April’s community call: Community/Customer Relationship Management platforms

Our April call will focus on the pros and cons of various Community/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, and what a “perfect” community relationship management platform might look like. 

We’ll hear from three members of our community of practice who are using different tools, and spend some time brainstorming to create a requirements document of all the things we’d like to be able to do as community managers with a similar platform. 

Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, 20 April at 11am US EDT / 3pm UTC

Add to your calendar: iCal | Google

This month we’re taking a look at how you can use CRMs to support community management. Image credit: CSCCE
Continue reading “April’s community call: Community/Customer Relationship Management platforms”

March’s Community Call Recap: Community manager roles in STEM

The March community call focused on the different forms that community manager (CM) roles take across the STEM ecosystem. The agenda included presentations and reflection questions to guide the conversation, which covered career paths, professional development, and common challenges. 

To kick off the meeting, Lou Woodley spoke about CSCCE’s research program, highlighting our newest resource-creation project: STEM Community Manager Case Studies. Malin Sandström (International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility) and Elisha Wood-Charlson (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) then described work they performed as CSCCE Community Engagement fellows to characterize CM positions. This work will feed into a new CSCCE working group, which will launch in April and continue studying scientific community manager roles.

Continue reading “March’s Community Call Recap: Community manager roles in STEM”

February’s community call recap: Creating scaffolding to support your community

February’s community call focused on how scaffolding influences engagement and inclusion in communities. The call coincided with the release of the third installment of The CSCCE Community Participation Model guidebook, which described what scaffolding is and why it matters. And, as a gesture of gratitude and love to our community members in Valentine’s week, we also updated a number of our CC BY licensed scaffolding PDFs and created easily-adapted Google doc versions to support the creation of scaffolding across the STEM ecosystem.  

We spent time on the call discussing and exploring these resources and the challenges community managers face when trying to create and/or socialize scaffolding in their communities, as well as coworking to create, adapt, and update materials. In this post, we recap some of the key points that came up during our community conversation. 

Continue reading “February’s community call recap: Creating scaffolding to support your community”

February’s community call: Creating scaffolding to support your community

Our February call will focus on scaffolding — onboarding documentation, how-to manuals, and tip sheets that keep everyone within an organization or community on the same page.

We’re currently finalizing a guidebook that lays out the role of scaffolding in STEM communities, and we’re excited to give you a sneak peak of the guidebook’s core concepts. This month’s call will also include time for participants to create or update their own scaffolding – either by adapting CSCCE’s CC-BY-licensed scaffolding templates or building and/or sharing their own organization’s documents.

Join us on Wednesday, 16 February at 4pm UTC / 11am EST for more. Click here to join the Zoom meeting. 

For our February 2022 community call, we’ll be discussing the scaffolding that supports communities. Image credit: CSCCE
Continue reading “February’s community call: Creating scaffolding to support your community”

January’s community call recap: Project management tools for community managers

Our January call focused on project management tools and how they can streamline collaborations and improve efficiency. This post includes a summary of the call, as well as video clips of presentations from Lou Woodley (CSCCE; describing the tool Trello), Alycia Crall (the Carpentries; describing Asana), Anne Heberger Marino (Lean-To Collaborations, describing Mural), Ellen Dow (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, describing Todoist).

Continue reading “January’s community call recap: Project management tools for community managers”

Community calls coming up in Q1 of 2022

CSCCE community calls are a monthly opportunity for shared learning and connection. Members of the community of practice as well as anyone interested in the topic under discussion each month are all welcome to join, and we encourage you to spread the word among your own networks! 

In this blog post, we share our plans for the first three calls of 2022. We also talk about the ways that we chose topics to highlight, the different kinds of formats we have hosted in the past, and how you can propose topics and/or present on future calls. 

Continue reading “Community calls coming up in Q1 of 2022”

Happy holidays from CSCCE! A community potluck to wrap up 2021

Our December community call is traditionally a community potluck, with everyone contributing a little something to the call. We hold space for reflection, make time for intention setting for the new year, and have a little fun! This post shares a short recap of what we did this year, as well as best wishes for the holiday season from the staff team here at CSCCE.

This year we took a group photo, with optional festive props! Thanks to everyone who attended for playing along. Image credit: The CSCCE
Continue reading “Happy holidays from CSCCE! A community potluck to wrap up 2021”

December’s Community Call: Annual community potluck!

Every year (OK, this is only the third time, but still…) we host a virtual community potluck for our community of practice. Much like a traditional potluck, where guests bring an item to share in a multi-course meal, we’ll have a variety of activities (courses) and ways for you to “share your dish.” 

Read on for more information, or if you’re just here for the key details, we hope to see you on Wednesday, 15 December at 4pm UTC / 11am EST. You can join the Zoom room here.

Join us for our annual community potluck, a social gathering for members of our community or anyone interested in connecting with community managers in STEM. Image credit: CSCCE
Continue reading “December’s Community Call: Annual community potluck!”

November’s community call recap: Exploring community governance models

Over the last few months, the topic of community governance has come up multiple times in our community of practice Slack workspace. So, we decided to dedicate our November community call to discussing the pros and cons of various governance models. In this blog post, we share a brief recap of the call, along with some additional resources to help you go deeper on this topic on your own or with your team. 

The discussion during the last 30 minutes of the call felt like the beginning of what could be a much larger conversation, and so if you are interested in a follow-up call or other means of keeping the conversation going, please reach out to us at info@cscce.org

Continue reading “November’s community call recap: Exploring community governance models”

November’s Community Call: A conversation about community governance

For our November community call (17 November, 4pm UTC / 11am EST | join here) we’re hosting a conversation on community governance. This topic has come up several times this year in our community of practice, and so we wanted to create an opportunity to explore it in more detail through a set of activities, resource-sharing, and discussion.

The call will include a short primer on community governance models, as well as opportunities to discuss governance structures currently in place in the ecosystem of STEM communities. In order to make this a safer space for sharing and learning, this month’s call WILL NOT BE RECORDED. And, to ensure that you get the most out of the experience, we encourage you to stay for the full 90 minutes. 

On our November call, we’ll offer a primer on different models of governance in communities, with a focus on the STEM ecosystem. Image credit: CSCCE
Continue reading “November’s Community Call: A conversation about community governance”