Form your Teams!

I am happy to announce that the first phase of the Team section of the Citizen Sky website is now up and running!

You can start your own team or join an existing team.  (You can search existing teams by keyword or see a list of all teams.)   Team leaders have the ability to make team membership open to anyone, or if they are looking for something very specific, team leaders can moderate the joining process.  Once the team has all of the necessary skills represented in its membership teams can even be closed.

Members of each team have the ability to create team posts.  These posts can be public (anyone can read them) or private (only other members of your team can read them.)

Coming soon in phase II of the team section: each team will be assigned a professional liaison, each team will have wiki pages for sharing information with other team members, we will add the ability to create event listings, and possibly additional tools based on initial feedback.  So start forming your groups now and we will have even more support for you in the coming weeks!

I'd like to remind everyone of the basic guidelines for forming a team.  The most successful teams will have the following attributes:

Good chemistry: Past experience suggests that some of the friendships formed within a citizen science team may last a lifetime. We recommend finding team members who you may be acquainted with (from the workshop, the forums, etc), but whom you may not yet know well. This gives the team a baseline to start with but allows room for growth and new friendships to build.

Complementary skill sets: Science requires lots of diverse skill sets. Homogenous teams where everyone is good at observing, math, programming, etc. may have trouble in other areas.

A common goal: This may seem obvious, but you'd be surprised at how many teams are formed by people who "just want to work together". While that is noble, you may find out that everyone has a different project in mind. Make sure the final goal and product (a paper, web page, video, etc.) is agreed upon ahead of time.

A leader: There are many different ways to lead and many different types of leader. The one thing in common is that every group needs one - including our teams. Pick a leader at the very beginning and define their role. It could be a simple or a complex role - your choice. But make it clear in the beginning.  Note: Whoever creates the team will initially be the team leader.