Introducing the Cha Cha Club–An Invite-Only Club for ResearchOps Professionals
It’s highly likely that you’ve never heard of the Cha Cha Club before. Is it a dance club? A quirky tropical-themed bar? A swish Ibiza nightclub? You’d be forgiven for guessing all of those and more, but you’d be waaaay off the mark.
The Cha Cha Club is an invite-only Club for dedicated ResearchOps professionals: a fun and safe space for ResearchOps professionals to share, learn, and grow — together. It was founded one morning in late 2019, in a store called Cha Cha Matcha, New York City. I wanted to scratch my own itch — to connect with people who, like me, were working at the frontlines of ResearchOps. Since then, the Club has grown from a handful of people to more than fifty Cha Chas from around the world who call the Club their professional home.
“But why Cha Cha?” you might ask, and it’s a fair question. “Cha Cha” stands for “cheerleaders and chums” — How very British! — because it can be a lonely ride when you’re a team of one (or a dozen), and you’re trying to figure things out on your own.
A Club Member Says…
It’s reassuring to know that there are others who are dealing with the same challenges that I’m facing at work. I don’t have to figure everything out on my own! The members are always happy to share their knowledge and experiences. They’ve helped me grow and move forward in my role more than once.
Since its inception, the Cha Cha Club has operated by word-of-mouth — something like a funky prohibition bar. But ResearchOps is a fast-growing profession and the people who are investing their careers (and their grey hairs) in making it real deserve more. So we’ve now got a flashy new brand and a fabulous website. We’re bona fide.
We Couldn’t Have Done It Without You
A huge thanks to User Interviews for sponsoring the brand design and website build. User Interviews makes it simple to run high-quality research with your target audience. They’re a boon for participant recruitment.
A massive thanks to Karolina Lundqvist for designing the brand, Dale Halvorsen for illustrations, and Benjamin Currey for bringing it all so meticulously to life — spot the cats’ tails wagging, and more, in the website’s illustrations.
Finally, thanks to all the founding members (or Cha Chas) for coming with me on the journey, with special mention to Tim Toy, Saskia Liebenberg, and Noel Lamb.
Wanna Join?
If you’re a full-time ResearchOps professional (you wear the job title loud and proud) and you don’t work for a research vendor, we’d love you to apply to join. All applications are reviewed by a group of Club members, and the membership fee is US$350 per year*.
* Membership fees are used to cover the running costs of the Club, and to fund an annual project that evolves the practice of ResearchOps.
A Club Member Says…
Cha Cha Club is where I come for all the insider tips and tricks…. Having this amazing group of people to call on for all my Ops questions has helped me advance in my career and grow my current role.
The Cha Cha Club is invite-only not because we’re snobs, but because we like to keep the conversation focused and the trust high. Club members tend to run into similar problems and work with the same vendors. They use the same lingo, and understand first-hand why something that looks trivial is an operational triumph. We’re collectively in the know as to the best vendors to use, the features that are coming down the road, and how to get the most out of relationships and investments. We call this “Cha Cha Power!” Find out more about the Club’s vibe.
Grab a Spot at Our First Free-for-All Club Event
It’s not often that ResearchOps professionals are given a stage to totally and utterly geek out about their work. But that’s set to change. Every quarter the Club will host a free-for-all (and free) event that features members as hosts and speakers. Whether you’re a member or not, a ResearchOps newbie or an old hand, you can learn from the people who spend their time knee-deep in ResearchOps everyday. Tickets are limited to 100 people, and a recording will be shared after the event.
Our first event will be hosted by ResearchOps OG, Noel Lamb, and feature talks from Atlassian’s Research Librarian, Alison Jones, and Mailchimp’s ResearchOps Managers, Laurie McGowan and Lily Aduana. The event is called “SLC (Simple, Lovable, Complete) Research Libraries & Operationalizing Customer Closeness.” Geeky as ever!
SLC (Simple, Lovable, Complete) Research Libraries & Operationalizing Customer Closeness
Ever wondered what the minimum is that you need to do to deliver a research library that still kicks your knowledge management goals — or at least thumps them in the right direction? How about the best operations strategy for getting people immersed in understanding their end users and customers? In this first Cha Cha Club event, we’ll dig into these topics with speakers who have been there, done that, and got the T-shirt.
Grab your spot. (Tickets are limited to 100 people.)
The Backstory
Perhaps you’re thinking, “But doesn’t Kate run the ResearchOps Community?” It’s a good question. The short answer is “not since 2019.” The long answer deserves a bit of a backstory.
When I founded the ResearchOps Community in 2018, I had no idea that I would hit such an excitable nerve. It turned out that thousands of researchers around the world were interested in lightening the logistical load of doing research — a statement that sounds ludicrously obvious now. In collaboration with a crack team of fervent members, I instigated the #WhatisResearchOps initiative and soon a team of 60 organisers had run 34 workshops around the world to understand researchers’ challenges and triumphs, and their thoughts about what research operations should include. The result was the #WhatisResearchOps framework, and the foundations for so much more. Leading the Community was a riot, but its lightening-fast growth meant that it quickly outgrew my capacity, needs, and goals. In a blogpost announcing my departure from the Community, I wrote:
Running a 1400+ strong community is very hard work, and very time consuming. My research operations interest lies primarily in large organisations and, in reality, there are very few people in the world who are doing that job — I’m fortunate to regularly catch up with most of them. The things that we think about, talk about, and do in building out ResearchOps in large organisations are very different to the conversations that researchers have about recruiting, and tools etc., as a necessary activity in delivering their research projects.
That statement has remained true since the day that I wrote it. The mission of the Cha Cha Club is to give dedicated ResearchOps professionals a space to learn, grow, and thrive — together. But I’m also interested in what it takes to run a community that’s both financially and energetically sustainable, and that scales the value of small and tight-knit. The Cha Cha Club is my way of exploring all of that, while helping to build a stronger profession.
