CSCCE Blog Editor, Author at CSCCE

Creating core values: A new worksheet from CSCCE

In May, we published CSCCE’s core values, which were co-created with our Code of Conduct working group and participants on our May community call. In this blog post we dive a little deeper into our process, which we have made available for download in a new worksheet.

Why core values?

Successful communities have a shared purpose, but in order to convene around that purpose members need to agree on how they communicate and work together in order to ensure safer spaces and productive collaboration. By defining the core values of your community, you can get at what these collaborative norms are and set the tone for events, workshops, meetings, and other group activities.

As part of CEFP 2019, CSCCE director Lou Woodley developed a framework for creating authentic yet aspirational core values that are tailored to a community. The participants in the fellowship cohort used the framework to explore what might be helping and hindering the realization of core values in their own communities as part of their mid-year training in leading culture change efforts. This is also the framework we followed when creating the CSCCE core values.

Laying your happiness foundation when starting a new role

Transitioning to a new role can be a daunting and important stage in your community management career. Here, CEFP2019 Fellow, Ann Meyer, shares 5 tips to help you thrive – and enjoy – your next career move.

I recently transitioned to a new role and was a little surprised by a question during my interview. They asked me “Where do you see yourself in 5 years?” I know I was expected to answer with an idea of a concrete plan or a solid, tangible vision for my future but what popped out of my mouth instead was, “I want to be happy.” But we all know that more often than not, happiness isn’t something that just happens – you have to work for it.

Wanting to be happy at work isn’t an idle or frivolous desire. Research has shown that happy people are successful people (Lyubomirsky et al 2005). With a new role, you have an opportunity to set yourself up to be happy from the very beginning. By laying a solid foundation when you start, you are setting yourself up not only for a smooth transition but also for future success. Here are five ways I’ve tried to do just that for myself every time I change jobs.

Navigating the Nuances of Hiring a Community Team Member

If you’re recruiting for a new member of your community team, how do you identify potential candidates, create a successful interview process and then support the on-boarding of your new team member? CEFP2019 Fellow, Liz Guzy, walks us through the steps.

As community managers we are often tasked with many different roles, including Human Resources. As projects launch and demands mount, we realize we can no longer do it all and must consider hiring additional staff, but this process can be overwhelming and anxiety-inducing:

How do we carve out the time for the hiring process that we can be sure yields the best applicant pool?
What if no one applies or wants to be part of our community?
How do we navigate adding members to our team when our community is still being established/growing?

June’s Community Call: Join us for our Summer Social!

On Wednesday, 17 June from 1-2:30pm US Eastern Time we’re hosting our first annual summer social! Although our community calls are scheduled for 90 minutes, we understand if you have to leave after an hour.

Since we launched last year, the CSCCE Community of Practice has continued to grow and so we’d like to spend June’s community call continuing to get to know one another. Combined with our holiday potluck call in December, the summer social will become a standing event on CSCCE’s community calendar. Whether you are brand new to the CSCCE community or have been here for a while, chances are you’ll meet someone new on this call!

May’s Community Call Recap and Announcing the CSCCE Core Values

On this month’s community call we discussed and refined a set of core values prepared by the CSSCE Code of Conduct Working Group. Through breakout sessions and open discussion, members of the community considered the values and how they translate into personal and collective behaviors.

As a result, today we published our core values on the CSSCE website here. They will inform our code of conduct (coming soon), how staff and members interact in our community of practice on Slack (request to join here), and all of the programming and trainings offered by the center.

May’s community call – The CSCCE core values

Our May community call, scheduled for Monday, 18 May 2020 at noon US Eastern Time, will focus on CSCCE’s core values and how we are working with members of our community of practice to co-create a code of conduct.

This call will include a discussion with the CSCCE Code of Conduct working group, and provide opportunity for all members of our community to comment on our draft core values statement.

Our May 2020 call will focus on the collaborative process of developing the CSCCE code of conduct. Image credit: CSCCE

Announcing our new Resources pages and Zenodo Community collection

The past few weeks have marked an important next phase for CSCCE as we started releasing some of the materials that CSCCE staff and community members have created over the past months and years.

We’re delighted to announce the first of a growing number of Resources pages on the CSCCE website – starting with pages for “Being a Scientific Community Manager,” “Diversity, equity and inclusion,” and “Online communities and communication tools.”

From the rehearsal to the annual meeting: What can scientific community managers learn from collective organizing in other situations?

In this guest blog, CEFP 2019 Fellow Arielle Bennett-Lovell considers how her community organizing efforts outside science help her in her day job as Coordinator for the Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge.

What do a local campaign to save libraries, shared allotments, extinction rebellion protests, and a society of learned individuals all have in common? All of these are groups of people brought together by a shared goal, often with the intention of using collective discussions and engagement from members to push forward a set of ideas or principles using a variety of different initiatives.

A mature scientific community, which is co-creating its programming and future direction as part of a member-led exercise, or advocating for larger societal change on key issues in broader society, shares a lot of organisational parallels with an active community outside of science. However, as community managers, we sometimes don’t see these connections and miss the opportunity to use a breadth of examples in our own organisations.

We can, and should, examine the experiences of other communities, bringing them back into our own as examples of collective organising. This can enrich planning and programming for our scientists, students, and stakeholders. I’ve been lucky to be a part of a number of different campaigns and communities outside of my day job, and in this piece, I’ve outlined some of the key aspects of collective organising I’ve picked up from outside science.

April’s Community Call Recap – How community managers can support diversity, equity, and inclusion in science

This month’s call challenged us all to think hard about creating and supporting inclusive communities, particularly virtually. Led by the CEFP 2019 DEI Project Team, we explored four topics related to this and used Zoom’s breakout room capability to give participants the opportunity to have small group discussions.

*April’s community call showcased four new CSCCE tip sheets created by the CEFP 2019 DEI Project Team.*

April’s community call – Exploring diversity, equity and inclusion

Our next CSCCE Community Call is on Wednesday 22nd April at 2pm Eastern. Join us to discuss running inclusive online events and find out more about the CEFP 2019 Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Project Team’s work.

This month we’ll include a breakout style activity as well as presentations during the first hour of the call, and then a 30 minute open discussion for anyone to share their thoughts and experiences.