May’s community call recap: Creating virtual events that meet people where they are

Two years after the pandemic pushed the majority of events online, we invited community members to discuss when virtual and hybrid formats work well, when they work poorly, and the tools that lead to success.

We also hosted a co-working session, during which we worked on a virtual events glossary and an updated version of our guidebook of curated virtual events resources – two items we’ll release soon. In this blog post, we offer some of the key takeaways from this month’s community call, in the hopes that it helps you plan engaging and inclusive events. 

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May’s community call: Revisiting virtual events

Join us on 18 May at 3pm UTC / 11am EDT for a conversation about virtual events: what we’ve learned after two years of online gatherings. We’ll make space for discussion, considering what the future of hybrid events look like, and host writing sprints to co-create new resources. 

You can join the call on Zoom, and add it to your calendar: iCal | Google

On our May call, we’re consolidating community learnings around convening virtual events. Image credit: CSCCE
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Community calls coming up in Q2 of 2022

Believe it or not, a quarter of 2022 is already behind us. So, we’re looking ahead to what’s coming up in our monthly community calls over the next three months. 

If you’ve never been to a CSCCE community call, these are monthly virtual gatherings (kind of like a webinar, but more interactive!) for anyone interested in building communities in STEM. Most participants on the calls are members of our community of practice, and we regularly invite members to present or lead discussions. Calls are scheduled for 90 minutes to allow conversations to blossom and diverge, but we also appreciate 60 minutes is typical for virtual meetings and so if you have to leave at the top of the hour there’s no need to apologize. 

We do not routinely record calls, however if there are formal presentations we make those available after the fact on our YouTube channel. Our rationale is that by not recording the calls we afford more opportunity for participants to speak candidly in a protected space, and, to ensure people who are unable to attend benefit from shared learnings, we publish blog post recaps within a week after the call. 

You can find a record of our past community calls, including recaps and recordings, here

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April’s community call: Community/Customer Relationship Management platforms

Our April call will focus on the pros and cons of various Community/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) platforms, and what a “perfect” community relationship management platform might look like. 

We’ll hear from three members of our community of practice who are using different tools, and spend some time brainstorming to create a requirements document of all the things we’d like to be able to do as community managers with a similar platform. 

Join us via Zoom on Wednesday, 20 April at 11am US EDT / 3pm UTC

Add to your calendar: iCal | Google

This month we’re taking a look at how you can use CRMs to support community management. Image credit: CSCCE
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March’s Community Call Recap: Community manager roles in STEM

The March community call focused on the different forms that community manager (CM) roles take across the STEM ecosystem. The agenda included presentations and reflection questions to guide the conversation, which covered career paths, professional development, and common challenges. 

To kick off the meeting, Lou Woodley spoke about CSCCE’s research program, highlighting our newest resource-creation project: STEM Community Manager Case Studies. Malin Sandström (International Neuroinformatics Coordinating Facility) and Elisha Wood-Charlson (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory) then described work they performed as CSCCE Community Engagement fellows to characterize CM positions. This work will feed into a new CSCCE working group, which will launch in April and continue studying scientific community manager roles.

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February’s community call recap: Creating scaffolding to support your community

February’s community call focused on how scaffolding influences engagement and inclusion in communities. The call coincided with the release of the third installment of The CSCCE Community Participation Model guidebook, which described what scaffolding is and why it matters. And, as a gesture of gratitude and love to our community members in Valentine’s week, we also updated a number of our CC BY licensed scaffolding PDFs and created easily-adapted Google doc versions to support the creation of scaffolding across the STEM ecosystem.  

We spent time on the call discussing and exploring these resources and the challenges community managers face when trying to create and/or socialize scaffolding in their communities, as well as coworking to create, adapt, and update materials. In this post, we recap some of the key points that came up during our community conversation. 

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February’s community call: Creating scaffolding to support your community

Our February call will focus on scaffolding — onboarding documentation, how-to manuals, and tip sheets that keep everyone within an organization or community on the same page.

We’re currently finalizing a guidebook that lays out the role of scaffolding in STEM communities, and we’re excited to give you a sneak peak of the guidebook’s core concepts. This month’s call will also include time for participants to create or update their own scaffolding – either by adapting CSCCE’s CC-BY-licensed scaffolding templates or building and/or sharing their own organization’s documents.

Join us on Wednesday, 16 February at 4pm UTC / 11am EST for more. Click here to join the Zoom meeting. 

For our February 2022 community call, we’ll be discussing the scaffolding that supports communities. Image credit: CSCCE
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January’s community call recap: Project management tools for community managers

Our January call focused on project management tools and how they can streamline collaborations and improve efficiency. This post includes a summary of the call, as well as video clips of presentations from Lou Woodley (CSCCE; describing the tool Trello), Alycia Crall (the Carpentries; describing Asana), Anne Heberger Marino (Lean-To Collaborations, describing Mural), Ellen Dow (Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, describing Todoist).

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Community calls coming up in Q1 of 2022

CSCCE community calls are a monthly opportunity for shared learning and connection. Members of the community of practice as well as anyone interested in the topic under discussion each month are all welcome to join, and we encourage you to spread the word among your own networks! 

In this blog post, we share our plans for the first three calls of 2022. We also talk about the ways that we chose topics to highlight, the different kinds of formats we have hosted in the past, and how you can propose topics and/or present on future calls. 

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Happy holidays from CSCCE! A community potluck to wrap up 2021

Our December community call is traditionally a community potluck, with everyone contributing a little something to the call. We hold space for reflection, make time for intention setting for the new year, and have a little fun! This post shares a short recap of what we did this year, as well as best wishes for the holiday season from the staff team here at CSCCE.

This year we took a group photo, with optional festive props! Thanks to everyone who attended for playing along. Image credit: The CSCCE
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