Affinity Groups encourage community members to gather based on common interests such as discipline, technology interests/needs or proximity. Below are some frequently asked questions about Affinity Groups.
Q: What is an Affinity Group?
- A group that encourages focused collaboration in areas where there is common interest.
Q: What are the benefits of Affinity Groups?
- Extra touchpoint when new members join the research computing community.
- Lightweight partitioning of the community into smaller, more accessible subsets when the need arises.
- Communication tools such as auto-generated email lists, slack channels, and Ask.CI locales.
- Organic leadership opportunities for career-building.
Q: Who can join an affinity group?
- Anyone with an account on this or any other Connect.Cyberinfrastructure Portal. See the Connect CI homepage for a complete list of portals.
Q: What affinity groups exist now?
Q: How do I create a new affinity group?
- Fill in the Affinity Group request form to get the process started.
- Affinity Group creation requests will be reviewed and notification sent to the author within 10 working days of the submission.
Q: How do I invite people to join my affinity group once it has been created?
- Send a notice to colleagues, mailing lists, etc. of people that might be interested and invite them to join by clicking "Join" in the affinity group's listing. If they have an account on this or any other Connect.cyberinfrastructure.org portal, they will appear on the affinity group listing immediately after clicking. They will be prompted to join the portal if they do not have an account.
Q: What are the expectations of an affinity group coordinator?
- Welcome new members to the affinity group and to the broader community (as applicable).
- Ensure group is engaged, and contributing to the broader community through any means or mechanism that works for the group - zoom calls, slack channel, email list, Ask.CI locale or other. info [at] campuschampions.org (Contact us) if you need assistance with setting up any of these communications channels.
Q: What are the expectations of an affinity group member?
- Engage with and contribute to the group's effort.
Q: How do I leave an affinity group?
- Click the "Leave" button again to leave the affinity group and it will revert to "Join".
Q: Do Affinity Groups last forever?
- info [at] campuschampions.org (Contact us) to phase out an Affinity Group that is no longer useful.