Am I ready to participate in a Champions Cohort?

The Openscapes Champions Program is a remote-by-design, cohort-based mentorship program that supports individuals and teams of up to 6 colleagues to re-imagine data analysis and stewardship as a collaborative effort, develop modern skills that are of immediate value to them, and cultivate collaborative and inclusive communities.

Individuals and teams will focus on their workflows to identify where they are and where they want to go. It’s important to note that individuals and teams do not have to have familiarity or expertise in open science or data science fields to benefit from the Openscapes Champions Program.

Anyone across all Water Boards Regions, Divisions, or Offices, and job classifications is eligible to apply to join an Openscapes Champions Cohort at the Water Boards.

Participant Requirements

All individuals and team members are given the approval and support they need from their management to dedicate the time required to actively participate and engage in the Openscapes Process.

During the course of a 9-week cohort, the time needed for participants to attend mandatory Cohort Calls and Seaside Chats as well as optional Co-working Sessions and individual reflection is described below.

The aggregate time participants will need to commit to the Cohort Process comes out to approximately 1-4 hours per week, depending on whether they take part in optional Co-working Sessions and reflection, and how the various calls fall on their calendars.

See the indivdual cohort pages for specific dates and times of mandatory meetings.

weekly Gantt chart visualization of the cohort process. Prep calls are 30-minute participant and instructor get-to-know-you calls which occur a few weeks before cohorts begin. Cohort calls are 2-hours, Champions Program session with the whole cohort. They occur on every other week for 5 sessions starting in mid-August and ending in Mid-October. Seaside chats are 1-hour calls scheduled and lead by each team, which occur on alternating weeks from Cohort calls. Co-working sessions are optional, 1-hour remote co-working with the cohort occurring on alternating weeks from Cohort calls. The 2-month check-in is a 1-hour meeting in December when the cohort re-convenes to share and reflect team process. Individual reflection is 30 min to 2 hours of optional, weekly time to think about the process on your own. Minimum individual time commitment for required cohort activities is approximately 1-2 hrs per week. Those who take advantage of OPTIONAL reflection & co-working may commit up to 2-4 hrs per week. — The estimated weekly and overall time commitment each individual in a cohort may dedicate to Openscapes tasks. Required calls are indicated in dark blue; optional calls and tasks are indicated in lighter blue.

Guidance for all Participants

Characteristics of individuals and teams that will get the most return on their investment into the Champions Program include:

All individuals and team members are interested in exploring the interconnected nature of open science and in taking time to reimagine data workflows and stewardship as a collaborative effort, develop modern skills that are of immediate value to them, and cultivate collaborative, inclusive, equitable, and kind teams and communities.
All individuals and team members want to evolve and invest in their culture, processes, and workflows so that they can embody the better science for future us mindset.
- “Better science” means science that is more open, reproducible, efficient, and also more diverse, equitable, inclusive, kind.
- “Future us” is ourselves, teams, communities in the next hour, week, decades – with a focus on onboarding ourselves and others to ongoing work.
Teams that have at least one or two members who do some form of data management, analysis, visualization, or communication in their work on a regular basis. The more regular this work occurs (e.g., weekly is better than quarterly), and the more technically advanced they are (e.g. coding in R, Python or SQL is better than Excel), the more the entire team will get out of the process.

Guidance for Teams

Teams who apply to an upcoming Openscapes Champions Cohort at the Water Boards can be comprised of:

3-6 people that work on something together regularly
Some team members external to the Water Boards, as long as these team members also fit the characteristics described below. It is strongly recommended that external team members account for fewer than 50% of the individuals on each team.

Teams do not need to be a formal unit or group; they can be collaborating in other ways. What’s important is that they share a curiosity and interest in improving something about how they work together.