Present: Emily Dodwell (ED), Heather Turner (HT), Kevin O'Brien (KO), Noa Tamir (NT), 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),
Present: David Smith (DSmith), Lorna Maria Aine (LMA)
- HT went to Celebration 2020: slides and video are available.
- Good response and got word out about community and activities, and encouraged people to think about ongoing issues.
- (HT) ~15 people at South Africa workshop, 100 at satRday
- Beginner workshop in Eswatini (formerly Swaziland). People wanted to know about data analysis, big data and ML -- only so much to accomplish in the time available.
- Talk Focus on resources available so there can be independent continued learning.
- Goal was to do similar workshop in Botswana but flight was canceled -- was able to do most of it remotely. Paid for by crowdfunded money previously raised (~500 pounds remaining, hopefully to do something in Namibia).
- Overall successful tour -- thanks to everyone with contacts and who helped make it happen.
- Organization of team meeting minutes: Team folders will be setup in meetings-public for individual calls
- Team meetings are helping with engagement -- keep momentum going.
- Looking ahead, June taskforce communications for updates. Role description to set expectations for involvement.
ACTIONS
- ED will post minutes from February Core meeting: http://developer.r-project.org:9001/p/K5hLqDShzP
- KO: Key theme is remote events. How to help Meetups and small-scale events to transition. Some of us were involved in assisting satRday DC to make the switch. Well-prepared satRdays in Switzerland went well; DC team was smaller, so focus was on transferring learnings from first to this second event. (Including sound checks, technology and operations, etc.)
- Format: Full-day event may be overkill (i.e. max 5 hours), so zoom burnout is a consideration for larger events
- Potential shorter Newcastle event in the works
- Lais is working on this with KO.
- Why R? foundation -- weekly webinar series
- Forwards may contribute on-ramps like background of speakers (so greater choice for selection of keynotes)
- variety of topics, e.g. ecological sciences
- Brand strategy and marketing will become more important for remote events -- further discussion required in future Community team meeting
- NT: Working in R-Ladies and WiMLDS on support for organizers for code of conduct and how to handle Zoombombing
- Strategies for how to host events online and support CoC
- Host and at least 2 organizers on silent for tech support, and let people in/kick people out, sharing password (because not everyone on a slack, not everyone gets Meetup announcements, etc.), some people logged in with made-up name (e.g. "someone") -- immediately kicked out because protect event by confirming name on sign-up list
- Guidelines shared with R-Ladies Global slack
- Also thoughts on all-day events and how to maintain them
- More webinar approach -- lesser interaction among participants for greater control
- Twitch, discord are alternative setups that we're not as used to but worth continued exploring
- How much is for learning vs. networking, support, community building -- really important question to address. Maybe can't do everything in single event/conference, so worth asking.
- Ways to keep people in touch after events, i.e. tech channels (Discord, slack, etc.)
- Positive: not limited to local, getting greater national/international presence, higher attendance numbers, people joining in their timezones and not everyone doing everything, speakers from all over
- More opportunities for live-coding, i.e. instead of trying to replicate keynote, etc., do different thing with experts (i.e. pre-recorded talk from expert who can interact with people via chat in real-time)
- Pre-test setup
- Opportunity to on-ramp new personnel? Activity and regeneration coming out of it, as well.
- Shared calendar among R User groups (R-Ladies already has this), and potentially Python and WiMLDS chapters for fast reference and reduce amount of work while following multiple
- LMA: Haven't been a lot of remote events, however people are creating and sharing short videos
- Current model: short and quick material
- Ready to support any chapter that wants to create material for or host remote event
- KO: Internet service provider costs in Kenya are high so not feasible to get a lot of people involved (dependent on that, really)
- Post-pandemic: Potential for hybrid event (in person and virtual conference with turns for main room) across countries, localized to specific regions in Africa
- Use university campuses as venue
- HT: Other opportunities for creativity -- poster presentation shared on Twitter, e.g.
- NT: AL did Twitter thread about spatial analysis and resources: https://twitter.com/CivicAngela/status/1250129312319262722?s=20
- Guidelines to brand/share/create content may be other opportunities for access and ideas
- LMA: Save videos on YouTube so location for resources for future reference (at any time)
- NT: Reading groups are also transitioning well to remote (like book club -- host prepares examples, questions -- people join for discussion)
- Forwards opportunities for involvement with useR and coordination of virtual events: https://rforwards.slack.com/archives/C4A1SN31A/p1587989228008800
- NT happy to help but can't take on all
- NT: satRday Berlin has decided not to run this year, and instead focus on working groups to create plans and ideas for next year to prepare perfect event (workshops, diversity scholars, keynotes, communications). Goal is creation of how-tos for next year.
ACTIONS
- (All) Feedback on NT's Markdown would be greatly appreciated! https://github.com/forwards/conferences/blob/master/How%20to:%20CoC%20Response%20Team.MD
- HT to summarize useR vaguely (instead of slack link above) -- ED will wait for this before posting and/or wait until useR announcement.
- NT to reach out to Conferences team about availability to tackle these items
[No items at this time.]
- LMA: Publishing Angela's course
- Blog post from HT about Africa tour
- Blog post to announce documentation once NT gets feedback
- Blog about remote events and how to organize/support (NT suggests to summarize that references those already available -- Q&A with original organizers/posters about what they learned)
- Mention Why R? webinar series in there
- Angela to write about Twitter experience
- Swiss/DC satRdays
- Grab quote from post or reach out to original posters for additional content
- Goal to get out in next month
ACTIONS
- useR audience vs. more general audience as survey respondents (who perhaps have not attended, and why?)
- Could be thought-provoking information for whenever we return to in-person events
ACTIONS
- Team call Monday, April 27th at 2 pm CST (regularly last Monday of each month)
- Converting package development workshop to a modular course that people can teach in user group and/or remotely to reach more people with this material
- Ideally, someone with some background in package development can pick up and teach others
- At end of grant for workshops, remaining money intended for Latin R (October -- too early to know if this will go on as planned)
ACTIONS
- Next slackathon will be weekend of May 15-18.