Membership and Participation in our RCD Communities: What is it and how are we doing?
Kirk M. Anne, Robert M. Freeman, Chris Reidy, Gabriel King Smith, Gil Speyer, Wei Yin · 2024
The Research Computing and Data (RCD) community has coalesced over the past ten years to encompass hundreds of organizations that support both researchers and research support staff alike. While many of these organizations may rely on external funding, definitions of membership vary considerably, and their goals may include broadening participation, increasing diversity and inclusion, and performing outreach to encourage those besides "the usual suspects" to get involved. In addition, silent or absent audience members – ones who are minimally or not at all engaged – are easily overlooked. This preliminary work addresses a need for tools to help an organization know its membership, to characterize the depth of participation and engagement, and to identify and measure any untapped potential as part of its mission to maximize the capabilities of its community. We apply this approach to characterize and understand the Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) People Network community, both the membership and participation groups, including representation and diversity over time. We then further highlight those more deeply engaged via multiple approaches across various CaRCC activities. A "first draft" in developing a common tool set, we hope these methods will be adopted and improved upon by the larger RCD community.