CSCCE CoP Archives - Page 4 of 17

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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Facilitating community activities using Github – CSCCE Open-Source Tools Trial 1

In the first Tools Trial of this new series exploring open-source tools that support community building in STEM, we’re going to take a look at three use cases for how Github repositories can be used to facilitate community collaborations.

Github is one of THE platforms for open-source software developers, a place where they share code, fix errors, and suggest new features. However, you don’t need to be an expert developer to reap some of Github’s benefits as a place to manage distributed collaborations “out in the open.” – and indeed many OS community managers have found ways of using the platform to meet their coordination needs, and meet their members where they’re already working.

In this Trial, we’ll start with a short intro to Github in case you’re new to the platform. Then, we’ll hear how three different communities, Data Umbrella, The Turing Way, and rOpenSci, are connecting and collaborating in Github to create a community-sourced blog, organize community events, and plan engaging community calls, respectively. There will be plenty of time for Q&A and discussion, so come prepared to engage with our speakers!

Tools Trial Info:

Date: Wednesday, 30 August 2023
Time: 11am US EDT / 3pm UTC (90 minutes)
Speakers: Reshama Shaikh (Data Umbrella), Anne Lee Steele and Danny Garside (The Turing Way), and Yanina Bellini Saibene (rOpenSci)
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Investigating open-source community platforms – CSCCE Tools Trials return!

Online platforms are continually appearing and evolving, and as a community manager it can feel like a constant effort to stay up to date with what’s out there. We started CSCCE Tools Trials in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic instigated a large-scale shift to online convening, as a way of working together to figure out how best to use online tools for community building. And we’re bringing them back (again!) to gain a deeper understanding of the range of open-source tools that support communication and connection in STEM.

Starting in August, with the support of the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative, we’ll be convening a series of Tools Trials to explore various community-focused OS platforms (think Github, Jitsi, or Mastodon). And we’d love to hear from you if you would be interested in sharing your experience convening STEM communities using open-source tools, or if there are specific tools that you are interested in learning more about. Please email info@www.cscce.org if you would like to get involved.

New CSCCE tip sheet highlights 12 guiding questions to improve the accessibility of your next virtual event

The COVID-19 pandemic transformed virtual events. Connecting online suddenly became the only way to convene groups large and small, for short meetings or multi-day conferences, and community managers often found themselves developing new meeting formats or learning to use new platforms and tools.

Fast forward to June 2023, and a lot has changed. Platforms have evolved (and sometimes dissolved), event organizers have mastered their own suites of engagement tools, and, as participants, we’re more seasoned (although “you’re on mute!” remains a frequent refrain in Zoom meetings!).

We’ve also gained a much deeper appreciation for what it means to host a truly accessible online event. While online events opened up spaces to many people who’d previously been excluded (e.g., through reduced registration, travel, or childcare costs), for others, it made it even harder to participate.

In a new resource we’ve been working on with community members Rebecca Carpenter, Sara Kobillka, Casey Wright, Yanina Bellini Saibene, and Hao Ye, we offer 12 guiding questions to help you think about the ways that you could improve the accessibility of your community events. And in this blog post, we share our three top tips.

DOWNLOAD THE TIP SHEET HERE

June’s Community Call – Annual Mid-Year Social!

As the academic year winds down for many of us, and we head into the season of conferences, field work, and vacations, it’s time for CSCCE’s fourth annual mid-year social!

Every year around this time we invite you to join a community call that’s focused on helping you to meet other members of the CSCCE community of practice who are interested in some of the same community management topics as you are. In brief, you tell us the topics that you’re hoping to connect around, we work behind-the-scenes to make everyone a personalized list of pairings, and then we all spend the call enjoying meeting the people on our virtual “networking dance cards!” Read on to find out more about what to expect and how to sign up, and do reach out to info@www.cscce.org if you have any requests or suggestions

Date: Wednesday, 21 June 2023

Time: 11am EDT / 3pm UTC

Register before 14 June: click here

Zoom link to join: click here

Add to calendar: click here

*Join us for the opportunity to get to know other members of the CSCCE community of practice! Image credit: CSCCE.*

May Community Call Recap – Discourse Tools Trial

Whether you’re a new community manager tasked with standing up an online space for your members, or you’re just not happy with the platform you’ve been using for years and need to find a new one, picking the right software or application for your community is a big deal.

There are a number of different tools available, all with their own features, quirks, and costs, and it can be daunting to get started with your market research, budgeting, and, eventually, implementation. That’s where CSCCE tools trials come in! In 2020 and 2021 they were a semi-regular event as communities necessarily embraced online connection – and now they’re more of a pop-up event as needs arise.

At this month’s community call/tools trial, thanks to a thread that took off in the CSCCE Community of Practice Slack, we took a closer look at Discourse. Discourse is an open-source community discussion platform that can be tailored to meet the needs of a range of communities. A brief tour of the platform by CSCCE’s Maya Sanghvi was followed by two demos from members of the CSCCE Community of practice: Andra Stratton (Program Manager for the Rare as One Network at the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative) and Isaac Farley (Technical Support Manager at Crossref).

May’s Community Call / Tools Trial – Discourse

This month, we’re hosting an impromptu Tools Trial for our community call. In response to significant interest from the members of our community of practice (find out more about our community), we’ll be getting together in Zoom on Friday, 26 May 2023 at 10am EDT / 2pm UTC to share expertise and explore the functionality of Discourse.

Date: Friday, 26 May 2023

Time: 10am EDT / 2pm UTC

Zoom link to join: click here

Add to calendar: click here