EDI in the R Community
Heather Turner
Research Software Engineering Fellow
University of Warwick
@HeathrTurnr
4 May 2022
Artwork from @juliesquid for @openscapes (illustrated by @allison_horst).
Potted History of R
1992: Robert Gentleman and Ross Ihaka develop an early version of R for teaching.
1995: R released under a GNU public license
1997: CRAN and R Core team established
2000: R 1.0.0 released
April 2022: R 11th in TIOBE rankings
At the Black Crow Cafe, Auckland, NZ
(source: R. Ihaka)
Gender Diversity
Only ~11% women/non-binary package maintainers.
Similar over-representation of men in general user community
Geographical Diversity
Women in R
"heR" panel at useR! 2014 raised awareness of gender disparity
In 2015:
- Myself and Bettina Grün elected to R Foundation
- Women in R taskforce set up in December 2015
useR! 2016 survey
(source: - 74% White; 16 % Asian
- 5% LGBT
- 33% women
Forwards
Widening participation in R Foundation activities:
useR!, R Journal, CRAN, R project
- Accessibility
- Community
- Conferences
- On-ramps
- Surveys
- Teaching
Forwards Team
Core Team: Heather Turner, gwynn sturdevant, Jonathan Godfrey, Kevin O'Brien,
Noa Tamir, Yanina Bellini Saibene,
Saranjeet Kaur, Michael Lawrence, Anna Vasylytsya,
Andrea Sánchez-Tapia, Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel, Emma Rand
Plus >20 sub-team members!
R Consortium
Non-profit business association set up as Linux Foundation project
- Funded projects
- Forwards package development workshops
- Working groups
- 2018: R-Community IDEA
- RUG and conference support
R-Ladies
2012: Gabriela de Queiroz founded group in San Francisco
Later: Twin Cities, Taipei, London
2016:
- San Francisco & London organizer meet at useR!
- R Consortium grant to create R-Ladies Global
R-Ladies vs RUGS
- 858 RUGS on Meetup.com (earliest 2008)
- R-Ladies relatively stronger in Latin America
satRdays
2016: R Consortium grant to start
- Locally organized
- Strong commitment to diversity
- Ticket price < 8hr min wage
> 20 conferences
- 6 in Africa
- 1 in S. America, Asia, Oceania
useR! 2017
Forwards recommendations implemented
- Wider diversity scholarships
- Subsidised childcare
- Improved code of conduct
Rainbow R established
R Foundation Endorsed Conferences
Latin America:
- R Day, May 2018, Curitiba, Brazil.
- LatinR, September 2018, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
- ConectaR, January, 2019, San José, Costa Rica.
India:
- R@IIRSA. December, 2019, Mumbai.
Regional Networks
- Provide community
- Support user groups
- Organize regional events
@LatinR_Conf / latin-r.com
ArabR
@AfricaRUsers / africa-r.org
@AsiaR_comm / AsiaR-community
Regional Leaders
LatinR chairs:
AfricaR leaders:
AsiaR founders:
ArabR team: 
Minorities in R
MiR Community aims to support historically underrepresented R users around the world.
- MiR community Slack
- Blog
- Webinars and tutorials
- Support RStudio instructor certification
MiR Team
Co-founders: Danielle Smalls-Perkins, Dorris Scott
Silvia Canelón, Liz Hare, Audris Campbell,
Andy Murtha, Meenakshi Kushwaha, Ola Giwa, Zane Dax
Developer Community Events
rOpenSci unconfs (2014-2019)
- mostly invited
- strong commitment to diversity
Tidyverse Developer Days (2019,2020)
- open events
- first-timers encouraged
(source: B. Milz)
R Contribution Working Group
- Motivated by R Core panel at useR! 2020
- Collaboration between R Core, Forwards and community groups
- Aim to foster larger, more diverse community of contributors to the R project.
Collaboration Campfires
Novice-friendly topics
- Bug handling
- Contributing translations Designed to be inclusive
- Community champions
- Targeted promotion
RCWG participants
Saranjeet Kaur
R Development Guide
Collaboration Campfires
Lluís Revilla Sancho
R Bugzilla analysis
Michael Chirico
Michael Lawrence Translations tutorial
Kara Woo
R-Ladies link, RWeekly
Slack moderator
gwynn sturdevant
MiR link
Gabriel Becker
Martin Mächler Contributing tutorial
Plus several others joining meetings, contributing via github.com/r-devel/rcontribution
useR! Global 2021
