Present: Heather Turner (HT), David Smith (DS), Emily Dodwell (ED), Isabella Gollini (IG), Jonathan Godfrey (JG), Kevin O'Brien (KO)
Absent: Tania Allard (TA), Jenny Bryan (JB), Di Cook (DC), Jasmine Dumas (JD), Julie Josse (JJ), Tanja Kecojevic (TK), Michael Lawrence (ML), Augustina Ragwitz (AR)
Present: Angela Li (AL)
- (HT) Ongoing revisions to Code of Conduct are on hold until next year. Current proposal is to accept CoC we've provided and monitor at conferences (summary after event) so R Foundation is aware if any incidents occur and actions that can be taken.
- There will be aVirtual electronic meeting to have everyone agree to changes.
- (JG) Can we ask RFoundation to push Conduct out to all R events, and any events linked to R community? As long as there is a plan to have a CoC at all events, the authors/creators is a small problem.
- (KOB) It is reasonable to expect COC to apply at ERUM 2020. The new chair is very receptive.
- (HT) Blog post about organizing Workshop for future organizers (with timeline, resources, considerations, and language for flyers, applications, emails).
- (AL) This would be great to add to Forwards blog, and it doesn't have to be too long.
- Here's a blog post example on how to organize a conference, so the writeup for the NYC workshop could follow the same format: https://satrdays.org/blog/2016/11/18/2016-budapest-organizer/. It would help me a lot! And future women/girls workshop organizers too.
- R Journal article:
- Summary of NYC girls workshop
- Touch base with DC: NZ workshop
- ED: Practical issues with running workshops for children: liability. Can R Foundation help?
- (HT) R-Ladies may be able to help.
- (AL) R-Ladies is official non-profit now.
- (KOB): PSF fellow Lorena Mesa is based in Chicago and is closely involved in "Girls Develope It" , Naomi Cedar, chair of the PSF, is also based in Chicago.
- (AL) I know Lorena! She's amazing, I can ask her how she does work with them (KOB): WIN!!!
- (ED) That's great, and I'll touch base with a contact I have at Girls Who Code.
ACTIONS
- Keep an eye on GitHub issues to focus on initiatives and close tasks as people have time to work on them related to your team (ALL).
- (HT) I gave lightning talk at PyData Cardiff on promoting diversity in the R community, highlighting R-Ladies, Rainbow R, Forwards and the recent TDoR Hackathon.
- (KOB) SatRdays DC took place last weekend. There was a lot of positve feedback online to live feed (accessibility) . Kelly O'Briant and Ben Ulloa deserve praise for this initiative.
- (KOB) Explore more joint events between R, PyData and Julia communities related to Diversity and Inclusion:
- Events could be modelled on the NumFOCUS disc unconf in NYC in 2017.
- Key Consideration is venues. Cities such as London, Dublin, Berlin Montreal and NYC to start with.
- Stefan Karpinski of Julia (in NYC) already expressed interested in engaging with Forwards. Reshama Sheikh is based in NYC. PyData Berlin Organizers are interested in engaging on this.
- (KOB) [re: RCWG DI]: Objective to assist in the recruitment people from URMs ( in particular in Europe and Africa) to join R consortium working group on D&I. Forwards community team has approached Richard Ngamita to suggest potentional participant from Kampala R user group. Next meeting is taking place in early January.
- (KOB) There was well published difficulties on African Participants travelling to NeurIPS re: Visas and Immigration. Consensus around developing and promoting events in Africa.
- (KOB) Forwards has been engaging with African R user community with a view to develop events such as SatRDays events in Africa. Reasonable amount of success so far: Kampala R user group are going ahead with a SatRDay event. R users from Morocco have expressed interest in having a SatRday in either Rabat or Fez. Contact also established with Abidjan R user group.
- KOB plans to meet Evan Odell (author of Refuge package) and Deborah from Afro Tech Fest in London in Spring 2019. The meetings will be fairly informal and intended just to start a dialogue.
- (KOB) Afro Tech Fest takes place in London 12-14th April. KOB plans to attend, but waiting on news on Brexit related travel issues.
- (DS) SatRdays DC event went very well:
- ~120 people from local area (including many not from R community, but also Python and engineering).
- Single-track with live streaming, great venue.
- Extremely positive feedback about live feed (great for people in remote locations).
- Mix up interests with outreach if/when possible: i.e. AR interested in domestic violence (anthropology), which is also within GG's field.
ACTIONS
- Active engagement with RUGs Slack members on goals,values, objectives and future activities
- Publish a short report on the community team activiites.
- (HT) useR! 2019 registration and abstract submission and diversity scholarships is opening Monday.
- Diversity scholarship committee: 8 people from Forwards and R Ladies
- Closed captioning and community contribution for talks; potentially more important than live streaming because videos can always be watched later. This is sponsored by R Consortium.
- (JG) please caption keynote speakers at least.
- (KOB) A "My-First-Pull-Request" initiative (topic to be continued on Forwards and RUGS slacks): Fixing Typos, adding examples to CRAN pdf, etc.
- AL is planning unconf 2 weeks after package workshop.
(No updates at this time.)
ACTIONS
- Blog post.
- Social media tips on slack are welcome.
(No updates at this time.)
- (AL) Got support from Stephanie Kirmer to co-teach Forwards workshop in Chicago in February. Currently setting up application and reviewing curriculum.
- Want to invite R-Ladies organizers from nearby communities (Michigan, St. Louis, etc) to attend, inspire them to lead Forwards women's workshops in their own communities (5-10 organizers)
- Link to event can be found on the Forwards site, and will be updated with application in a few days or so: http://forwards.github.io/edu/chicago/
ACTIONS
- Will convert slides to Google Slides for easier collaboration.
- Next slackathon will be January 11th-14th.