tools trial Archives

CSCCE Tools Trials return in 2026 – starting with Zulip!

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.

About the Zulip Tools Trial

Date: Wednesday, 21 January 2026

Time: 11am US EST / 4pm UTC (90 minutes)

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/83142974212/invitations?signature=diQ6rsI45PPUaynUdY0FO6enNS6XlFvZ2Eu8FmNgsZc

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Speakers:

Samantha Wittke (CSC-IT Center for Science)
Danny Garside (Digital Research Academy)
Maria Doyle (Bioconductor)
Philip Durbin (Dataverse)
Rory Sawyer (OpenRefine)

CSCCE Community Tools Trial: Zulip

Zulip is an open source platform, similar to Slack, that supports community engagement through threaded discussions and curated channels. It is growing in popularity in STEM, and within our community of practice there is a collective interest in learning more about the platform, as well as several resident experts willing to demo Zulip and answer questions.

Zoom link to join: https://us02web.zoom.us/meetings/83142974212/invitations?signature=diQ6rsI45PPUaynUdY0FO6enNS6XlFvZ2Eu8FmNgsZc

So, we’re bringing back our community Tools Trials format to facilitate a conversation about Zulip! Our panel of Zulip experts includes:

Samantha Wittke, CSC-IT Center for Science
Danny Garside, Digital Research Academy
Maria Doyle, Bioconductor
Philip Durbin, Dataverse
Rory Sawyer, OpenRefine

They’ll each share a brief demo or presentation to highlight the features of Zulip, and then they’ll all be available to answer any questions you might have about the platform.

CSCCE Tools Trials are free events that are open to anyone convening communities in STEM, and this session is perfect for you if you:

Are interested in learning more about setting up Zulip as a new community platform
Want to learn more about what it takes to transition a community from Slack to Zulip
Already run a Zulip community, but are interested in “advanced” features such as integrating bots
Want to get to know your fellow scientific community managers

We intend for this to be the first in a short series of Tools Trials focusing on open-source tools for community engagement. Please check our Events calendar for future events, and/or reach out to info@cscce.org if you have a suggestion of a platform to trial.

CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 4 Recap: GitHub and Bitergia to support research and developer communities

For the fourth of our open-source Tools Trials, we took a closer look at some of the specific needs of research and developer communities.

In this blog post, we briefly recap what we learned about how to use GitHub to collaborate on technical documentation, how GitHub teams can support member management, and the kinds of user metrics Bitergia Analytics can gather so that you can stay informed about the health of your community activities. You can also watch each of the presentations from the call, and access a collection of related resources.

CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 3 Recap: OpenReview

The third Tools Trial in our open-source series focused on OpenReview – an open-source platform that supports open peer review, primarily for conference abstracts but with the ability to be customized and applied to other situations. OpenReview PI Andrew McCallum and Senior Software Engineer Melisa Bok joined us to share some history about the platform, along with a demo of some of its key features.

We’re working on a series of tip sheets to consolidate much of the technical learnings from the entire series of Tools Trials, but in the meantime, if you missed the call you can watch the recordings and read a brief recap of the call below.

You can also read/watch recaps of Tools Trial 1, which highlighted various ways of using GitHub to support community activities, and Tools Trial 2, which focused on tools to support events.

Our next Tools Trial in this series will take place on Wednesday, 11 October at 10am EDT / 2pm UTC. We will be returning to GitHub, with presentations about how the Zarr community uses it to collaborate on technical documentation, how Rosetta uses GitHub teams to manage contributors, and how the Observational Health Data Sciences and Informatics team uses Bitergia to measure contributor analytics. More information | Add to calendar

GitHub and Bitergia for supporting research and developer communities – CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 4

For the fourth Tools Trial in our open-source series, we’re taking a closer look at research and developer communities. Our speakers will be sharing how they use GitHub and Bitergia to connect across teams and understand member behavior.

This will be the third Tools Trial at which GitHib is making an appearance, so if you’d like a primer on the platform, take a look at the recap blog posts for Trial 1 and Trial 2. But don’t worry if you don’t have time – we’ll make sure that you have the background you need to follow the technical aspects of the presentation during the call.

Tools Trial Info:

Date: Wednesday, 11 October 2023
Time: 10am EDT / 2pm UTC
Speakers: Sanket Verma (Zarr), Paul Nagy (OHDSI), Georg Link (Bitergia), Julia Koehler (Rosetta)
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You can find all Tools Trials announcements and recap blog posts on the CSCCE blog.

CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 2 Recap: Using GitHub and HedgeDoc to organize and support community events

For the second Tools Trial in our series focusing on open-source tools, we invited staff from The Carpentries to highlight some of the tools they use to support community events like CarpentryCon. Toby Hodges (Directory of Curriculum) and Maneesha Sane (Deputy Director of Technology) took up the challenge, with Toby sharing the tool HedgeDoc, which supports collaborative note taking in markdown, and Maneesha demo-ing two different ways of setting up a GitHub repo (one to host a website, the other to solicit conference session proposals).

In this blog post, we’ve curated the video recordings of Toby and Maneesha’s presentations, as well as CSCCE staff member Emily Lescak’s introduction to the session, the resources that were shared during the session, and a brief overview of some of the key themes and discussion points.

Exploring OpenReview and its various applications – CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 3

In the third Tools Trial of our series focused on open-source tools for community building, we’re taking a look at OpenReview, an open-source platform that supports open peer review, primarily for conference abstracts. Andrew McCallum and Melisa Bok from OpenReview will be joining us to take us through the key features of the platform, and CSCCE’s Emily Lescak will share an overview of some of the different ways it has been used in STEM communities – including for reviewing grants, and program applications.

Tools Trial Info:

Date: Thursday, 28 September 2023
Time: 11am EDT / 3pm UTC
Speakers: Andrew McCallum and Melisa Bok (OpenReview), and Emily Lescak (CSCCE)
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You can find all Tools Trials announcements and recap blog posts on the CSCCE blog – including a summary of the first Trial in this series which focused on GitHub.

CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial Recap: Using GitHub to facilitate community activities

On Wednesday, 30 August 2023 we held the first of our new series of five Tools Trials focused on open-source tools for community-building. The series is funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and is intended for anyone interested in exploring open-source tools – including community managers who’ve never tried them before!

In this first trial, we focused exclusively on GitHub – one of the go-to platforms developers use to share and build open-source software. At CSCCE, we often say “meet your members where they are,” and for open-source communities, that often means you’ll find them using GitHub.

In this blog post you can find the recordings of all of the presentations from the call, as well as a summary of some of the (really interesting) discussion that took place both in the Q&A at the end of the call and in the chat and the shared virtual notes doc. Over the next few weeks, CSCCE staff will also be collaborating with the presenters to create a tip sheet that distills some of the key takeaways from the call; especially technical tips and tricks to help you explore implementing some of these GitHub-based community solutions.

Tools to support conferences and events – CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 2

Continuing our series of Tools Trials sessions focused on open-source tools that can be used for different aspects of convening and collaborating, in the next session on tools to support conferences and events, we’re going to take a look at some of the ways community managers can use GitHub and HedgeDoc.

In this interactive session, we’ll hear how The Carpentries uses GitHub to solicit proposals to CarpentryCon and HedgeDoc to facilitate collaborative note taking. This Tools Trial, part of an ongoing series funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, builds off of the first session in this series on ways that Github repositories can be used to facilitate community collaborations.

Tools Trial Info:

Date: Wednesday, 13 September 2023
Time: 11AM US EDT / 3pm UTC
Speakers: Maneesha Sane and Toby Hodges (The Carpentries)
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CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 2 – Tools to support conferences and events

In this week’s open-source tools trial, we’re going to take a look at some of the ways community managers can use GitHub and HedgeDoc to scaffold community convening events. We’ll hear how The Carpentries uses GitHub to solicit proposals to CarpentryCon and HedgeDoc to facilitate collaborative note taking. This tools trial, part of an ongoing series funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, builds off of the first session in this series on ways that Github repositories can be used to facilitate community collaborations.

Speakers:

Maneesha Sane (The Carpentries)
Toby Hodges (The Carpentries)