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Get Involved! 2026 Volunteer Call Out and Info Session
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Get Involved! 2026 Volunteer Call Out and Info Session
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Upload Date:
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Language: EN.
Segment:0 .
No worries, Jackie. If you want, I'll stop sharing. And you can. Are you able to share. I should be I don't know why we were all locked out of there, but. Yeah give me one second.
While Jackie gets some slides up here, I'm going to go ahead and kick us off. So first of all, Hello, and Thank you for your patience as we get started here. A little bit late. Welcome, and Thank you for joining us today. Jackie is going to well Jackie's working on that. I'm going to I'm going to let her sort of everything's a little late.
Yep go ahead. Yeah cool. So thank you, everybody. You can see my slides I hope. Cool I'm going to adjust just so I can see more of you while we're chatting today. We are recording today's session, so if you know anybody who couldn't make it, please pass it on.
If you don't want to be on camera, that's fine. Please feel free to stay off camera. So I'm just going to give you a quick look of what's ahead. My name is Jacqueline Lord. I'm SSPS, marketing and operations manager. I know a lot of you, and it's great to see you here today. So today we're going to talk about different ways you can get involved with SSP, different opportunities we have. You're going to learn about our mission and values.
You're going to hear from our leadership about how we operate with volunteers and some of the benefits to getting involved. Excuse me. And then you're going to hear from our committee chairs themselves. They're going to talk about the different committee work and what it might be like to join their committee at the end of the session today.
We will have some time for questions, so feel free to put your questions in the chat as we go, and we'll get to them at the very end. So I'm going to hand things off to Melanie, and she'll talk a little bit about SSPS core values and our mission. Thanks, Jackie. For those of you that are new to SSP, or if you just need a refresher, I'm going to share a little bit about who we are.
SSP was founded in 1978 as a nonprofit organization that brings together professionals from every corner of scholarly publishing. Our mission is to foster communication, collaboration, and innovation with our industry. Our members include publishers, librarians, editors, service providers, and technologists from organizations of all sizes and sectors. And we connect through our annual meeting, webinar, regional events, and community of interest groups.
Always with an eye towards advancing scholarly communications together. Our work is grounded in six strategic goals embedding a desire and everything that we do. Supporting professionals at every career stage. Engaging globally, developing new content and services. Ensuring long term financial sustainability and advocating for the value of scholarly publishing. We live these goals for our core values, which are community, inclusivity, adaptability and integrity.
All of this is made possible through our work, through the work of our board of directors, our committees, our task forces. And of course, our dedicated staff. So I'd like to introduce now to you, SSP president Rebecca McLeod, who will share more about volunteering with SSP. Thanks, Melanie. Hello, everybody. At the heart of SSP work is a vibrant, dedicated volunteer community.
Over 300 active members contribute their time and talents to keep our programs running strong. Our volunteer service committees serve on committees and task forces, Kitchen, lead mentorship and fellowship programs, and develop educational content and events like this one. Each SSP committee supports specific strategic goals, and the board collaborates closely with each committee to make sure we're moving the organization forward in a meaningful way.
Whether you're interested in event planning, mentorship, education, or professional development, there's likely a place where your skills and passion can make a real impact. Now, I'm very happy to introduce SPS President-elect demita snow, who will share more about the benefits of getting involved. Thank you, Rebecca. Hello, everyone.
Volunteering with SSP is not just about giving back, it's also about growing. When you get involved, you expand your professional network, build your leadership skills, and you increase your visibility in the industry. I found SSP to be a source of inspiration, connection, and growth. My own volunteer journey began about 10 years ago with an ask to join a conference call.
Remember those. There was no video, and the hope was that everyone that was supposed to be on the call actually was on the call. During that phone call, we talked about the formation of a diversity and inclusion task force and what it would look like for your own information. Accessibility and equity were both added a bit later. Rebecca was on the call because she was to be the co-chair of the task force.
That one call led to my being a task force member, a committee member, committee co-chair, board service, and the pleasure of being here today as your President-elect, I've had the chance to work alongside amazing professionals on task forces and committees where I felt heard and respected. That's the kind of space SSP fosters, which you can see in the quotes from our community. So I encourage you to give an hour a week, an hour, a month, or even an hour a year of your time to support an advocate, an organization that supports us in a myriad of ways.
Your volunteer service can make us an even stronger community and Association. And with that, I'll turn it over to Rebecca. Thank you, Damita, and Thank you again for taking that call. So how can you get involved with ssp? Here are a few ways. First, there's our communities of interest groups. These are subject focused groups open to all members. So some examples that we have are the AI and scholarly publishing group, the mental health awareness and action group, and our early career professionals group.
Regional groups, which are location specific meetups and events that help foster local community. If your area doesn't have a regional group yet, perhaps you can help launch one. And finally, we have our committees and task force forces. And these are the engines of SSPS work. A few examples include the annual meeting program committee.
The career development and early career subcommittees education committee. The diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility committee and the marketing and Communications Committee, and many more. Each group plays a crucial role in shaping sp's future, and we need voices like yours to help lead that effort. Now, I'm going to hand it back to Jackie, who's going to begin our committee introductions.
Thanks, everyone. So Damita and Rebecca, Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. Damita I thought that I really loved hearing how you've had every role of leadership along the way. That's really awesome. And I've seen I recognize a lot of the chairs have had the same experiences.
So feel free when you're talking about your committee to reference your own journey as you'd like. We are going to go through all of our committees who are looking to recruit new volunteers. We are going to go in a random order. So chairs kind of be on alert for me to call your committees. And in the chat. And we will take them at the end. So let's kick it off with our epic awards committee.
Yep Thanks so much, Jackie. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma Hennessy and I am happy to chat for a few minutes about what the epic awards committee does and what we're looking for in New members. I'll have to get into my SSP origin story at another time. I am, I'm not prepared. I was up very late last night on a late flight, so I'm just going to dive right into the committee stuff.
So the epic awards is the new SSP awards program, which is currently in its second year. As we approach this year's SSP meeting. And the program is really about celebrating the great work that happens across our community all through the year and over the years. So in terms of what we're looking for, if you might be interested in our committee, we're especially interested in hearing from people who care about celebrating our scholarly communications community.
And colleagues are looking to work in a collaborative group and are excited to help continue to shape a fairly new awards program that reflects the diversity and innovation in our field. If you have experience with other awards programs as either a planner or participant, that's always helpful, but it's definitely not a must. I did not myself. The work is pretty manageable.
And it's not a huge time commitment. It's shared between both the SSP staff and the members of the committee. As a committee member, some of the things that we work on year to year are reviewing and updating the award categories based on the submission trends and feedback. Fine tuning the submission requirements and judging criteria.
Helping to recruit hosts for the awards ceremony. And we also really rely on the committee to help us spread the word about each of those things. Calls for submissions, calls for judges, ticket sales. And we mainly do that using social media, our professional networks, et cetera like I said, it's a pretty low lift in terms of time commitment. We meet once a month and there's sometimes a bit of asynchronous work between the meetings during the busier parts of the award cycle, but otherwise we mainly rely on the committee to help us think through decisions and make sure that we're working towards our intended outcomes and responding to feedback as we gather it each year.
And we really appreciate the engagement that we've had from our committee this year. With the program being new, we're definitely really focused on trying to be adaptable, looking at feedback, adjusting the program to make it better. As a side note, we highly encourage you to consider attending the epic awards dinner as SSP this year, which will be glamorous, fun, and have two wonderful hosts and a great program.
So if you're thinking about it, think about it some more. And while that event is primarily planned by our wonderful SSP staff, the committee does also get to weigh in on some fun decisions and planning related to the dinner as well. So overall, we're really looking for people who are thoughtful, collaborative, and excited about recognition as a way to strengthen and connect our community.
And if it sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much. That's it for me, Jackie. Thanks, Emma. I was glad you added a last minute plug for this year's event. That's what I was going to say. Had to do it. Had to do it.
Yeah it's going to be really awesome. Yeah all right. Next is education committee. Hello I'm David Myers, co-chair of the education committee, and I see that Lori, my other co-chair, is also on. So if Lori, if you want to jump in. My SSP journey was that I started on this committee working on the webinars. I did that for a couple of years, and then I was asked to join Sophie Reiss as co-chair of the education committee, and I've been on it for two years going into the final year of my term.
So the education committee has two main functions, and we are looking to expand that. But the main ones that we've done are webinars as well as new directions. So there are four webinars a year. New directions is the usually early fall event, live one day in-person symposium with a virtual component. So we're looking for people who are really interested in committing to these and doing and giving us ideas, because what we do is we meet as a group, as a whole at the beginning of each term and discuss what are the topics that we think people are going to be interested in.
We come up with a list that's longer than we can, ideally longer than we would actually be able to fill. Then members join either a webinar team or they join the larger SSP team. The individual webinar teams are then tasked. It's usually about two people working on each one. They're then tasked working with the others in finding speakers, organizing what the topics we're going to be, fleshing everything out, getting the marketing copy ready for SSP, and on possible questions.
So we usually have two people assigned to each webinar. The new directions team meets as a group because they've got a, you know, big program to plan out. And we are also looking for new ideas for the education committee and ways that we can expand it into the next year. So it's not a huge time commitment in most cases. We do have a once a month all hands meeting. That's after the first longer one is usually only a half hour. And then the individual webinar teams will meet.
Maybe they have their own meeting once a month and there's about a monthly meeting. They'll get a little more preprint as they get closer to it for New Directions. I don't know if. Lori, if there's anything you wanted to add. No, I think that really covers it. And if you want to get involved in shaping what programming is presented at SSP, then join education.
Great and Lori will be at the meeting in person. If anyone wants to talk to her further at the volunteer table. Thank you guys. That is fantastic. And I really feel like undersells the reputation of our webinars and educational content. So let's go to the audit committee. Thanks, Jackie. And like Emma, I'm not prepared to share my SSP origin story, but I will work on that because Jeff, I agree 100% love hearing people's stories.
So the audit committee is a relatively new committee. It's only about five years old. The committee was formed because when SSP launched the generations fund, we also needed to adjust our approach to financial audits in order to stay compliant with industry best practices. So the committee oversees the audit of SSP financials. We select the auditor and advise the board of directors about the audit and its findings.
It's kind of an unusual committee in that oftentimes we don't do a lot. And if the committee is quiet, that's a good thing. It's also a relatively small committee. There's typically about 6 to 8 members. But the work that the committee does is really important. And I think that the people who have served on the committee over the years, including myself, have found it to be very rewarding.
And you don't need to have a background in finance. The committee is important for good governance and oversight, and the work that we do aligns with SSPS core value of integrity. It does so by embracing responsible action, transparency and honesty. The committee's work helps to ensure SSP is practicing good stewardship and contributing to the society's long term sustainability and financial health.
So the work is primarily concentrated around late fall, when the auditor is selected and late spring when the audit is received, reviewed and hopefully approved. There may be other occasional meetings as needed, and some years may include special projects, such as overseeing an RFP for selecting a new auditor, or reviewing and making recommendations about relevant items in SSP bylaws. So that's the audit committee in a nutshell, and I hope you'll consider joining.
Thank you. I appreciate that. So let's hop over to career development. Hi, I'm Tricia Sharon, and I am one of the co-chairs of the career development committee. The career development committee is what plans and manages professional development activities.
I think we have about eight different tasks and projects that most of you will be familiar with. They include our fellowship program, our mentorship program, new mentorship pilot programs, coin groups, all of the SSP professional profiles, maintaining our professional skills survey and map, and introducing services around career coaching, job descriptions, resume reviews, and finally looking for internship opportunities and collaboration with our DEI committees.
So that's a lot of things that we do. We have a monthly meeting where we all get together to talk about all of those important projects that we're working on, but really, a lot of the work happens in working groups. So for each of these tasks that the career development committee has, some of them are you have a lot more time commitment, such as the fellowship or mentorship with matching and managing groups sort of throughout the year.
But some can be very asynchronous and just sort of certain times of the year where you'll have a meeting to talk about, for example, survey results or to write a blog post about something coming out or a survey that we want the membership to get involved with. So there's so many different opportunities for the career development committee, regardless of the time that you think you might have, the career development committee has a place for you and your voice is very important.
So we have really been focused on doing a lot. You'll know. Obviously, we have the early career subcommittee and a lot of activities for early careerists. Hopefully a lot of you today will have received a message from Sean Pidgeon, who's one of our other co-chairs, talking about a brand new mentorship scheme for later careers and those considering retirement. So we're really trying to broaden the career development opportunities across the entire membership.
So we hope you'll get involved. And just another little plug for the annual meeting. If you happen to be there. We'll have 10 amazing Fellows there. So please be sure to say Hello and to give them a welcome to SSP. Thank you. So very busy.
So let's hop over to the diversity equity inclusion and accessibility committee. Many awesome. Thank you Jackie. So as Melanie shared at the start, SSP strategic goals include embedding diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and all that we do. And that was a huge, huge, huge reason why I joined both SSP and the DEIA committee within the first couple months of starting the job in the industry.
It was something that really, I was drawn to as a way to meet people and just further embed these principles across the industry and within SSP. So if you are passionate about or interested in learning more about these topics, our committee is really happy to welcome you as a member. So as a committee, we want to embody and advance these values again within SSP and across the industry. And members join with a wide range of knowledge and interests within these topics.
So there's no need to have any prior experience within Dea to join. It's really a community where you can learn from wherever you start. And right now we have three focus areas where we're putting our main activities in. So one is increasing the diversity and global representation within SSP content membership and meetings.
We want to increase Dea awareness and knowledge of accessible career pathways and just increasing access in general to different types of career pathways in the industry, especially for underrepresented groups. We're also passionate about advancing accessibility in SSP and raising awareness of best practices to build in accessibility across our industry practices. We also offer guidance to SSP volunteers on how to model these practices in SSP, work through our DEIA Liaison Program and as a liaison, members work within all the other SSP committees to offer guidance, best practices, and support for making sure across SSP our activities are equitable and inclusive.
We meet as a committee once a month, but similarly to the other committees, we're pretty flexible with how members spend their time and know that our time and free time ebbs and flows across the year. So often, members will pitch in more if they're really passionate about a particular project or working on a specific webinar or blog post about a topic that really interests them.
So it'll really ebb and flow. But the main requirement is just that once a month meeting and then joining one of the other focus areas. So if any of that interests you at all, please feel free to sign up along with any of the other committees. Thank you. Thank you. The DEI committee also liaisons with every single committee we have.
So there's really a lot of meshing with everyone's activities. So it's a really good way to get a little bit of work in all the positions if you're interested. So let's go over to marketing and communications. Hello, everyone. I'm Ann stone, I'm the current co-chair of marketing and Communications Committee. We welcome everyone to contribute in this community.
You don't have to be a marketer in your day job. Everyone has relevant experiences and it's a very active committee. We're looking to have about 30 people to contribute to all the different work we do. To share the load. The best part about being on this committee is working closely with Jackie Lord, who is our amazing senior marketing and operations manager.
We support and amplify the work of all the committees and we and the work set out by the SSP leaders. The committee is currently structured so that volunteers can choose your adventure, and the work matches your interests and availability. I'll give you a quick overview of and a couple of examples to give you the flavor of the work we do. There are three to four main groups at any given time. We have committee liaisons.
As with the DEI committee, there's a liaison from Markham to every other group, and there's a content marketing group, an event marketing group, and what I call special projects. So for the committee liaison role, you embed yourself into the committee that interests you and where you want to make a difference and provide support. Whether you're planning their marketing communications program or providing strategic ideas about how to cross-fertilize with other committees work.
You have a role to play, and you can always call on the co-chairs and other committee members for their ideas and support. For example, the community engagement committee is launching a new regional group in the West, and Lou peck collaborated on that committee to create a marketing launch plan with ideas that are going to influence the changes across the regional groups, for example, shifting communications more for visibility on CE3, for content marketing.
There's many different ways to contribute, whether it's writing a 50 word blurb about weekly industry news for the remember newsletter, or crowdsourcing a TSK article for ask the community post, or writing up an SSP news or blog post on social media, maybe even making videos to promote programs like the epic awards or the workplace equity toolkits. This is where your own creativity and interest can blend to make your contributions personally rewarding event marketing.
There is a dedicated committee liaison to the annual meeting, but there's also so many other events that go on, led by the education committee and others. So with event marketing, we have a subgroup who dedicate their efforts to support these events with the sort of a planning and promotion process for New Directions and our webinar series these this could include content marketing as well in terms of writing up webinar promotions and recaps.
Special projects. Right now we are in the middle of planning SSPS website relaunch. Leading up to this project, there was a special project with the Dea committee in the last year or maybe even longer, to audit the current website for accessibility and recommendations from that work went into the RFP that we used this year to identify our development partner.
So we do a lot, and there's always something to be done with all the work of the contributing to programs, marketing plans and promotions. I'm sure you're wondering what is the time commitment. Well, we appreciate that everyone is busy with their work, and so in any given month, you may have different capacity and you also may have different preferences as your working style may be more aligned with committees or working independently.
So we're very collaborative. We have a monthly meeting to check in as a group and share ideas and share the work, and then the subgroups meet on their own schedule or do not need to meet, depending on what's going on, to reach their goals. We have regular agendas and shared documents, so it's easy to contribute and keep up. If you enjoy working more independently. There is always a bit-sized project for writing, communications, planning or social media.
Jackie has no end of ideas for how you can contribute to help out, and it's easy to raise your hand. So why contribute to SPS marketing communications committee? We're all here to support each other and learn from each other. We encourage creativity and innovation. Contributing your unique experiences and interests. You're also in the know about everything that's going on at SSP.
You now have great opportunities to get to know people from different organizations and make meaningful contributions to advance SSP schools. So join us. Exciting things will be happening in 2627, including our website relaunch. And Jackie, with your permission, I can tell my quick 10 year anniversary story or not, you have to make it quick.
No, I'll skip it and save it for another day. OK, OK, OK. All right, let's move over to finance. Hello, everyone. I'm Henry Spielberg, I'm the co-chair of finance committee, and I've served in this role for just come out for two years alongside my co-chair, Emily Del, who's also been serving as treasurer of SSP and is just reaching the end of her term now.
So she'll be stepping away. But we're delighted that Laura Ritchie has been elected as treasurer for the new term. So we'll be working with her for the next year ahead. So finance committee is a little bit different from some of the other SSP committees in that it primarily has a governance and oversight role. So we're also a bit smaller than some other committees comprising 15 members altogether, including representatives, of course, from the board of directors and SSP staff.
But what we really what we focus on is ensuring that we provide the support and guidance for SSP to remain on a sound financial footing and continue to be able to perform its important work. So we occasionally will make recommendations to the board, for example, when there's a suggestion for membership due increases or changes to pricing for the annual committee, the finance committee will look those over, make any suggestions and provide recommendations to the board.
One of the key tasks during the year, which tend to take place earlier in the year, of course, is the review and comment on the draft budget, which is put together by Melanie and her team. And we also help with setting future priorities for other areas of revenue and spending. So in terms of what you might expect if you want to join the finance committee, you'll be joining a dedicated group of fellow professionals, all with a shared commitment of supporting SSP.
But the work is not too onerous. Like most other committees, we typically meet every month online for an hour or so. There's usually a little bit of pre-reading just in terms of reviewing the monthly financial statements, which are circulated ahead of the meeting. And we do ask committee members to look those over and raise any questions or make any comments. But typically that review doesn't take too long.
Another area of responsibility is managing and looking, ensuring that the success of SSP financial reserves, which of course, provide the financial reassurance that the SSP will remain viable. And this includes, of course, the generations fund as well. And though all of the reserves are managed for us by an investment fund that an investment management firm. So each month we look through the statements. And of course, that's particularly important given the current turbulence in the wider world and financial markets.
But generally, the reserves perform very well as long term investments. As I mentioned during the budget season, the committee scrutinizes the budgets quite closely, making recommendations and comments on anything in note. And we'll also continue to review other financial performance through the year as well. For example, in the run up to the annual meeting, looking over the revenue and cost basis for those activities as well.
From time to time, there's the opportunity to get involved in special projects. And in those cases, we may set up smaller subgroups which members can elect to join maybe of only three or four people. And so that might be looking at a particular aspect of finance committee's responsibilities. A couple of years ago, for example, we reviewed the SSP policy on ethical investment.
And that was quite an interesting project over a few months to make sure that SSP approach there was in line with other similar non-profits, so that that was a very worthwhile activity. And more recently we've had a smaller group to look into the approach on, on how best to go about distributing the generations fund. Now that that's been completed, just in closing, I'd note that it's important to realize that you don't need any formal financial experience to join the committee, although of course, if you have some familiarity with managing budgets, overseeing panels and expenditure.
And so on. That's useful, but really what matters most is curiosity, enthusiasm and a willingness to get involved and to ask questions. So I hope that's been helpful. We we'll be looking for three new members of the committee this year. If you have any questions at all, please do contact me. Or in fact, Emily herself will be in person at the annual meeting at the get involved session.
And of course, Laura is the incoming treasurer. I'm sure will be happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you very much. Thanks, Henry. Appreciate it. And all that you do, for all that the committee does for SSP to keep us in shape. So now let's go over to the community engagement. And this should be committee not subcommittee.
My mistake. Thanks, Jackie. Coming in loud. So Hi, everyone, I'm Mike Donatelli, I'm one of the co-chairs of the community engagement committee. And so I'm here to talk to you briefly about our group. I've been a co-chair for this past year's, my first year on this committee, and I've been involved with SSP for a decade plus somehow.
So the community engagement committee is really just it's a group of passionate volunteers. We have a global roster, you know, from around the scholarly communications and publishing industry, and we're divided into various subgroups with different focuses. And I want to emphasize, I think there's plenty of room to volunteer and participate in our committee based on your interests and location.
But our key responsibilities are overseeing the SSP regional groups, which I've already mentioned a few times today. You know, which are regional, mostly in person groups that are based in various cities across the United States. Also overseas, now with a group in Berlin and another group based in the UK. This past year, we've kind of expanded this into a more of an online possibility with a new group that's focused on the Western United States.
And so it's been really exciting just to see that develop and come up. We're always looking for volunteers that are interested in leading those regional groups. Again, we have groups in DC, Boston, and New York, Raleigh, Durham, Chicago, Berlin. And I said the UK and the Western group. But if there's an area where you think that, you know, there should be a group, we're looking for volunteers to always help us spin up another regional group, especially now that we can focus those online.
We're also responsible for the community of interest groups, the coin groups. I'm sure many of you have heard of the coin groups. There's a very successful AI focused coin group. There's a mental health awareness group. There's a humanities and social sciences group. That is the process of relaunching itself. And again, those are organizations that are really led by volunteers.
You know, people who want to establish a community interest group can establish a community interest group. And we're here to help make sure that gets off the ground. The committee itself is meeting monthly for about an hour right now. And sorry. And what we're really looking to focus on next year is building support structures to help the existing groups and help form new groups faster, to give people a framework for experience and expand on what we have.
Currently there are some new coin groups launching in the coming year. A mid-career focused group, for instance, as opposed to an early career focused group that's already been quite successful and we're always looking for new ideas on that front. Another area of community engagement, some of the events that used to be attached to the generations fund fundraising, the annual 5K, which will be happening this fall, and the creative auction at the annual meeting.
We're hoping to expand that as well in the coming years, and always looking again for volunteers with some ideas that want to run events or help these things spread across the community, regardless of location. So in terms of why you should volunteer and want to join our committee, if you're looking to volunteer on a regional level to get some FaceTime with your colleagues in your area, there's room within the regional group system.
If you have an idea or topic for a community of interest group. We're certainly happy to help you get that launched off the ground. Really, I think over the next year, we're going to be focused on a lot of brainstorming and support for these groups. And so even if you're not in one of those areas and you just want to help people connect, I think the community engagement group might be for you.
So thank you and appreciate your consideration. Excuse me. Thanks, Mike. Let's hop over to the early career subcommittee. Hey Thanks, Jackie. I'm happy to speak a bit on the early career subcommittee. So Hi, everyone.
I'm really excited to speak about the x. Sorry so I'm in my second of a three year term as the co-chair of the early career subcommittee, and I've been a member of SSP since 2023, when I joined as an early career fellow and as an early career professional myself, I'm very passionate about the resources that the subcommittee is able to produce and share with the whole industry here.
So the mission of the early career subcommittee is to engage with and serve students and early career professionals in scholarly communication by providing educational resources and really help them develop their careers. We also try and help early career professionals expand their networks and build a foundation for career success through increased presence and participation in SSP. And as a subcommittee of the early career development committee of the career development committee as a whole, we act somewhat independently as a separate group, but ultimately strive towards that same goal of career development, just with a bit more of a targeted audience.
So this is a really good subcommittee to join early in your journey at SSP. It's a great way for early career professionals to learn about and contribute to our resources, build out their community among other SSP volunteers, and help guide their own career trajectory. We also welcome volunteers in their mid and late career stages, as their experience is very helpful in guiding our group in giving back to early career professionals.
The time commitment is really as much as you're willing to put in with one hour long monthly all hands meeting as most committees and then varying meetings for other project teams. We do encourage our members usually to join 1 to 3 projects, depending on their interest and their bandwidth. A members of our subcommittee help develop and create resources that are all free to use and open to both SSP and non SSP members.
So some of the projects that you could work on in the early career subcommittee include the early career Chu, which is a free newsletter available on LinkedIn that summarizes the latest industry news, career resources and events each quarter. We also contribute to finding early career submissions for SSPS professional profiles that highlight the different career paths and insights of SSP members.
For those who want some experience working in other mediums like audio, we also have an early career development podcast series that offers advice and commentary on enhancing your skill set, broadening your network, and seizing opportunities. And those are all available to everyone on The Scholarly Kitchen. The early career subcommittee also contributes to the SSP webinar program, which you've already heard a bit about.
The latest early career webinar covered practical strategies for navigating career development and promotion. And we usually have one, sometimes two, early career dedicated webinars each year. And our other big project is the early career professionals coin, which has also come up a couple times. This group meets monthly to discuss topics and networking among early career professionals in various scholarly publishing roles.
So joining our subcommittee, we're always welcoming more members to contribute ideas and help run these meetings. So if you're in the first one to five years of your career or interested in contributing to any of the resources I've mentioned, please feel free to consider the early career subcommittee. We're always welcoming new members and are very excited for this upcoming volunteer year.
Thank you. Thanks, Ana, much appreciate it. Let's hear from the Scholarly Kitchen cabinet. Hello, everybody. I'm Randy Townsend and I have been a career long volunteer with SSP. I was one of the founding co-chairs of the DEI committee. I've served on the board and as president.
I am also a chef and a long term mentor. Perpetual I guess it's no secret that the Scholarly Kitchen is the place to turn to, to see what our industry is talking about. The Scholarly Kitchen cabinet is the governing body for the Scholarly Kitchen, and its responsibilities include setting governance issues, appointing the editor, reporting on TSKK metrics and development to the board of directors, and making recommendations to the SSP executive committee regarding new opportunities for TSKK.
We're deeply connected to SSPS mission of advancing scholarly publishing and communication through education, collaboration, and networking. We want to ensure that we're attracting new and diverse voices and topics that are relevant, thought provoking, inspiring, and ultimately keep us all connected. Volunteering with the PTSC cabinet offers an opportunity to help guide one of the scholarly publishing community's most visible and trusted forums.
Cabinet members help shape editorial direction, uphold standards of integrity and inclusivity, and ensure the Scholarly Kitchen remains responsive to industry developments and diverse perspectives. Member support editorial leadership. Contribute to policy and planning discussions, and help identify priorities that keep TSKK relevant, credible and balanced.
The work includes advising on content strategy, engaging with editors and authors and helping the blog adapt as scholarly publishing continues to evolve. Please consider joining the cabinet if any of this resonates with you. We'd love to have your bright voices and perspectives. Thank you. Thanks, Randy.
Let's hear from the training committee. Thanks, Jackie. I'm Jeanine McKenna. I'm the co-chair of the training committee with Jeff Mahoney, who is rotating off after the annual meeting next month. And Mike Groth will be joining as the next co-chair for the next three years. So for the training committee, our job, our role is different than the education committee.
We focus on skills you can learn for your particular role or a role you may want to grow into. So with that, our biggest event is the journals Academy, which is held every fall, typically over three consecutive Tuesdays for a chunk of three hours. And it ranges from learning about editorial, about finance, production and the everyone on the committee.
It's an all hands event. Everyone takes a segment to serve as a shepherd with several other members to find speakers, and generally be there to support the event. It's been with. This will be the fourth year of the journals Academy coming up. It's been pretty successful. And then in the past, members who have attended the journals Academy then join the training committee because they enjoyed it so much.
And they want to, you know, give back. So with that, after the journals Academy, we also have the Leadership Academy, which is a recent addition to the training committee from about two years ago. And that is also aimed at early career. And it's for individuals who really want to progress in their career. And they learn different aspects of becoming a leader in the publishing industry.
They each session will have a different. Aspect one was they did the strong Campbell inventory and discussed that and what that would mean for each of them. And lastly, we have two training seminars a year and those are pretty open as far as topics. We've been really trying to develop one on AI and also trying to develop one on.
What you do if you want to develop a new title or expand a portfolio. And so any of those suggestions are welcome from the committee. We are a really collaborative group. There are right now about 20 members, and that includes the liaisons from the other committees. And we meet monthly as a full group. And then as we get closer to the journals Academy in the fall, the committee, the groups will meet on their own to get there each session up and running.
So it's not a huge lift as far as time and it's a lot of fun. Jeff was really the founding chair when this was a task force. And it moved into a committee. And I'm really sad he's rotating off. Neither he nor I will be in Chula Vista this year. So Mike Groff will be the incoming co-chair. He'll be at the table for the get involved session or get involved lunch.
So I think that's it. Thanks, Janine. Much appreciated. Let's hear from the membership committee. Hello, everyone. I'm Trina arpin. I am the co-chair of the membership committee, along with Ian Suarez.
We're both just finishing our first year as co-chairs, and we will both be continuing on. So, Yeah, the membership committee, membership committee, we monitor the membership health. We promote and develop new membership classes. We provide advice and input on changes in membership rates and also on the membership survey, which goes out every other year. And yes.
So we have currently three working groups that sometimes fluctuates a little bit recruiting membership and membership engagement and general outreach. And we will work on increasing or reaching out to organizational members, either lapsed or potential to try and get them to join. The general outreach committee will send a welcome email to every new individual member each month, and the member engagement committee will work on providing that input for membership rate and changes, the membership survey and also organizing and sort of staffing the SSP booth at the annual meeting.
They also get to pick what the either like the little swag or what treats we provide at that booth. So I know that was very exciting for them. This spring, when they learned that Chula Vista is the lemon capital of the world, maybe, or North America, I'm not quite sure. But so you don't need any prior experience in membership strategy or nonprofit operations to join us. Just an interest in supporting a strong and inclusive professional community.
Next year, we will continue to focus on growing the organizational memberships, and we're also looking to improve our ability to identify and connect with decision makers at organizations. So Yeah. I think that that's all for me. Excellent.
Thank you very much. Let's move over to the annual meeting program committee. OK Hello, everyone. I'm Greg Fagin. I have an interesting origin story that I won't tell, but it goes back to 1995. I was very young. I was a publishing prodigy. I was 12 years old.
So I'll tell you that. I'll tell that to you in Chula Vista. If you're interested, feel free to ask me. And I'll. I'll let you know about it. So I'm one of the co-chairs of the annual meeting program committee. Our goal, our responsibility is to plan, develop and execute the annual meeting.
We have lots of help from people like Jackie and Melanie and Susan, everybody at SSP, and we are the largest committee. We are 30 to 40 people and we, you know, people of varying experience. So everyone from seasoned publishing professionals to people early in their career. And we do like to rotate people in and out each year. You know, people drop off. We bring new people on because we like to have fresh perspectives and ideas coming in each year.
So keep that in mind when you're thinking about committees to join. We welcome new people and new perspectives. So we need our goal is to responsibility is to develop the theme, help to recruit speakers and organize the sessions, the concurrent sessions, the plenary sessions. And from that, you're a member of the annual meeting program committee.
And we do meet monthly, as most committees do. You know the full committee and we communicate via email and C3 for other needs and things that pop up as they do throughout the planning stages. And we have subcommittees. There's a keynote subcommittee working on recruiting, identifying and recruiting the keynote speaker. There is a highlights webinar subcommittee. As you know, we started last year, the highlights webinar, which is, you know, brief distillations of some of the concurrent and plenary sessions at SSP.
And we have the speakers from the annual meeting take part and there's time for questions. And we so it's perfect for people who can't make it to Chula Vista for the annual meeting. And it's even if you were there, there are things to be gained from attending the highlights meeting. So once we've started the planning of the sessions, we get the reviews come in, and the heaviest lift for the program committee is each member.
It will be, you know, we get probably 100 submissions roughly, and we have to whittle those down to 25 or so sessions that will be part of the annual meeting. So each program committee member will be assigned 15 to 20 sessions of submissions. To review. You grade them using the SSP rubric in ex ordo, which is the system that we use.
And then we meet and we discuss them, and eventually we whittle those down to the 25 or so that become the sessions of the annual meeting. And then your further duties beyond that is we like to assign each member of the program committee. You volunteer for this, of course, you become a shepherd of a session and you don't have to. You're not responsible for organizing it, but you are responsible for keeping in touch with the session organizer and making sure you're helping them recruit speakers if need be.
And you can turn to the other committee members to help you with that. We all know people that can be speakers and you know who would be useful. And just making sure that the session organizers are meeting with their speakers, and they're developing those sessions in a timely manner so that as we get closer to the meeting, that those sessions happen as they should. And then there are other, smaller duties involved volunteering to be a buddy for new people.
Maybe it's their first time attending this SSP meeting. And we like to have someone from the program committee shepherd them around and introduce them to people to make sure that they feel welcome. Delivering the gifts for the speakers before their sessions. Speakers get who are part of the sessions, get a gift, and the shepherds duty is to make sure that those gifts are delivered. And if you're not going to be there physically, to just let us know so that we can assign somebody to do that.
And it's very satisfying, I have to say, to meet from, you know, we start meeting in August and just watching the meeting develop and watching it come to fruition, as we will, at the end of this month. It's really very satisfying. It's a very satisfying experience to watch that happen and to see the meeting just unfold and know that you had a part in making that happen.
So we welcome all Newcomers. So feel free to, talk to us at the table in Chula Vista. And I think I've covered everything, but I know my fellow co-chair, Jessie Slater, is on the call. So, Jessie, if you want to add anything, feel free. All right. Well, Thank you, Greg, I think ampc might actually be our biggest committee, certainly our most visible.
So I hope that everybody is feeling a little inspired about the opportunities that we have available. I'm going to put a link in the chat to our Get Involved page. This has a link to the volunteer application as well as the contact information for all of our chairs. You can go see more of the projects they've talked about today, say, but I wanted to throw it open to see if any of our attendees have any questions that we could address, or questions for specific committee chairs.
OK well, this recording will be posted online. I want to thank everybody for coming today. And Thank you to our chairs and SSP leadership for your time. If you would like to know, and for more information, you can visit the link I put in the chat.
Or you can also email us at org, and we're happy to put you in touch with a chair. If you have more specific questions, please apply by June 6th if you're interested. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
Segment:0 .
No worries, Jackie. If you want, I'll stop sharing. And you can. Are you able to share. I should be I don't know why we were all locked out of there, but. Yeah give me one second.
While Jackie gets some slides up here, I'm going to go ahead and kick us off. So first of all, Hello, and Thank you for your patience as we get started here. A little bit late. Welcome, and Thank you for joining us today. Jackie is going to well Jackie's working on that. I'm going to I'm going to let her sort of everything's a little late.
Yep go ahead. Yeah cool. So thank you, everybody. You can see my slides I hope. Cool I'm going to adjust just so I can see more of you while we're chatting today. We are recording today's session, so if you know anybody who couldn't make it, please pass it on.
If you don't want to be on camera, that's fine. Please feel free to stay off camera. So I'm just going to give you a quick look of what's ahead. My name is Jacqueline Lord. I'm SSPS, marketing and operations manager. I know a lot of you, and it's great to see you here today. So today we're going to talk about different ways you can get involved with SSP, different opportunities we have. You're going to learn about our mission and values.
You're going to hear from our leadership about how we operate with volunteers and some of the benefits to getting involved. Excuse me. And then you're going to hear from our committee chairs themselves. They're going to talk about the different committee work and what it might be like to join their committee at the end of the session today.
We will have some time for questions, so feel free to put your questions in the chat as we go, and we'll get to them at the very end. So I'm going to hand things off to Melanie, and she'll talk a little bit about SSPS core values and our mission. Thanks, Jackie. For those of you that are new to SSP, or if you just need a refresher, I'm going to share a little bit about who we are.
SSP was founded in 1978 as a nonprofit organization that brings together professionals from every corner of scholarly publishing. Our mission is to foster communication, collaboration, and innovation with our industry. Our members include publishers, librarians, editors, service providers, and technologists from organizations of all sizes and sectors. And we connect through our annual meeting, webinar, regional events, and community of interest groups.
Always with an eye towards advancing scholarly communications together. Our work is grounded in six strategic goals embedding a desire and everything that we do. Supporting professionals at every career stage. Engaging globally, developing new content and services. Ensuring long term financial sustainability and advocating for the value of scholarly publishing. We live these goals for our core values, which are community, inclusivity, adaptability and integrity.
All of this is made possible through our work, through the work of our board of directors, our committees, our task forces. And of course, our dedicated staff. So I'd like to introduce now to you, SSP president Rebecca McLeod, who will share more about volunteering with SSP. Thanks, Melanie. Hello, everybody. At the heart of SSP work is a vibrant, dedicated volunteer community.
Over 300 active members contribute their time and talents to keep our programs running strong. Our volunteer service committees serve on committees and task forces, Kitchen, lead mentorship and fellowship programs, and develop educational content and events like this one. Each SSP committee supports specific strategic goals, and the board collaborates closely with each committee to make sure we're moving the organization forward in a meaningful way.
Whether you're interested in event planning, mentorship, education, or professional development, there's likely a place where your skills and passion can make a real impact. Now, I'm very happy to introduce SPS President-elect demita snow, who will share more about the benefits of getting involved. Thank you, Rebecca. Hello, everyone.
Volunteering with SSP is not just about giving back, it's also about growing. When you get involved, you expand your professional network, build your leadership skills, and you increase your visibility in the industry. I found SSP to be a source of inspiration, connection, and growth. My own volunteer journey began about 10 years ago with an ask to join a conference call.
Remember those. There was no video, and the hope was that everyone that was supposed to be on the call actually was on the call. During that phone call, we talked about the formation of a diversity and inclusion task force and what it would look like for your own information. Accessibility and equity were both added a bit later. Rebecca was on the call because she was to be the co-chair of the task force.
That one call led to my being a task force member, a committee member, committee co-chair, board service, and the pleasure of being here today as your President-elect, I've had the chance to work alongside amazing professionals on task forces and committees where I felt heard and respected. That's the kind of space SSP fosters, which you can see in the quotes from our community. So I encourage you to give an hour a week, an hour, a month, or even an hour a year of your time to support an advocate, an organization that supports us in a myriad of ways.
Your volunteer service can make us an even stronger community and Association. And with that, I'll turn it over to Rebecca. Thank you, Damita, and Thank you again for taking that call. So how can you get involved with ssp? Here are a few ways. First, there's our communities of interest groups. These are subject focused groups open to all members. So some examples that we have are the AI and scholarly publishing group, the mental health awareness and action group, and our early career professionals group.
Regional groups, which are location specific meetups and events that help foster local community. If your area doesn't have a regional group yet, perhaps you can help launch one. And finally, we have our committees and task force forces. And these are the engines of SSPS work. A few examples include the annual meeting program committee.
The career development and early career subcommittees education committee. The diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility committee and the marketing and Communications Committee, and many more. Each group plays a crucial role in shaping sp's future, and we need voices like yours to help lead that effort. Now, I'm going to hand it back to Jackie, who's going to begin our committee introductions.
Thanks, everyone. So Damita and Rebecca, Thank you very much for sharing your experiences. Damita I thought that I really loved hearing how you've had every role of leadership along the way. That's really awesome. And I've seen I recognize a lot of the chairs have had the same experiences.
So feel free when you're talking about your committee to reference your own journey as you'd like. We are going to go through all of our committees who are looking to recruit new volunteers. We are going to go in a random order. So chairs kind of be on alert for me to call your committees. And in the chat. And we will take them at the end. So let's kick it off with our epic awards committee.
Yep Thanks so much, Jackie. Hi, everyone. I'm Emma Hennessy and I am happy to chat for a few minutes about what the epic awards committee does and what we're looking for in New members. I'll have to get into my SSP origin story at another time. I am, I'm not prepared. I was up very late last night on a late flight, so I'm just going to dive right into the committee stuff.
So the epic awards is the new SSP awards program, which is currently in its second year. As we approach this year's SSP meeting. And the program is really about celebrating the great work that happens across our community all through the year and over the years. So in terms of what we're looking for, if you might be interested in our committee, we're especially interested in hearing from people who care about celebrating our scholarly communications community.
And colleagues are looking to work in a collaborative group and are excited to help continue to shape a fairly new awards program that reflects the diversity and innovation in our field. If you have experience with other awards programs as either a planner or participant, that's always helpful, but it's definitely not a must. I did not myself. The work is pretty manageable.
And it's not a huge time commitment. It's shared between both the SSP staff and the members of the committee. As a committee member, some of the things that we work on year to year are reviewing and updating the award categories based on the submission trends and feedback. Fine tuning the submission requirements and judging criteria.
Helping to recruit hosts for the awards ceremony. And we also really rely on the committee to help us spread the word about each of those things. Calls for submissions, calls for judges, ticket sales. And we mainly do that using social media, our professional networks, et cetera like I said, it's a pretty low lift in terms of time commitment. We meet once a month and there's sometimes a bit of asynchronous work between the meetings during the busier parts of the award cycle, but otherwise we mainly rely on the committee to help us think through decisions and make sure that we're working towards our intended outcomes and responding to feedback as we gather it each year.
And we really appreciate the engagement that we've had from our committee this year. With the program being new, we're definitely really focused on trying to be adaptable, looking at feedback, adjusting the program to make it better. As a side note, we highly encourage you to consider attending the epic awards dinner as SSP this year, which will be glamorous, fun, and have two wonderful hosts and a great program.
So if you're thinking about it, think about it some more. And while that event is primarily planned by our wonderful SSP staff, the committee does also get to weigh in on some fun decisions and planning related to the dinner as well. So overall, we're really looking for people who are thoughtful, collaborative, and excited about recognition as a way to strengthen and connect our community.
And if it sounds like you, we'd love to hear from you. Thank you so much. That's it for me, Jackie. Thanks, Emma. I was glad you added a last minute plug for this year's event. That's what I was going to say. Had to do it. Had to do it.
Yeah it's going to be really awesome. Yeah all right. Next is education committee. Hello I'm David Myers, co-chair of the education committee, and I see that Lori, my other co-chair, is also on. So if Lori, if you want to jump in. My SSP journey was that I started on this committee working on the webinars. I did that for a couple of years, and then I was asked to join Sophie Reiss as co-chair of the education committee, and I've been on it for two years going into the final year of my term.
So the education committee has two main functions, and we are looking to expand that. But the main ones that we've done are webinars as well as new directions. So there are four webinars a year. New directions is the usually early fall event, live one day in-person symposium with a virtual component. So we're looking for people who are really interested in committing to these and doing and giving us ideas, because what we do is we meet as a group, as a whole at the beginning of each term and discuss what are the topics that we think people are going to be interested in.
We come up with a list that's longer than we can, ideally longer than we would actually be able to fill. Then members join either a webinar team or they join the larger SSP team. The individual webinar teams are then tasked. It's usually about two people working on each one. They're then tasked working with the others in finding speakers, organizing what the topics we're going to be, fleshing everything out, getting the marketing copy ready for SSP, and on possible questions.
So we usually have two people assigned to each webinar. The new directions team meets as a group because they've got a, you know, big program to plan out. And we are also looking for new ideas for the education committee and ways that we can expand it into the next year. So it's not a huge time commitment in most cases. We do have a once a month all hands meeting. That's after the first longer one is usually only a half hour. And then the individual webinar teams will meet.
Maybe they have their own meeting once a month and there's about a monthly meeting. They'll get a little more preprint as they get closer to it for New Directions. I don't know if. Lori, if there's anything you wanted to add. No, I think that really covers it. And if you want to get involved in shaping what programming is presented at SSP, then join education.
Great and Lori will be at the meeting in person. If anyone wants to talk to her further at the volunteer table. Thank you guys. That is fantastic. And I really feel like undersells the reputation of our webinars and educational content. So let's go to the audit committee. Thanks, Jackie. And like Emma, I'm not prepared to share my SSP origin story, but I will work on that because Jeff, I agree 100% love hearing people's stories.
So the audit committee is a relatively new committee. It's only about five years old. The committee was formed because when SSP launched the generations fund, we also needed to adjust our approach to financial audits in order to stay compliant with industry best practices. So the committee oversees the audit of SSP financials. We select the auditor and advise the board of directors about the audit and its findings.
It's kind of an unusual committee in that oftentimes we don't do a lot. And if the committee is quiet, that's a good thing. It's also a relatively small committee. There's typically about 6 to 8 members. But the work that the committee does is really important. And I think that the people who have served on the committee over the years, including myself, have found it to be very rewarding.
And you don't need to have a background in finance. The committee is important for good governance and oversight, and the work that we do aligns with SSPS core value of integrity. It does so by embracing responsible action, transparency and honesty. The committee's work helps to ensure SSP is practicing good stewardship and contributing to the society's long term sustainability and financial health.
So the work is primarily concentrated around late fall, when the auditor is selected and late spring when the audit is received, reviewed and hopefully approved. There may be other occasional meetings as needed, and some years may include special projects, such as overseeing an RFP for selecting a new auditor, or reviewing and making recommendations about relevant items in SSP bylaws. So that's the audit committee in a nutshell, and I hope you'll consider joining.
Thank you. I appreciate that. So let's hop over to career development. Hi, I'm Tricia Sharon, and I am one of the co-chairs of the career development committee. The career development committee is what plans and manages professional development activities.
I think we have about eight different tasks and projects that most of you will be familiar with. They include our fellowship program, our mentorship program, new mentorship pilot programs, coin groups, all of the SSP professional profiles, maintaining our professional skills survey and map, and introducing services around career coaching, job descriptions, resume reviews, and finally looking for internship opportunities and collaboration with our DEI committees.
So that's a lot of things that we do. We have a monthly meeting where we all get together to talk about all of those important projects that we're working on, but really, a lot of the work happens in working groups. So for each of these tasks that the career development committee has, some of them are you have a lot more time commitment, such as the fellowship or mentorship with matching and managing groups sort of throughout the year.
But some can be very asynchronous and just sort of certain times of the year where you'll have a meeting to talk about, for example, survey results or to write a blog post about something coming out or a survey that we want the membership to get involved with. So there's so many different opportunities for the career development committee, regardless of the time that you think you might have, the career development committee has a place for you and your voice is very important.
So we have really been focused on doing a lot. You'll know. Obviously, we have the early career subcommittee and a lot of activities for early careerists. Hopefully a lot of you today will have received a message from Sean Pidgeon, who's one of our other co-chairs, talking about a brand new mentorship scheme for later careers and those considering retirement. So we're really trying to broaden the career development opportunities across the entire membership.
So we hope you'll get involved. And just another little plug for the annual meeting. If you happen to be there. We'll have 10 amazing Fellows there. So please be sure to say Hello and to give them a welcome to SSP. Thank you. So very busy.
So let's hop over to the diversity equity inclusion and accessibility committee. Many awesome. Thank you Jackie. So as Melanie shared at the start, SSP strategic goals include embedding diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility and all that we do. And that was a huge, huge, huge reason why I joined both SSP and the DEIA committee within the first couple months of starting the job in the industry.
It was something that really, I was drawn to as a way to meet people and just further embed these principles across the industry and within SSP. So if you are passionate about or interested in learning more about these topics, our committee is really happy to welcome you as a member. So as a committee, we want to embody and advance these values again within SSP and across the industry. And members join with a wide range of knowledge and interests within these topics.
So there's no need to have any prior experience within Dea to join. It's really a community where you can learn from wherever you start. And right now we have three focus areas where we're putting our main activities in. So one is increasing the diversity and global representation within SSP content membership and meetings.
We want to increase Dea awareness and knowledge of accessible career pathways and just increasing access in general to different types of career pathways in the industry, especially for underrepresented groups. We're also passionate about advancing accessibility in SSP and raising awareness of best practices to build in accessibility across our industry practices. We also offer guidance to SSP volunteers on how to model these practices in SSP, work through our DEIA Liaison Program and as a liaison, members work within all the other SSP committees to offer guidance, best practices, and support for making sure across SSP our activities are equitable and inclusive.
We meet as a committee once a month, but similarly to the other committees, we're pretty flexible with how members spend their time and know that our time and free time ebbs and flows across the year. So often, members will pitch in more if they're really passionate about a particular project or working on a specific webinar or blog post about a topic that really interests them.
So it'll really ebb and flow. But the main requirement is just that once a month meeting and then joining one of the other focus areas. So if any of that interests you at all, please feel free to sign up along with any of the other committees. Thank you. Thank you. The DEI committee also liaisons with every single committee we have.
So there's really a lot of meshing with everyone's activities. So it's a really good way to get a little bit of work in all the positions if you're interested. So let's go over to marketing and communications. Hello, everyone. I'm Ann stone, I'm the current co-chair of marketing and Communications Committee. We welcome everyone to contribute in this community.
You don't have to be a marketer in your day job. Everyone has relevant experiences and it's a very active committee. We're looking to have about 30 people to contribute to all the different work we do. To share the load. The best part about being on this committee is working closely with Jackie Lord, who is our amazing senior marketing and operations manager.
We support and amplify the work of all the committees and we and the work set out by the SSP leaders. The committee is currently structured so that volunteers can choose your adventure, and the work matches your interests and availability. I'll give you a quick overview of and a couple of examples to give you the flavor of the work we do. There are three to four main groups at any given time. We have committee liaisons.
As with the DEI committee, there's a liaison from Markham to every other group, and there's a content marketing group, an event marketing group, and what I call special projects. So for the committee liaison role, you embed yourself into the committee that interests you and where you want to make a difference and provide support. Whether you're planning their marketing communications program or providing strategic ideas about how to cross-fertilize with other committees work.
You have a role to play, and you can always call on the co-chairs and other committee members for their ideas and support. For example, the community engagement committee is launching a new regional group in the West, and Lou peck collaborated on that committee to create a marketing launch plan with ideas that are going to influence the changes across the regional groups, for example, shifting communications more for visibility on CE3, for content marketing.
There's many different ways to contribute, whether it's writing a 50 word blurb about weekly industry news for the remember newsletter, or crowdsourcing a TSK article for ask the community post, or writing up an SSP news or blog post on social media, maybe even making videos to promote programs like the epic awards or the workplace equity toolkits. This is where your own creativity and interest can blend to make your contributions personally rewarding event marketing.
There is a dedicated committee liaison to the annual meeting, but there's also so many other events that go on, led by the education committee and others. So with event marketing, we have a subgroup who dedicate their efforts to support these events with the sort of a planning and promotion process for New Directions and our webinar series these this could include content marketing as well in terms of writing up webinar promotions and recaps.
Special projects. Right now we are in the middle of planning SSPS website relaunch. Leading up to this project, there was a special project with the Dea committee in the last year or maybe even longer, to audit the current website for accessibility and recommendations from that work went into the RFP that we used this year to identify our development partner.
So we do a lot, and there's always something to be done with all the work of the contributing to programs, marketing plans and promotions. I'm sure you're wondering what is the time commitment. Well, we appreciate that everyone is busy with their work, and so in any given month, you may have different capacity and you also may have different preferences as your working style may be more aligned with committees or working independently.
So we're very collaborative. We have a monthly meeting to check in as a group and share ideas and share the work, and then the subgroups meet on their own schedule or do not need to meet, depending on what's going on, to reach their goals. We have regular agendas and shared documents, so it's easy to contribute and keep up. If you enjoy working more independently. There is always a bit-sized project for writing, communications, planning or social media.
Jackie has no end of ideas for how you can contribute to help out, and it's easy to raise your hand. So why contribute to SPS marketing communications committee? We're all here to support each other and learn from each other. We encourage creativity and innovation. Contributing your unique experiences and interests. You're also in the know about everything that's going on at SSP.
You now have great opportunities to get to know people from different organizations and make meaningful contributions to advance SSP schools. So join us. Exciting things will be happening in 2627, including our website relaunch. And Jackie, with your permission, I can tell my quick 10 year anniversary story or not, you have to make it quick.
No, I'll skip it and save it for another day. OK, OK, OK. All right, let's move over to finance. Hello, everyone. I'm Henry Spielberg, I'm the co-chair of finance committee, and I've served in this role for just come out for two years alongside my co-chair, Emily Del, who's also been serving as treasurer of SSP and is just reaching the end of her term now.
So she'll be stepping away. But we're delighted that Laura Ritchie has been elected as treasurer for the new term. So we'll be working with her for the next year ahead. So finance committee is a little bit different from some of the other SSP committees in that it primarily has a governance and oversight role. So we're also a bit smaller than some other committees comprising 15 members altogether, including representatives, of course, from the board of directors and SSP staff.
But what we really what we focus on is ensuring that we provide the support and guidance for SSP to remain on a sound financial footing and continue to be able to perform its important work. So we occasionally will make recommendations to the board, for example, when there's a suggestion for membership due increases or changes to pricing for the annual committee, the finance committee will look those over, make any suggestions and provide recommendations to the board.
One of the key tasks during the year, which tend to take place earlier in the year, of course, is the review and comment on the draft budget, which is put together by Melanie and her team. And we also help with setting future priorities for other areas of revenue and spending. So in terms of what you might expect if you want to join the finance committee, you'll be joining a dedicated group of fellow professionals, all with a shared commitment of supporting SSP.
But the work is not too onerous. Like most other committees, we typically meet every month online for an hour or so. There's usually a little bit of pre-reading just in terms of reviewing the monthly financial statements, which are circulated ahead of the meeting. And we do ask committee members to look those over and raise any questions or make any comments. But typically that review doesn't take too long.
Another area of responsibility is managing and looking, ensuring that the success of SSP financial reserves, which of course, provide the financial reassurance that the SSP will remain viable. And this includes, of course, the generations fund as well. And though all of the reserves are managed for us by an investment fund that an investment management firm. So each month we look through the statements. And of course, that's particularly important given the current turbulence in the wider world and financial markets.
But generally, the reserves perform very well as long term investments. As I mentioned during the budget season, the committee scrutinizes the budgets quite closely, making recommendations and comments on anything in note. And we'll also continue to review other financial performance through the year as well. For example, in the run up to the annual meeting, looking over the revenue and cost basis for those activities as well.
From time to time, there's the opportunity to get involved in special projects. And in those cases, we may set up smaller subgroups which members can elect to join maybe of only three or four people. And so that might be looking at a particular aspect of finance committee's responsibilities. A couple of years ago, for example, we reviewed the SSP policy on ethical investment.
And that was quite an interesting project over a few months to make sure that SSP approach there was in line with other similar non-profits, so that that was a very worthwhile activity. And more recently we've had a smaller group to look into the approach on, on how best to go about distributing the generations fund. Now that that's been completed, just in closing, I'd note that it's important to realize that you don't need any formal financial experience to join the committee, although of course, if you have some familiarity with managing budgets, overseeing panels and expenditure.
And so on. That's useful, but really what matters most is curiosity, enthusiasm and a willingness to get involved and to ask questions. So I hope that's been helpful. We we'll be looking for three new members of the committee this year. If you have any questions at all, please do contact me. Or in fact, Emily herself will be in person at the annual meeting at the get involved session.
And of course, Laura is the incoming treasurer. I'm sure will be happy to answer any questions as well. Thank you very much. Thanks, Henry. Appreciate it. And all that you do, for all that the committee does for SSP to keep us in shape. So now let's go over to the community engagement. And this should be committee not subcommittee.
My mistake. Thanks, Jackie. Coming in loud. So Hi, everyone, I'm Mike Donatelli, I'm one of the co-chairs of the community engagement committee. And so I'm here to talk to you briefly about our group. I've been a co-chair for this past year's, my first year on this committee, and I've been involved with SSP for a decade plus somehow.
So the community engagement committee is really just it's a group of passionate volunteers. We have a global roster, you know, from around the scholarly communications and publishing industry, and we're divided into various subgroups with different focuses. And I want to emphasize, I think there's plenty of room to volunteer and participate in our committee based on your interests and location.
But our key responsibilities are overseeing the SSP regional groups, which I've already mentioned a few times today. You know, which are regional, mostly in person groups that are based in various cities across the United States. Also overseas, now with a group in Berlin and another group based in the UK. This past year, we've kind of expanded this into a more of an online possibility with a new group that's focused on the Western United States.
And so it's been really exciting just to see that develop and come up. We're always looking for volunteers that are interested in leading those regional groups. Again, we have groups in DC, Boston, and New York, Raleigh, Durham, Chicago, Berlin. And I said the UK and the Western group. But if there's an area where you think that, you know, there should be a group, we're looking for volunteers to always help us spin up another regional group, especially now that we can focus those online.
We're also responsible for the community of interest groups, the coin groups. I'm sure many of you have heard of the coin groups. There's a very successful AI focused coin group. There's a mental health awareness group. There's a humanities and social sciences group. That is the process of relaunching itself. And again, those are organizations that are really led by volunteers.
You know, people who want to establish a community interest group can establish a community interest group. And we're here to help make sure that gets off the ground. The committee itself is meeting monthly for about an hour right now. And sorry. And what we're really looking to focus on next year is building support structures to help the existing groups and help form new groups faster, to give people a framework for experience and expand on what we have.
Currently there are some new coin groups launching in the coming year. A mid-career focused group, for instance, as opposed to an early career focused group that's already been quite successful and we're always looking for new ideas on that front. Another area of community engagement, some of the events that used to be attached to the generations fund fundraising, the annual 5K, which will be happening this fall, and the creative auction at the annual meeting.
We're hoping to expand that as well in the coming years, and always looking again for volunteers with some ideas that want to run events or help these things spread across the community, regardless of location. So in terms of why you should volunteer and want to join our committee, if you're looking to volunteer on a regional level to get some FaceTime with your colleagues in your area, there's room within the regional group system.
If you have an idea or topic for a community of interest group. We're certainly happy to help you get that launched off the ground. Really, I think over the next year, we're going to be focused on a lot of brainstorming and support for these groups. And so even if you're not in one of those areas and you just want to help people connect, I think the community engagement group might be for you.
So thank you and appreciate your consideration. Excuse me. Thanks, Mike. Let's hop over to the early career subcommittee. Hey Thanks, Jackie. I'm happy to speak a bit on the early career subcommittee. So Hi, everyone.
I'm really excited to speak about the x. Sorry so I'm in my second of a three year term as the co-chair of the early career subcommittee, and I've been a member of SSP since 2023, when I joined as an early career fellow and as an early career professional myself, I'm very passionate about the resources that the subcommittee is able to produce and share with the whole industry here.
So the mission of the early career subcommittee is to engage with and serve students and early career professionals in scholarly communication by providing educational resources and really help them develop their careers. We also try and help early career professionals expand their networks and build a foundation for career success through increased presence and participation in SSP. And as a subcommittee of the early career development committee of the career development committee as a whole, we act somewhat independently as a separate group, but ultimately strive towards that same goal of career development, just with a bit more of a targeted audience.
So this is a really good subcommittee to join early in your journey at SSP. It's a great way for early career professionals to learn about and contribute to our resources, build out their community among other SSP volunteers, and help guide their own career trajectory. We also welcome volunteers in their mid and late career stages, as their experience is very helpful in guiding our group in giving back to early career professionals.
The time commitment is really as much as you're willing to put in with one hour long monthly all hands meeting as most committees and then varying meetings for other project teams. We do encourage our members usually to join 1 to 3 projects, depending on their interest and their bandwidth. A members of our subcommittee help develop and create resources that are all free to use and open to both SSP and non SSP members.
So some of the projects that you could work on in the early career subcommittee include the early career Chu, which is a free newsletter available on LinkedIn that summarizes the latest industry news, career resources and events each quarter. We also contribute to finding early career submissions for SSPS professional profiles that highlight the different career paths and insights of SSP members.
For those who want some experience working in other mediums like audio, we also have an early career development podcast series that offers advice and commentary on enhancing your skill set, broadening your network, and seizing opportunities. And those are all available to everyone on The Scholarly Kitchen. The early career subcommittee also contributes to the SSP webinar program, which you've already heard a bit about.
The latest early career webinar covered practical strategies for navigating career development and promotion. And we usually have one, sometimes two, early career dedicated webinars each year. And our other big project is the early career professionals coin, which has also come up a couple times. This group meets monthly to discuss topics and networking among early career professionals in various scholarly publishing roles.
So joining our subcommittee, we're always welcoming more members to contribute ideas and help run these meetings. So if you're in the first one to five years of your career or interested in contributing to any of the resources I've mentioned, please feel free to consider the early career subcommittee. We're always welcoming new members and are very excited for this upcoming volunteer year.
Thank you. Thanks, Ana, much appreciate it. Let's hear from the Scholarly Kitchen cabinet. Hello, everybody. I'm Randy Townsend and I have been a career long volunteer with SSP. I was one of the founding co-chairs of the DEI committee. I've served on the board and as president.
I am also a chef and a long term mentor. Perpetual I guess it's no secret that the Scholarly Kitchen is the place to turn to, to see what our industry is talking about. The Scholarly Kitchen cabinet is the governing body for the Scholarly Kitchen, and its responsibilities include setting governance issues, appointing the editor, reporting on TSKK metrics and development to the board of directors, and making recommendations to the SSP executive committee regarding new opportunities for TSKK.
We're deeply connected to SSPS mission of advancing scholarly publishing and communication through education, collaboration, and networking. We want to ensure that we're attracting new and diverse voices and topics that are relevant, thought provoking, inspiring, and ultimately keep us all connected. Volunteering with the PTSC cabinet offers an opportunity to help guide one of the scholarly publishing community's most visible and trusted forums.
Cabinet members help shape editorial direction, uphold standards of integrity and inclusivity, and ensure the Scholarly Kitchen remains responsive to industry developments and diverse perspectives. Member support editorial leadership. Contribute to policy and planning discussions, and help identify priorities that keep TSKK relevant, credible and balanced.
The work includes advising on content strategy, engaging with editors and authors and helping the blog adapt as scholarly publishing continues to evolve. Please consider joining the cabinet if any of this resonates with you. We'd love to have your bright voices and perspectives. Thank you. Thanks, Randy.
Let's hear from the training committee. Thanks, Jackie. I'm Jeanine McKenna. I'm the co-chair of the training committee with Jeff Mahoney, who is rotating off after the annual meeting next month. And Mike Groth will be joining as the next co-chair for the next three years. So for the training committee, our job, our role is different than the education committee.
We focus on skills you can learn for your particular role or a role you may want to grow into. So with that, our biggest event is the journals Academy, which is held every fall, typically over three consecutive Tuesdays for a chunk of three hours. And it ranges from learning about editorial, about finance, production and the everyone on the committee.
It's an all hands event. Everyone takes a segment to serve as a shepherd with several other members to find speakers, and generally be there to support the event. It's been with. This will be the fourth year of the journals Academy coming up. It's been pretty successful. And then in the past, members who have attended the journals Academy then join the training committee because they enjoyed it so much.
And they want to, you know, give back. So with that, after the journals Academy, we also have the Leadership Academy, which is a recent addition to the training committee from about two years ago. And that is also aimed at early career. And it's for individuals who really want to progress in their career. And they learn different aspects of becoming a leader in the publishing industry.
They each session will have a different. Aspect one was they did the strong Campbell inventory and discussed that and what that would mean for each of them. And lastly, we have two training seminars a year and those are pretty open as far as topics. We've been really trying to develop one on AI and also trying to develop one on.
What you do if you want to develop a new title or expand a portfolio. And so any of those suggestions are welcome from the committee. We are a really collaborative group. There are right now about 20 members, and that includes the liaisons from the other committees. And we meet monthly as a full group. And then as we get closer to the journals Academy in the fall, the committee, the groups will meet on their own to get there each session up and running.
So it's not a huge lift as far as time and it's a lot of fun. Jeff was really the founding chair when this was a task force. And it moved into a committee. And I'm really sad he's rotating off. Neither he nor I will be in Chula Vista this year. So Mike Groff will be the incoming co-chair. He'll be at the table for the get involved session or get involved lunch.
So I think that's it. Thanks, Janine. Much appreciated. Let's hear from the membership committee. Hello, everyone. I'm Trina arpin. I am the co-chair of the membership committee, along with Ian Suarez.
We're both just finishing our first year as co-chairs, and we will both be continuing on. So, Yeah, the membership committee, membership committee, we monitor the membership health. We promote and develop new membership classes. We provide advice and input on changes in membership rates and also on the membership survey, which goes out every other year. And yes.
So we have currently three working groups that sometimes fluctuates a little bit recruiting membership and membership engagement and general outreach. And we will work on increasing or reaching out to organizational members, either lapsed or potential to try and get them to join. The general outreach committee will send a welcome email to every new individual member each month, and the member engagement committee will work on providing that input for membership rate and changes, the membership survey and also organizing and sort of staffing the SSP booth at the annual meeting.
They also get to pick what the either like the little swag or what treats we provide at that booth. So I know that was very exciting for them. This spring, when they learned that Chula Vista is the lemon capital of the world, maybe, or North America, I'm not quite sure. But so you don't need any prior experience in membership strategy or nonprofit operations to join us. Just an interest in supporting a strong and inclusive professional community.
Next year, we will continue to focus on growing the organizational memberships, and we're also looking to improve our ability to identify and connect with decision makers at organizations. So Yeah. I think that that's all for me. Excellent.
Thank you very much. Let's move over to the annual meeting program committee. OK Hello, everyone. I'm Greg Fagin. I have an interesting origin story that I won't tell, but it goes back to 1995. I was very young. I was a publishing prodigy. I was 12 years old.
So I'll tell you that. I'll tell that to you in Chula Vista. If you're interested, feel free to ask me. And I'll. I'll let you know about it. So I'm one of the co-chairs of the annual meeting program committee. Our goal, our responsibility is to plan, develop and execute the annual meeting.
We have lots of help from people like Jackie and Melanie and Susan, everybody at SSP, and we are the largest committee. We are 30 to 40 people and we, you know, people of varying experience. So everyone from seasoned publishing professionals to people early in their career. And we do like to rotate people in and out each year. You know, people drop off. We bring new people on because we like to have fresh perspectives and ideas coming in each year.
So keep that in mind when you're thinking about committees to join. We welcome new people and new perspectives. So we need our goal is to responsibility is to develop the theme, help to recruit speakers and organize the sessions, the concurrent sessions, the plenary sessions. And from that, you're a member of the annual meeting program committee.
And we do meet monthly, as most committees do. You know the full committee and we communicate via email and C3 for other needs and things that pop up as they do throughout the planning stages. And we have subcommittees. There's a keynote subcommittee working on recruiting, identifying and recruiting the keynote speaker. There is a highlights webinar subcommittee. As you know, we started last year, the highlights webinar, which is, you know, brief distillations of some of the concurrent and plenary sessions at SSP.
And we have the speakers from the annual meeting take part and there's time for questions. And we so it's perfect for people who can't make it to Chula Vista for the annual meeting. And it's even if you were there, there are things to be gained from attending the highlights meeting. So once we've started the planning of the sessions, we get the reviews come in, and the heaviest lift for the program committee is each member.
It will be, you know, we get probably 100 submissions roughly, and we have to whittle those down to 25 or so sessions that will be part of the annual meeting. So each program committee member will be assigned 15 to 20 sessions of submissions. To review. You grade them using the SSP rubric in ex ordo, which is the system that we use.
And then we meet and we discuss them, and eventually we whittle those down to the 25 or so that become the sessions of the annual meeting. And then your further duties beyond that is we like to assign each member of the program committee. You volunteer for this, of course, you become a shepherd of a session and you don't have to. You're not responsible for organizing it, but you are responsible for keeping in touch with the session organizer and making sure you're helping them recruit speakers if need be.
And you can turn to the other committee members to help you with that. We all know people that can be speakers and you know who would be useful. And just making sure that the session organizers are meeting with their speakers, and they're developing those sessions in a timely manner so that as we get closer to the meeting, that those sessions happen as they should. And then there are other, smaller duties involved volunteering to be a buddy for new people.
Maybe it's their first time attending this SSP meeting. And we like to have someone from the program committee shepherd them around and introduce them to people to make sure that they feel welcome. Delivering the gifts for the speakers before their sessions. Speakers get who are part of the sessions, get a gift, and the shepherds duty is to make sure that those gifts are delivered. And if you're not going to be there physically, to just let us know so that we can assign somebody to do that.
And it's very satisfying, I have to say, to meet from, you know, we start meeting in August and just watching the meeting develop and watching it come to fruition, as we will, at the end of this month. It's really very satisfying. It's a very satisfying experience to watch that happen and to see the meeting just unfold and know that you had a part in making that happen.
So we welcome all Newcomers. So feel free to, talk to us at the table in Chula Vista. And I think I've covered everything, but I know my fellow co-chair, Jessie Slater, is on the call. So, Jessie, if you want to add anything, feel free. All right. Well, Thank you, Greg, I think ampc might actually be our biggest committee, certainly our most visible.
So I hope that everybody is feeling a little inspired about the opportunities that we have available. I'm going to put a link in the chat to our Get Involved page. This has a link to the volunteer application as well as the contact information for all of our chairs. You can go see more of the projects they've talked about today, say, but I wanted to throw it open to see if any of our attendees have any questions that we could address, or questions for specific committee chairs.
OK well, this recording will be posted online. I want to thank everybody for coming today. And Thank you to our chairs and SSP leadership for your time. If you would like to know, and for more information, you can visit the link I put in the chat.
Or you can also email us at org, and we're happy to put you in touch with a chair. If you have more specific questions, please apply by June 6th if you're interested. Thanks, everyone. Thank you.
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