One Year of R-Ladies Austin 🎉

Today marks one year of R-Ladies Austin! The Austin chapter started when Victoria Valencia and I emailed R-Ladies global (on the same day!) to ask about starting a local chapter. It was meant to be -- the ladies from R-Ladies global introduced us, and the rest is history.

For anyone who hasn’t heard of R-Ladies, we are a global organization whose mission is to promote gender diversity in the R community by encouraging, inspiring, and empowering underrepresented minorities. We are doing this by building a collaborative global network of R leaders, mentors, learners, and developers to facilitate individual and collective progress worldwide. There are over 60 R-Ladies chapters around the world and we continue to grow!

Here in Austin, it’s been a busy year. So far, we’ve hosted 16 meetups -- including seven workshops, two book club meetings, two rounds of lightning talks, a handful of happy hours, a movie night, and a visit from NASA.

To celebrate our first R-Ladies anniversary, I thought it would be fun to answer some questions with Victoria around our journey so far:

What has been the best part of working with R-Ladies?

Victoria: The best part has been connecting with women in our community that share similar passions and interest in data! It has been so fun. Also, the R Ladies hex stickers are pretty awesome. :)

Caitlin: It’s been great to be a part of such a supportive community and to meet so many brilliant women, both here in Austin and in other cities. Since joining R-Ladies, I’ve built a great network, learned cool things, and had a lot of fun along the way.

Have you had a favorite meetup so far?

Victoria: My favorite meetup by far was our book club for Dear Data by Giorgia Lupi and Stefanie Posavec. We started by discussing the book and the types of visualizations and data Giorgia and Stefanie shared with each other. Some were funny and some were sad but all of them were inspiring! We followed by creating our own visualizations in a postcard format of the beer list at Thunderbird Coffee. Who knew a beer list could be so fun to visualize and that each of us would think to do it in such different ways! It was a blast.

Caitlin: I love the book club meetups too -- it’s a great space because we can do anything from have deep discussions on the ethical impacts of algorithms in society (I’m looking at you, Weapons of Math Destruction) to getting really creative and using colored pencils to dream up artistic ways of visualizing data. I also loved having David Meza come down from NASA in Houston to talk about knowledge architecture. It would be an understatement to say that he’s been supportive since day one, because he actually reached out to us long before our first meeting. (I guess “supportive since day -75” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it, but it’s true.)

What’s the biggest thing you’ve learned after one year of organizing R-Ladies?

Victoria: That managing a meetup is a fair amount of work, but certainly worth the effort! I have also learned that the R Ladies community is strong and close knit and super supportive! It has been great connecting and learning from them.

Caitlin: I agree with Victoria's take -- managing is a lot of work but also *very* worth it. I’ve learned a lot about building community through collaboration. Working with other local meetups has helped us to expand our reach and provide more opportunities for the women in our group. It's also been very cool to learn more about the tech community on Austin. We've been fortunate to receive lots of support from local companies and other tech groups, and it's been nice to get more plugged in that way while building a distinct community that adds something new to the mix.

How has R-Ladies helped you (personally or professionally)?

Victoria: R-Ladies has helped me by allowing myself time to learn about cool R stuff I did not know before! It has helped me to learn more efficient ways of coding by going through all of the chapters of R For Data Science, how to relax with colored pencils, data, and beer, and that opened my mind to different perspectives from fellow R-ladies about the continually evolving and expanding world of data that surrounds us.

Caitlin: I can't say enough good things about the R-Ladies community. The individual chapters help to build local communities and strong networks of highly-skilled women, and the global chapter works hard to promote the work of R-Ladies to the larger global community, including people who might not see that work otherwise. Especially since a lot of women are one of few women on their team (or the only woman on their team), it's great to have a network who can relate and provide feedback and advice (on all sorts of things) when you need it. On a personal level, I've built relationships with amazing women (both in real life and virtually) through R-Ladies, and it's opened up some opportunities that would have taken a lot longer to find on my own.

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The next 12 months

We’ve grown a lot this first year (we’re over 275-strong!), and we’re hoping to grow even more in the next 12 months. If you're in Austin and haven’t made it out to a meetup yet, we’d love to meet you! We’re beginner friendly, positive, and dedicated to promoting gender diversity in the R Community (and tech in Austin more generally). And even if you are just interested in data and maybe learning more about R we want you to join us as well!

If you're not in Austin, but want to support R-Ladies, I'd encourage you to check out R-Ladies directory the next time you're looking for speakers or for local women to reach out to -- there are lots of women out there doing amazing things, and R-Ladies is making it easier and easier to find and connect with them.

The two biggest things that we'll need in the next 12 months are speakers and space. If you use R and have learned a cool thing, discovered a neat package, done an interesting analysis, or have anything else you want to share, we'd love to hear from you. And if you have space available, we're always looking for new spaces to host the various types of meetups we put on. Please get in touch with us; we'd love to hear from you!

Thanks for a fantastic year, and looking forward to the next 12 months!

Cheers,

Caitlin and Victoria