Speakers: Heather, Emma Rand, Claudia Huaylla, (Samantha Toet), Jyoti Bhogal, Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal, Miljenka Vuko,
(Sam could not attendin the end)
Heather Turner: Described her role on the R Foundation (especially being part of the conference committee that oversees useR!); past roles in Forwards (on the conferences team implementing initiatives to improve diversity at useR!; contributing to the useR! surveys especially the big one in 2016; teaching the Forwards package development workshop a few times); current work (building up the on-ramps team, supporting survey team) and things she can help you with (maintains Forwards GitHub organisation, website, LimeSurvey and Slack).
Emma Rand: Has recently become co-lead of the teaching team, taking over from Angela Li. She is focusing on modularizing the package development workshop so that it is easier for others to teach. The teaching team are thinking about how to train the trainers and reach more people through online workshops/video recordings.
Claudia Huaylla: Has recently joined the surveys team. Luckily she also spoke in Session 2, so you can catch her introduction there. In Session 1 she also mentioned that the team working on the survey of Latin American R users (including Claudia and Pao) are planning to submit an abstract to rstudioconf::global. She is also interested in contributing elsewhere on the taskforce, e.g. to the teaching team.
Jyoti Bhogal: Has been using R for ~5 years. She is an MSc student in statistics at the University of Pune and is just about to start her project on the analysis of fMRI data. She has recently joined the on-ramps team.
Saranjeet Kaur Bhogal: Is Jyoti's sister and was with her when they joined the Zoom! Saranjeet is a co-oranizer of R-Ladies Pune. She is doing an M.Phil on times series modelling in finance and has also joined the on-ramps team. We learnt that R is used a lot in Statistics at the University of Pune and Pune is also a tech hub, so they get good attendance at the R-Ladies group, with a spread of expertise.
Miljenka Vuko: Is originally from Croatia and is currently doing a PhD in Munich (microbial ecology). She taught herself R so she could analyse her DNA sequencing data. She joined the team that were organizing the useR! Hub that was planned to take place in Munich, before the conference went virtual. She was on the program committee and also assisted with many technical aspects. Now she has joined as co-lead of the conferences team and will be the official link between Forwards and useR! 2021.
Sam Toet: Did not make the session, but planned to talk about code of conduct at virtual events.
Pao Corrales, gwynn sturdevant and Kevin O'Brien: also joined us, but talked in later sessions. gwynn had to go before the discussion.
Discussion:
Kevin mentioned https://juliaacademy.com/ short courses prepared by Julia developers in a structured syllabus for learning Julia. He highlighted that they made a conscious effort to consider who presented the material in the videos so that people from different groups (especially geographic regions) were represented. Something to consider if Forwards create videos, so that it is not all white folk from the US/Europe. He also said part of the idea was to create material that could be used at K12 level in the US, perhaps in partnership with Black Girls Code, using Julia to help teach math with a Hidden Figures theme. Emma said the teaching team (especially Joyce) are interested in such outreach. Heather noted there are other people in the R community interested in AP Stats education, e.g. Amelia McNamara.
We also talked about potential interest in the package development workshop. Saranjeet thought there would be interest in Pune from the senior Statistics students and people working in industry. Pao said that the R-Ladies group in Buenos Aires were mostly beginners and that people tended to go to the R User Group if they wanted to learn about advanced R topics. So perhaps more potential there if it was opened up beyond R-Ladies. Heather noted it was good that Forwards is gaining new members from under-represented regions that might help us in our outreach.
Speakers: Kevin O'Brien, Liz Hare, Lorna Maria, Mine Cetinkaya-Rundel, Ritwik Mitra, (Becca Wilson)
(Becca could not attend in the end)
Speakers: Anna Vasylytsya, Joyce Robbins, gwynn sturdevant, Paola Corrales, Emily Dodwell, Michael Chirico