Abstract

Beginning of May 2022, EARMA conference in Oslo – we were presenting the very first steps towards establishing CZARMA – Czech Association of Research Managers and Administrators. What happened since then?
16 May 2022 - after years of discussions we were finally able to officially register the new association and start to make the plans real.
First, we needed to spread the word around and make the group of about 14 people bigger. The main idea is to unify our community, we decided to have only the individual rather than institutional membership.
Honestly, we expected to have around 80, maybe 100 members, mostly colleagues we already have known before. What a surprise when the list of registration exceeded 100, 150, 200, 250…CZARMA has by September 2022 more than 290 members and there are still some registrations proceeded.
Those numbers are proving that the RMA community in Czechia is willing to cooperate, share their experiences, discuss common problems, and find solutions to them, shortly also start to communicate with the funders and key players in the Czech research environment.
What have we already done and what are our plans for the following months? We launched the website, agreed on a new logo, and created a unified visual style, opened a transparent bank account, organized a dozen of either virtual or physical meetings towards the organisation of the Membership Meeting – CZARMA’s major body. We met in person - more than 60% of our members, voted for the representatives, and the focus was put on the presentation of the CZARMA Working Group (WG).
CZARMA has currently 13 WG according to 13 thematic and problem areas we identified so far: Professional Development, Projects, Finance, Legal Management, Mobility, Research Policy, Ethics in Research, Human Resources, Research evaluation, Open Science, Communication of Science, Research infrastructures, Gender in science and research.
CZARMA members could choose any of the WG and participate in the specific WG activities, all the CZARMA members would benefit and receive information and statements produced by the WGs and could visit the events organized by a specific WG. At the same time will be maintained and secured communication across the CZARMA and across the WGs.
We have reached the first milestone and were able to bring together the largest group of CZ RM professionals and we must keep working forward and take the advantage of this movement, concentration of skills, great ideas, and common goals, and benefit together in the long term.
In April 2023 will be CZARMA almost 1-year-old and you could learn from us how it grew up and what progress was made.