Hello everyone! Welcome to the weekly Thursday Community Call Thread. We really want to engage our community to think and learn about new topics in these calls. Unfortunately not everyone gets a chance to attend the call and those that do don’t always get a chance to speak due to time constraints.
There is value in continuing the types of conversation we start in these calls. We don’t want the call to be the last time people engage with the topics addressed. We want to enrich your days with inspiration and open eyes to new concepts. These topics might be applicable to some of your works or spark a personal interest. It is our goal to facilitate new ideas and creative thinking through this thread.
Community Call Link: Community Call Meta - SCRF Community Call
10/27 Community Call Recap:
The community call this week was led by none other than… me!
This week gets a bit meta since we are discussing the future of then community call itself in this community call. My intentions are to explore the function of the community call in creating community as well as the value that it actually creates for everyone. I really wanted to stress that this community call was a discussion above all else and I’d like that to continue here in this thread. If anyone has any thoughts or ideas that were or were not touched upon in the call, please do share in this thread. I want everyone to receive maximum value and comfort when they partake in the weekly call.
Value
Given this previous statement, I wanted to start the call off posing the questions
- What kind of value are we currently getting from the call?
- What kind of added value do we want to see?
The community call is meant to be an open forum for people to share in real time as well as a space for regular meetings to create a sense of community. There is a finite amount of time for these calls, but the discussion is meant to be open ended. So, how do we decide topics for the community call? Should we open this up to the community more or keep it relatively internal?
The community call is a live synchronous discussion with the capability of being asynchronous later, such as in this thread. This inclusive element is itself creating value because anyone can contribute to the community if they wish. Do we need more inclusivity or do we do a good job of this already?
I also supplied a question that I’ve been wondering for some time now:
For those who attend the call but don’t participate vocally, are you still getting value out of this call? I do understand that there is much to be gained from active listening, but I want to make sure that people are engaged enough and do truly walk away with something valuable.
A point brought up was that being able to talk about the call after the fact is beneficial to people who don’t speak as well as those who do. I want to ensure that everyone knows that this is the place to do so. The forum is the cornerstone of SCRF and if this thread has the possibility of growing the forum, I want to maximize it’s capability to do so.
Community Call Themes
Another idea brought up was having a more thematic element to the community call. Do we think that themed months, quarters, etc would be beneficial?
I personally think this could contribute to the continuity of the conversation between calls as well as the forum. Having content formed around a certain topic would, in my mind, be good for presentation and onboarding as well as learning. If this were an initiative, how could we keep from cycling the same content over and over? We need to ensure the community call stays in line with its purpose.
Perhaps within these periods of themes, we end with another meta community call type call? Thoughts?
Continuing the Call
How do we continue the call after the live event has ended? I’ve touched on this a little bit already, but this is where we get meta about this post. Does the recap post help those of you who read them? Do you attend the call or not? Is there another avenue for continuing the call? Perhaps social media or even discord? We want to encourage inclusivity, especially since there are clear inhibitors to attending the call for many of our community members. We want the forum to be a place of engagement and discourse, not just reading the post and consuming information.
Community Call vs Coffee House
The coffee house is something we have to consider when thinking about the future of the community call. Our intention with coffee house is to have a less formal discussion, not necessarily constricted by time, where can openly discuss research. If people are interested in having researchers speak here at SCRF, would you rather it be done in the community call or the coffee house (where it’s intended to be)?
We want to make sure the community call is focused on the community, so what are the types of discussions we want to have given our mission/vision here at SCRF? We can have discussions around very specific research papers (for example) but we can also have open ended discussion about the organization or outside projects. What kinds of things do you expect to see in each of these formats?
Last thoughts
We are looking for things to take action on given all of these questions and topics brought up. I would love to hear the community’s opinion on the most important points that were brought up here.
A few more questions to consider
- How does the value of the community call persist outside of the meeting?
- What types of community calls do you like? (presentations, discussions, SCRF related topics, outside projects, etc)
- Do we keep a sufficient historical record of community calls? How could we improve it?
- Our conversation is generally internally focused, so how do we project our value to the outside world?
Once again, if any of this sparks interest or you have other questions / thoughts, please discuss below!