SSI Fellowship proposal: Measuring and quantifying the health of the TTW community

[likeajumprope]

As discussed in the last colab cafe on the 3rd of September, I would like to apply for the SSI Fellowship with a proposal that aims to measure/map/quantify the health of the TTW community (among others).

The proposal would include:

• finding measures that are able to quantify community health.
• adapting existing measures (as, for example, provided by CHAOSS), to the TTW community.
• measuring community health in TTW (and probably the OSSIG or/and another group).
• comparing the results, with a reflection on differences of how those groups are structured and operate.
• releasing or feedbacking information about the aptness of the measures, the results, and insights back to those communities, CHAOSS and the public.
• Another exciting outcome of this project could be data that tracks community health during The Turing Way’s transition from Turing-funded to a community-governed structure.
• overall, this might be concluded with a reflection on the quantifyablity of a construct like community health.

Happy to hear your thoughts :)
This discussion is linked to: https://github.com/orgs/the-turing-way/discussions/4335

[Arielle-Bennett]

Hi @likeajumprope this sounds like a really great project idea! Really excited that you are considering this as an SSI submission :)

I have a few questions / points to consider

• Would you also be considering qualitative measures of community health alongside the quantitative measures? (I know these tend to be a lot harder to measure but we have got a lot of data on impact etc and it might be nice to do include some analysis of this if you have time)
• How do you envision the outputs being presented?
• What support can the existing structures of Turing Way offer you? Is there anything missing?
• You should definitely write up things for inclusion in the community handbook as part of the project - I think it would be such valuable work for the community management working group (I think this might've been in the "releasing information back to the community" but still think its worth including explicitly)

Always happy to have a deep dive into your project plan with you or provide feedback on the pitch at future Collab Cafes but otherwise big thumbs up from me 👍🏻

[cassgvp]

Hi @likeajumprope!

TL/DR:

1. This is a great project, IMHO!
2. We're developing tools in RCM Cooperative to measure community health - I think they would be a great fit for this as a jumping off point
3. Let's talk about how an SSI project could complement the technical development work involved, which I'm hoping to get funded elsewhere!

Longer answer:
Community health is something we considered quite deeply in @malvikasharan and @EKaroune 's RCM Team at Turing, and now as part of RCM Cooperative we are developing tools and processes to measure aspects of community which can be used to indicate heath, for example extending our community mapping tools (documented here) and quantifying other aspects which are described in our paper. Aim is to include all this in a dashboard for community managers, as described in this 1 min video pitch I made for a recent funding call (which wasn't successful ;) ). I'm now looking at other funders to support the technical development work requited to integrate CiviCRM with data sources where health indicators could be identified.

I was also thinking the TTW would be an excellent community to develop and test some indicators against, and I LOVE the idea of comparing/contrasting against OHBM OSSIG!

I'm about to apply for another pot of funding which is a good fit for the technical development of the RCM dashboard, but SSI fellowship support would definitely be an excellent addition, especially to make it immediately accessible to OS-SIG too. Let's talk about how to integrate!

To answer @Arielle-Bennett 's questions:

Would you also be considering qualitative measures of community health alongside the quantitative measures?

I love a bit of qual, but most of the calls I've been looking at are after something more scalable and 👋🏻 AI 👋🏻 , so I'm including sentiment analysis from whatever sources we can plug into (e.g. zenodo, linkedIn, slack if approved by the org). Where is the impact data for TTW held?

How do you envision the outputs being presented?

A dashboard for RCMs which can be used to produce automated and reproducible reports.

What support can the existing structures of Turing Way offer you? Is there anything missing?

The existing processes of documenting calls on etherpad, capturing outputs/conversations on GitHub and use of persistent identifiers are all perfectly well suited to model engagement. In terms or organisational structures (if that's what you meant), CMWG and Infrastructure WG would be the key groups for buy-in.

[Arielle-Bennett]

Hey Cass, that's exciting! Did you have a draft SSI proposal to share for feedback or did you want to come along to a Collaboration Cafe to discuss your proposal in more detail and explore how you and @likeajumprope could work together?

Our next meeting is on 1 October 2025 - details here: https://annuel2.framapad.org/p/ttw-collaboration-cafe

Alternatively I think you could open a separate discussion on here and invite the infrastructure and community management working groups to start weighing in with input?

On impact data...
Some of the impact statements can be found here: #4032 & https://github.com/the-turing-way/project-management/tree/main/impact_statements
You can find old Turing reports here: https://github.com/the-turing-way/project-management/tree/main/quarterly_reports

I think this is what you were looking for but if you had specific data in mind please say.

[cassgvp]

Thanks, @Arielle-Bennett !

I'm available for the second half of collab cafe 1st October. @likeajumprope are you around? I'll dm you :)

[cassgvp]

I've also set up a poll to ask the community about access to the data which would go into the dashboard

[likeajumprope]

Hi @Arielle-Bennett and @cassgvp
thanks for your replies and sorry for my late response. @Arielle-Bennett - I will reply in more detail later, but your questions are good thought stimulators. @cassgvp -that sounds fantastic! It would be great to work together (and I love dashboards)
Yes I will be at the colab cafe on Wednesday. Let's chat! I'd also have some questions around the video that I need to make @Arielle-Bennett - maybe I could quizz you for this as well.

[Arielle-Bennett]

Happy to answer questions on the video! They normally have some from previous rounds available for you to get inspiration from as well 😄

[SaraVilla]

happy to share mine from last year @likeajumprope !

[likeajumprope]

Ohh fantastic!! A site note: I am currently developing a course on Data Privacy and Anonymisation for the DRA, which has given me the opportunity to dive deeper into the GDPR and the regulations around data processing and storage in Europe (it's really interesting actually). While I am not a lawyer, I'd be happy to pitch in on topics such as data minimisation and anonymisation, to make the project GDPR compatible. Best, Johanna From: Cassandra Gould van Praag ***@***.***> Date: Monday, 29 September 2025 at 16:45 To: the-turing-way/the-turing-way ***@***.***> Cc: Johanna Bayer ***@***.***>, Mention ***@***.***> Subject: Re: [the-turing-way/the-turing-way] SSI Fellowship proposal: Measuring and quantifying the health of the TTW community (Discussion #4351) I've also set up a poll to ask the community about access to the data which would go into the dashboard<#4367> — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub<#4351 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe<https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFVBFNV7CIS2ERRDVICX3L33VFAZZAVCNFSM6AAAAACGAEFOTWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTINJUGMYDQMI>. You are receiving this because you were mentioned.

[cassgvp]

Nice! I've done a lot of GDPR work too - what a team!

[likeajumprope]

Ohhh I might pick your brain for the course then!! Johanna

…

On Mon, 29 Sept 2025, 17:11 Cassandra Gould van Praag, < ***@***.***> wrote: Nice! I've done a lot of GDPR work too - what a team! — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4351 (reply in thread)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AFVBFNT543GYFBBQIZ3GG6D3VFD25AVCNFSM6AAAAACGAEFOTWVHI2DSMVQWIX3LMV43URDJONRXK43TNFXW4Q3PNVWWK3TUHMYTINJUGMZTOMY> . You are receiving this because you were mentioned.Message ID: <the-turing-way/the-turing-way/repo-discussions/4351/comments/14543373@ github.com>

[SaraVilla]

just joining the discussion to note that I will be applying with a project analysis CM strategies within different communities, including TTW, to inform best practices and next steps on CoP of CM (with RCM). @likeajumprope'r project is quite complementary and we agreed to acknowledge each other's projects and mention future collaboration in our applications, I think I should also do this with yours @cassgvp.
I'll be making the point of 1+1=3, or in this case, 1=+1+1= 5 😉

I cannot attend this week's collab cafe, but please keep me posted and I can amend my application depending on what's been discussed