Present: Heather Turner (HT), Emily Dodwell (ED), Kevin O'Brien (KOB), Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel (MC), Saranjeet Kaur (SK)
Absent: Emma R - apologies, I'm teaching
Present: Absent:
- ED: Update about less active team leaders? HT to follow-up.
- HT: Miljenka Vuko is helping to write a post for the useR! 2021 blog, that introduces different community groups. She asked us some questions, which I answered here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1FSfTGz1Qankd5jgta3ys1lnfo304-tKshYtqiCfSsFg/edit?usp=sharing. Feel free to edit/comment - they'll use this to write the post in a week or two.
ACTIONS
- ED to add remaining sign-ups to About page.
- ED to send calendar invitations for next few months.
- (ALL) Input to userR! 2021 blog
- KOB involved with WhyR?
- Series of webinars over the summer (~20) that have been successful, goal is 30 over next few months (Asia/Pacific timezones) but resources are stretched
- Main dovetail from Forwards - funding from R Consortium to pay organizers to run them (time consuming and a lot of work, so if funding available to pay someone -- DevRel role)
- 2nd funding stream: WhyR? World Series: video blog series (10-20 min talks) -- less technical, more about lived experience of being R user around the world (impressive reach -- Malawi, Central African Republic). First step for remote talks to help people be aware of ability to prepare and give.
- HT previously asked for ideas for potential speakers -- people who wouldn't normally easily be able to get to/attend conferences. Keep in mind for future requests for names (create lineup).
- KOB: With two useR!s, greater need for speakers, but overexposure is a risk for repeat keynotes. Goal is to expand the pool.
- HT: Idea for mailing list? How to best capture who people are, where, and what they do. Not everyone has personal website.
- KOB: currently word of mouth to immediate network (AfricaR and second degree relations); people find about seminars via Twitter and LinkedIn (branding need). 3K subscribers to Youtube channel.
- KOB: Longer term goal is to bring in a big sponsor (outside typical ecosystem) so more money for everyone.
ACTIONS
- Miljenka Vuko is Forwards person for useR! 2021
- LH helping them to think about accessibility from the start (tutorials, presentations at submission stage to make sure materials are accessible)
- Actively thinking about CoC and implementation
- Effort to have community partners (in addition to sponsors) with similar profiling and visibility -- more integrated into website and promotion
- Global team (ties into KOB's points about virtual events), so people outside typical host areas can be involved in organization and events; bring in people from AfricaR and LatinR (need better links to Asia and surrounding areas -- has been challenging because usual outreach avenues, e.g. Twitter, aren't necessarily used in same way, and language barrier)
ACTIONS
- Follow up with Becca for feedback on physical accessibility best practices in Events guide.
- LatinR had panel on accessibility -- might be connections available that way. (HT has connected LH with people in bioconductor community, as well.)
- Mainly focused on initiative with R Core: there has been continued good attendance at 3 meetings so far (20-30, including a few from R Core each time).
- More developer focused stream at useR, slack mentorship forum focused on contributions to R Core, package development, more support for Git (some support to make bridge to make things easier for people -- incremental step to using it more in the future, idea of moving completely is up for debate)
- With more established group, may be more ideas that come up for new contributors to help with.
- Goal is to meet a few times a quarter to maintain momentum.
- Some contributions in first contributions repo, which Nic Crane had transferred to Forwards when she was on taskforce.
- Broaden language diversity efforts (i.e. first contributions in other languages, or link to similar efforts)
- Link Maria and Lorna to make some progress and make easier to distribute work.
- AV, TK, HT recently had meeting to review useR survey work. 2020 will be jointly analyzed. Survey to close end of October.
ER: Next meeting will be 20 October. MCR: Informal decision so far is to have package development workshop in the spring, so working on that now. - Last meeting: 2 ideas Doing things on intro side, also debugging and getting out of a rut (not necessarily any decisions made for focusing attention) - Disseminate materials so others can use development workshop. Come here to learn and/or go through once yourself so you're prepared to teach yourself (i.e. 2 types of audiences) - Maybe introductory materials should be 1 hour (not 3 or full-day) so easier to pick up and get going (otherwise people who are teaching intro R have their own materials, presumably) - HT also good for people who may travel to do workshop. Funding available for travel but not necessarily prep work, and no need to reinvent the wheel. - Stuff like this that other people have made available: useful to make list of existing (issue of maintaining list itself) with relevant licenses -- try and see how much use it gets. Restrict to non-commercial (because community use is goal)
- Next slackathon will be weekend of November 13th.
- How best to structure for better engagement? Plan to work on specific tasks.
- ED to create Doodle poll with time blocks for an "active hour" each day. Team leads to prepare tasks -- prompt for issues to highlight that they'd like team to focus on. List of things to review (that writers have asked for extra eyes on) if someone doesn't have active task.
- First contributions repo in other languages
- Review of accessibility guide, R Development guide
- Volunteers for teaching tasks
- Issue curation before event -- reach out to team leads to identify.