CSCCE Blog Editor, Author at CSCCE

Using virtual tools to enhance your meeting or event

On 21 April 2021, Lou Woodley and Jenny East of the Center for Scientific Collaboration and Community Engagement (CSCCE) hosted an interactive session on virtual events as part of the Code for Science & Society (CS&S) grantee workshop series. They focused on how to select and test online tools to help facilitate your meeting activities, and shared a guidebook to help you decide what tool to choose. This post, authored by Jenny and CSCCE’s communications director, Katie Pratt, gives an overview of the workshop and the motivation behind creating the guidebook.

This post also appears on the CS&S Event Fund blog.

Registration now open for Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals (CEF21S)

Today we opened general registration for the fourth cohort of our Scientific Community Engagement Fundamentals course (CEF21S). This 6-week online course, intended for new and more seasoned community managers alike, grounds learners in CSCCE’s core frameworks, offering a strong foundation for strategic community building in STEM.

April’s Community Call – Quarterly Programming Update

Our April community call will be an opportunity to find out what the CSCCE team has been working on over the last few months, learn more about what’s coming up in CSCCE community programming, and offer your feedback on what you’d like to see more of over the Summer.

Please join us on Wednesday, 21 April 2021 at 3pm UTC / 11am EDT for our quarterly programming update. Note that this call will not be recorded, in order to facilitate frank discussion.

*The April 2021 CSCCE Community Call will offer a window into our operations, trainings, and plans for the next few months. Image credit: CSCCE*

New resource addresses virtual event security and dealing with “Zoom bombing”

For our March 2021 Tools Trial, we hosted a safety drill to refine how virtual event hosts can respond to “Zoom bombing.” As a result of the trial, this week we published a CSCCE tech tip sheet, which contains a series of checklists to help you and your team configure your meeting settings, plan out how you might respond in the event of a bad actor disrupting your event, and recover from the intrusion after the fact.

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March’s community call recap – Sharing our collective learnings from a year of running and attending virtual events

For our March call we flipped the script, and instead of hosting presentations we made space for discussion on the broad topic of “virtual and hybrid events.” With so many members of our community of practice involved in convening events large and small over the last year, we had a hunch that by bringing us all together and carving out 90 minutes to talk, we could all learn a lot. And we weren’t disappointed!

In this blog post, we summarize the key takeaways from the four parallel discussions that took place in breakout groups. The conversations included a valuable mix of lessons learned, ideas for supporting virtual and hybrid events in the future, and suggested resources. A big thank you to everyone who contributed, and especially our discussion moderators: Amber Budden, Emily Lescak, Chiara Bertipaglia, and Megan Carter.

CSCCE Tools Trial 2.0: Preparing for, and reacting to, Zoom bombing

After a year of working online and meeting virtually for many, we’ve grown accustomed to Zoom norms and etiquette. We all know to mute our microphones when we’re not talking, use the “raise hand” function to ask a question, and use the chat to easily share links and resources.

Unfortunately, we’ve also grown accustomed to the threat of “Zoom bombing,” that awful situation when an outsider breaks into your virtual space, disrupts your meeting, and causes distress to your participants. While always a risk, there are steps you can take to protect yourself from such an eventuality. And, with practice, you can quickly kick a troublemaker out of your meeting, prevent them rejoining, and carry on with your event.

Interested in finding out more? Join us on 25 March 2021 at 10am US EDT for our next CSCCE Community Tools Trial, and read on for more details.

CSCCE Community Tools Trial 2.0 Recap: Virtual networking events

In late February, we relaunched our Community Tools Trials. This time around we’ve adjusted the format to provide the time and space to solve a specific challenge related to hosting online events each month, by pooling the diverse experiences and knowledge of the members of our community of practice.

Our earlier tools trials, “Tools Trials 1.0,” took a methodical approach to testing a variety of events platforms, with a primary focus on how the tool worked and what kinds of events it would be suited to (you can read our recap blog posts here). This series, however, “Tools Trials 2.0,” is putting the specific use case first, and then figuring out a solution (or choice of solutions!) that is engaging, inclusive, and accessible.

The first of the 2.0 series took place on 25 February 2021, and focused on virtual networking events. Community member Rachael Ainsworth of the Software Sustainability Institute wanted to test out an icebreaker idea with a sizable group, as well as have a larger discussion about what icebreakers work online, what platforms are out there, and how different users might experience the event.

March’s community call – Virtual and hybrid meetings

For this month’s community call we’re going to try something a little different, and instead of hosting speakers, we will create space to brainstorm ideas and share experiences of running virtual and hybrid meetings. In the spirit of “working out loud,” we invite you to join the call to connect with your fellow community managers and meeting organizers to pool your knowledge. At the end of the call, we’ll synthesize what we all learn and share it on the CSCCE blog.

How will this work?

We will set up four themed breakout rooms with expert moderators from the CSCCE community to guide you through a series of prompts. CSCCE staff will support the rooms by taking notes and collecting resources, leaving you free to vent, brainstorm, and problem solve with others who are working to make virtual and hybrid events more accessible and inclusive.

Prioritizing accessibility in organizing online events

In this guest blog post, Serah Rono and Emily Lescak summarize Serah’s presentation and discussions from her Code for Science and Society community talk on accessibility in virtual events, and share an accessibility checklist to guide you as you plan virtual events.

Accessibility is to equity as a foundation is to a house. A well-rounded and intentional approach to making your community spaces and resources accessible levels the playing field for all in your community, and benefits everyone in the long-run.

December 3, 2020 was last year’s International Day for People with Disabilities. Under the theme “Not all Disabilities are Visible,” the day’s focus was on spreading awareness and understanding of disabilities that are not immediately apparent, such as mental illness, chronic pain or fatigue, sight or hearing impairments, diabetes, brain injuries, neurological disorders, learning differences and cognitive dysfunctions, among others.

Welcome to Jenny East – CSCCE’s newest trainer!

We’re excited that the CSCCE team continues to grow, and this week we welcome Jenny East onboard as CSCCE’s newest trainer. Jenny will join lead trainer Camille Santistevan, along with center director Lou Woodley, in developing and facilitating CSCCE’s modular, online trainings and client-facing support.

About Jenny

Before joining the CSCCE team, Jenny spent over five years as an outreach coordinator for Oregon Sea Grant at Oregon State University, USA. In this role, she worked to educate recreational boaters about preventing water pollution and how to reduce their impact on the local ecosystem, a mission she undertook through the development of materials and events to engage boating communities within Oregon. Her position also included training staff at local marinas so that they had the skills and resources they needed, as they also had a role in supporting healthy waterways.