Present: Heather Turner (HT), Emily Dodwell (ED) Absent: Tania Allard (TA), Jenny Bryan (JB), Jonathan Godfrey (JG), Isabella Gollini (IG), Julie Josse (JJ), Tanja Kecojevic (TK), Michael Lawrence (ML), Angela Li (AL), Shakirah Nakalungi (SN), Kevin O'Brien (KO), Noa Tamir (NT)
- HT nominated R-Ladies for The Dan David Prize (https://trailer.web-view.net/Show/0X9E54458B88C8386C9C009F1094304569B61AB4AA8A0CCEAE735ACEA66EFD0769CE621924E3B8FD11.htm) - the nomination was collaboratively written by R-Ladies: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1CAG5u6RekX8K-O_5IKjhMkbU-OknRrsKhBQy_PFNLm8/edit.
- HT will be speaking at http://www.celebration2020.org/ on Forwards etc. 28-29 February.
- Emphasis on where we want to go in the future (vs. historical) -- open to feedback and suggestions for topics to include because this is opportunity to set an agenda and recruit other people, solicit help.
- Catch up on survey data to share learnings
- HT will be doing a mini tour of Southern Africa
- SatRday in Johannesburg (March 6-7 2020): Forward package development workshop (status of grant from DC - potentially use $ for travel scholarships)
- eSwatini RUG (March 12?): introduction to R workshop + meetup talk on Forwards and other support in the R community etc
- Botswana joint meeting WiMLDS and Pydata (March 14-15): introduction to R workshop
- connecting portions of Africa R community to develop larger sense
- Update to GitHub policy here.
- useR! 2020 Satellite email
ACTIONS
- Keep eye on R Consortium efforts (KO and NT) to make sure not duplicating efforts, but complementing and supporting work
- Connect people going to rstudio::conf in January -- someone take over Forwards twitter to share?
- Rstudio watch party - London, Poland, Nairobi
- Started discussions on how to support people that lower rate of success in getting visas to conferences (KO, RN, HT, ST).
- R Consortium D&I committee have some to money to support this initiative (Sam Toet)
- useR! 2020 diversity scholarships may now cover visa costs.
- Nigeria user groups/AfricaR are planning an African R Users Meeting (conference) in 2020.
- Maintain contact with Rainbow R ( follow up with NT and DC -- social events at conferences, etc.)
ACTIONS
- NT and HT meet with Levi Waldron from Bioconductor to talk about code of conduct at BioC conferences and generally in the project. Will share knowledge on diversity initiatives and also CoC cases for training CoC response teams.
- Continuing to work on event best practices. These helped inform selection for useR! 2021.
ACTIONS
- Best place to share minutes from Conference team calls (for NT)
- public or not? can be separate "conference yyyy-mm-dd.md" in Github folder: https://github.com/forwards/meetings-public or private https://github.com/forwards/meetings or repo for particular team?
- https://twitter.com/R_Forwards/status/1196402425378353152?s=20
- Best ways to further develop? (other related efforts - Google summer of code, ugs in R) and how people can get involved/contribute to R core code base
ACTIONS
- Blog has got going again. LM published post on R in Africa in November.
ACTIONS
- Publish blog post on Charlottesville workshop (AL, SN)
(No news this time.)
- Update from Emma Rand on York Jan 2020 workshop (on Nov. 12): The scholarship application deadline was yesterday; I'll let applicants know as soon as I can. I've left the application form open so will contact everyone who has applied for the Workshop itself (47 people) to let them know they can still apply for a travel grant.
- ER gave a talk at a local R-user group on Forwards and the package development workshop.
- KO: I am proposing a R event in tandem to a Recruitment Fair in Limerick called Career Zoo - taking place in Limerick on Saturday 1st February at Thomond Park Stadium.
ACTIONS
- Apply for another grant to target regions not originally included and expand access to workshops (Africa), including reaching out across network to identify contacts and areas where we may find supporters
- Funding for R Consortium grant is March 1 -- shall we submit one? other grants we'd like to pursue? (packages develop, material put on): https://www.r-consortium.org/projects/call-for-proposals
- DC and ED to discuss? (reaching out to places in SE Asia, i.e. Indonesia, and university contacts elsewhere that might be able to host a workshop)
- Everyone brainstorm who they know, best ways to get involved, where they'd like to go (ED reach out on slack)
- Otherwise community-type projects could be proposed directly to DEI group (i.e. accessibility)
- Event best practices -- continue working on
- Next slackathon will be weekend of January 17-20th.