high-level overview of the project, but we encourage you to read the new paper, which is available here.
This month, we’re considering the role of community champions (also known as community ambassadors or, sometimes, fellows) in successful community management, and how community champions programs can intentionally work with emergent leaders to meet the needs of a community or organization.
Join us for our monthly community call on Wednesday, 20 October at 3pm UTC / 11am EDT to learn more about champions and some of the programs that already exist – or are being planned – within the STEM ecosystem. [Add to iCal or Google Calendar]
Our October call will focus on the role of community champions and how community managers can support and empower them through intentional programming. Image credit: CSCCE
This week we’re launching a new CSCCE working group – for any STEM community managers planning or supporting community champions programs.
What are community champions programs?
As a community manager, chances are you spend a significant amount of your time operating at the “whole community” level – devising shared programming such as community calls and also creating newsletters and other reinforcing communications to keep the group informed and aligned around the various programming and activities.
While that community-level alignment is crucially important, a community moves forward its mission when members are empowered to take on emergent leadership roles – which enables the community to grow, become more sustainable, and to advance specific projects together via working groups and other smaller-group activities. In the CSCCE Community Participation Model (see image below) we refer to this mode of member engagement as the CHAMPION mode – and we’re working to develop our own champion infrastructure as well as working with other communities such as The Carpentries to develop theirs.
On this month’s Community Call, two project teams from the CSCCE Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP) shared their research into what makes a great ambassador program and how we as scientific community engagement managers can support the members of our communities who volunteer to take part.
March’s community call focused on ambassador programs in science. Image credit: CSCCE
What is an ambassador program?
To advance the mission of the community with which they’re working, community managers often turn to ambassador programs. Also known as community champions or fellows, these more engaged users can help with beta testing, advocating for the community’s work, recruiting new members, launching specialized projects or other specific activities.
Our next CSCCE Community Call is on Wednesday 18th March at 2pm Eastern. Join us to discuss the outputs of two of the community engagement fellows program (CEFP) projects about community ambassador programs.
After the presentations there will be time to ask questions and learn from others who’ve launched and/or managed ambassador programs.
Join us for March’s community call on ambassador programs in science. Image credit: CSCCE
Community ambassador programs
To advance the mission of the community with which they’re working, community managers often turn to ambassador programs. Also known as community champions or fellows, these more engaged users can help with beta testing, advocating for the community’s work, recruiting new members, launching specialized projects or other specific activities.
Nurturing a successful ambassador program can be a helpful way to scale your community’s activities – but what does running such a program involve? How should you recruit your ambassadors? And what motivates them to participate and stay engaged? Join us in March’s community call to explore some of the data about what these programs look like in science.
In December, we wrapped up the first year of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellowswas made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. We’ll be recruiting for Cohort Two later this year for a start date of January 2019.
Meanwhile, we’re continuing to share reflections from the 2017 Fellows on the Trellis blog. In today’s post, Melanie Binder discusses the Plantae Fellows Program. You can catch up on all posts by the Fellowshere.
Plantae is the global community and knowledge hub for plant scientists and was developed to address the need for a community and knowledge foundation for the global plant science community. The concept for Plantae was based on input and ideas from members of our plant science community. It is a crowdsourced initiative powered by American Society of Plant Biologists (ASPB) in collaboration with the Global Plant Council and represents our ongoing commitment to the plant science community.
Plantae is for everyone in the plant science community regardless of location or career phase, from plant science students to educators and researchers to authors, editors and professionals.
How do you support your volunteer programs? Image provided by Melanie Binder
We’re now mid-way through the first year of the AAAS Community Engagement Fellows Program (CEFP), funded by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The first cohort of Fellows is made up of 17 scientific community managers working with a diverse range of scientific communities. As they continue to develop their community engagement skills and apply some of the ideas and strategies from their training, the Fellows will report back on the Trellis blog, sharing their challenges, discoveries, and insights. Today Fellow Allen Pope introduces his Project Team: the Advocacy Ninjas. You can follow Allen on Twitter @PopePolar and online at www.iasc.info
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