This summer (2022), we will start a new concept, called the Computational Cognitive Science Community Forums (CCSCFs). Taking place once a month in the ConCats time slot, the community forums are intended to foster interaction and skills exchange amongst our labs.

There are currently few opportunities to learn from each other across labs. If you have expertise that could benefit someone in another lab, you would have to accidentally make a connection. Also, there is no natural venue to solicit feedback on a half-baked idea from anyone outside your lab. ConCats does bring us together, but primarily for hearing about external research, not for exchanging skills and ideas.

The CCSCFs are meant to close this gap. They will not be the venue for presenting project results or papers. Instead, presenters will ask for help/feedback or share a skill. For example,

• Ask for help/feedback: “Any thoughts on how to analyze these data?”, "Who else is working on method X and wants to chat about it?", “what are good ways to learn about topic X?“, “I have an abandoned project. Who wants it?” The presenter will literally only ask the question, and then the group will try to help. It’s ok if the conversation ends up being very short, because the answer is simple or because nobody can help.
• Share skills: Skills could be anything from programming tricks to online resources to project/time/life management tools. These will be more presentation-like, but should still be short (1 to 5 minutes), and should have the needs of others in mind.

The forums are meant to be casual and full of discussion, so presenters shouldn't feel that what they say needs to be polished.

The events will be in the regular ConCats slot, but to make them more enjoyable, we will start with refreshments half an hour earlier, and try to go for drinks afterwards.

First session
Many of you have already contributed ideas and we are set for the first session, on June 3rd. I have selected six presentations, but it's fine if we don't get through all of them. Details:

Topics
Thanks to everyone who has already contributed topics! Please add more topics to the spreadsheet. And please don't think that the issue you want help/feedback on is too mundane.