Reading and resources from CSCCE to inspire your community-building projects 

In recent weeks we’ve enjoyed witnessing several client and community projects blossom. Together, they showcase some of the many ways that CSCCE supports STEM community managers and community-engaged organizations.

So, in this month’s newsletter, we’re highlighting our detailed write-ups in the spirit of making the breadth and depth of community-building more visible. If you’re embarking on a new community-focused project or seeking support with an existing one, we hope you’ll find something useful across our growing range of free-to-access programming and resources, paid trainings, and consultancy work.

As always, reach out to info@www.cscce.org if you’d like to chat!

Planning and launching new communities

Earlier this month, we co-hosted an in-person event at the Michael J Fox Foundation in New York City. It was the culmination of several months of member research, online platform development, and strategic program design, and celebrated the launch of a new champions program designed to grow and maintain a community of researchers working with Parkinson’s Disease data. 

While not a project we worked on directly, we were excited to see the launch of PREreview’s new Slack community for conversations around open peer review, which builds upon CSCCE scaffolding resources and is hosted by alums of our foundational training, Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF). Congratulations to the PREreview team – we’re thrilled to see some of our CC-BY licensed resources reused in this way!
 

Developing community champions programs

Community champions programs are a powerful way of empowering members of a community to take on the maintenance, growth, and/or evolution of a community. Prior to our work developing MJFF’s new champions program, we also worked with rOpenSci and the National Microbiome Data Collaborative to design and establish new champions programs – each with distinct goals and strategies. 

During a recent conference session we attended, which was hosted by rOpenSci’s community manager Yanina Bellini Saibene, we discussed not only the power of champions programs but how to quantify that power through a deeper understanding of their impacts on individuals and the community as a whole. 

Planning for successful multi-stakeholder collaborations

As collaborations become increasingly complex – spanning different regions and different expertise, so managing these interactions thoughtfully becomes evermore critical to their success.

Recently, we’ve been working with several organizations on a new project funded by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and led by 2i2c to create a collaborative cloud infrastructure service for bioscience researchers in Latin America and Africa. In April, we facilitated the beginning of this project by developing and distributing a team readiness assessment survey and sharing what we learned at a hybrid kick-off meeting. The process made visible areas of shared understanding and excitement for the work ahead, and also highlighted things that needed to be addressed to ensure the project stayed on track (e.g., curating expectations and norms into a team playbook). 

We consolidated this process into a two-part workshop on preparing for and designing for large, multi stakeholder collaborations, and recently delivered it as part of CZI’s Central Science Training Series. This is one of many mini-workshop options that we deliver for clients – exploring topics such as decision making, event planning, and creating core values statements.

Foundational community manager trainings

More than 200 STEM community managers have now completed our CEF course, impacting institutions and collaborations around the world, and our current cohort is graduating this week. As well as the general registration version of this course, which runs approximately quarterly, we’re increasingly working with clients to create private cohorts that connect community managers working in similar settings, disciplines, or geographic regions. Read more about our work with Australian BioCommons and CZI to do this.
 

Resources, collaborations, and peer networking

Also in community news this month – it was our pleasure to host our annual mid-year social and curated networking forum for our members. And, following the success of last month’s Community Tools Trial of the online platform Discourse, we’re planning a follow up series of events focused on open-source community tools (let us know if you’d be interested in contributing). 

If you’d like to be more connected to other scientific community engagement professionals, consider joining our Slack-based community of practice, and for general inquiries about working with us in any capacity, please email info@www.cscce.org.

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

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