Diversity and Inclusion in the R Community
Heather Turner
@HeathrTurnr
Forwards taskforce @R_Forwards
7 March 2020
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Background
Action from the community initially focused on women
- heR panel at useR! 2014 raised awareness of gender disparity
- Forwards taskforce set up in December 2015
- R-Ladies Global set up in August 2016
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Forwards (est 2015)
R Foundation taskforce to widen participation of underepresented groups
- Social media
- Twitter: @R_Forwards
- Blog: https://forwards.github.io/blog/
- Community
- Conferences
- On-ramps
- Surveys
- Teaching
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Other initiatives - Wider Community
Conferences/workshops
- Women in Data Science (est 2015), Black in AI (est 2017)
Meetups
- Women in Machine Learning & Data Science (est 2013), Queer in AI (est 2018)
The Carpentries (est 2018, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility Roadmap 2019)
NUMFocus Diversity & Inclusion in Scientific Computing (DISC) (est 2017)
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Other initiatives - R Community
rOpenSci
- unconf (est 2014)
- Community Manager (since 2016)
Tidyverse developer day (est 2019)
R Consortium Diversity & Inclusion Working Group (est 2018)
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
R-Ladies
Currently 188 chapters
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
R-Ladies
Chapters spread over 52 countries
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Current Challenges
User Community
- outreach beyond white women
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Current Challenges
User Community
- outreach beyond white women
Developer community
- widening participation from underrepresented groups
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
useR! Regional Hubs
- Pilot in Munich this year
- Hoping to scale up next year to include hubs in e.g. Africa, Latin America, Asia
- reduce environmental cost with maximum in-person interaction
- reduce financial cost
- reduce travel time
- potential to allow languages other than English
- potential to incorporate remote participation
- avoid visa issues
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
AfricaR Community (@AfricaRUsers)
- Started in 2019
- Newly expanded leadership team
- Shelmith Kariuki - Kenya
- Denis Irorere - Nigeria
- Mohammed Ali - Egypt
- Ahmadou Dicko - Senegal
- Anicet Ebou - Ivory Coast
- Nelda Limilimi - Uganda
- Vebashini Naidoo - South Africa
New leadership team
- have been able to develop several RUGs and had two SatRdays.
- been able to really bring together R users in their respective regions, who did not know each other before
- leadership has representatives from Egypt, Senegal, Ivory Coast, Nigeria, Uganda, Kenya and South Africa
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
AfricaR Activities
- 2019: several new RUGs, two satRdays
- Plans for 2020:
- Write governing documents (mission statement, CoC)
- Rotating curator Twitter account
- Tutorials in French
- Website (events calendar, blog)
- Package(s) to address African needs, e.g. NLP package that supports Arabic, Swahili, etc.
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Get Involved
- Follow @AfricaRUsers
- Share your contacts
- Potential speakers/hosts for meetups, workshops
- Reuse your talks/workshops
- Present at RUGs when travelling
- Offer to present remotely
- Join in with AfricaR plans for 2020
- Help with organization of community finances?
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Minority Ethnic/Racial Groups
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
The Importance of Community
Dear Danielle,
— Danielle Smalls-Perkins (@smallperks) January 29, 2020
Remember these incredibly brilliant, talented, and kind women data scientists whenever you feel like “the only one,” on a team or in a space. Thanks to #rstudioconf2020 for bringing us together! #rladies pic.twitter.com/sA312EibH5
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
MiR Community
Medium post by Danielle Smalls-Perkins and Dorris Scott: MiR: A Community for Underrepresented Minority useRs
- Conference support: abstract review
- Mi-useR Slack: network and share opportunities
- Social media and blog posts: highlight Mi-useRs
- Mi-useR directory: members, speakers and Rstudio trainers
- MiR dev days: making contributions to the R open source ecosystem
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Get involved
- Let people in your workplace/RUG/etc know about MiR
- Join MiR as a minority useR or ally: bit.ly/2unAM8b
- Follow @Dorris_Scott and @smallperks
- Support the MiR initiatives
- Some people do not identify as disabled (e.g. some Deaf, Blind, Autisitic folk etc)
- Some prefer person-first, some prefer identity first
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
R for Blind Users
Jonathan Godfrey has provided many resources
- Let's Use R Now (LURN) e-book for blind users
- BlindRUG mailing list
- BrailleR package
- text descriptions of graphics
- WriteR software to produce R markdown documents
- Tips for writing accessible markdown documents
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Accessibility of R Conferences/Events
Liz Hare has been leading the development of best practices for events
Informed call for proposals for useR! 2021, e.g. asking if venue had
- step-free access
- disabled parking close to venue
- gender-neutral bathrooms
- policy allowing children on premises
Aim to integrate recommendations throughout organization for 2021.
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
What you can do
- Educate yourself/others on accessibility
- Expect disabled people at your events
- including as speakers, chairs, committee members, etc
- remove barriers to inclusion, don't wait for people to ask
- Give feedback on/help develop best practices
- (R-specific) advice for creating accessible/inclusive presentations
- advice for social media managers
- chicken-and-egg problem (don't see them so don't accommodate; don't see them because their no accommodated)
- planning with accessibility in mind from the start saves time and money over retrofitting.
- remove barriers
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
General tips for creating inclusive communities
- Organizers: use best practices in your events
- Noa Tamir is working on guide for meetups
- Expand your network
- Support the initiatives of underrepresented groups
- Share opportunities
- Do what you can to lessen/share the burden
sponsoring
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Developer meetings co-located with useR!
Directions in Statistical Computing (2014-2019)
- Both invited speakers and invited participants
- Mostly R Foundation members, plus special guests
- Prior to useR!
R Implementation Optimization and Tooling
- Open call for speakers, open to useR! participants
- Parallel with useR!
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Barriers to Inclusion
Invited workshop
- Special guests can feel out of place
- Community members that would be interested are left out
- Information is not shared
Satellite meetings
- Not same effort to reach out to underrepresented groups
- Very little promotion to general community
- Details hidden away on separate website
Hard for people from underserved regions to get involved
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Work in Progress
DSC 2020
- Speakers are invited, but anyone can attend
RIOT 2019
- First time RIOT was advertised on useR! 2019 website
Room for improvement
- Better promotion of events, with a focus on diversity
- Alternative formats (e.g. breakout session) to enable new contributors
- Sharing information, e.g. recorded talks, blog post
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Package development workshops
Forwards package development workshop materials
- Full day and 2 hour versions
- Workshop run in Auckland, Budapest, Chicago, York, Johannesburg
- Upcoming Montevideo
- Working on guide for others to run workshop at RUGs, R-Ladies groups, universities, etc
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Reluctance/Nervousness to Submit to CRAN
- Bad experience on CRAN/official mailing list
- Decide to not to publish/host on GitHub
- Hoops to jump through
- A lot of information: CRAN Repository Policy, Checklist for New Submissions
- Feedback can be unpredictable and underspecified
- Involved process: updating NEWS, DESCRIPTION, running checks and tests
- R-package-devel provides limited support
- can still be an intimidating experience
- focus on specific questions
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Basic Onboarding?
- Potential for basic onboarding service for first-time (underrepresented) submitters
- guidance through checklist
- help with errors/issues that come up in checks/tests
- help solve issues identified by CRAN
- give guidance on resubmission as they "graduate"
- Work with CRAN support team to keep Checklist for New Submissions up-to-date
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Python Core Dev: Adding Women to the Team
I want at least two female core Python Devs in the next year
— PyCon 2015, Guido van Rossum
From Victor Stinner's PyCon 2019 talk:
2016: 0 women core devs
2017: 2 women core devs
2018: 4 women core devs
~ 30 active core devs
Benevolent dictator for life
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Process of Becoming a Python Core Developer
Mariatta Wijaya described process in her PyCon 2018 talk
- Read the Dev Guide devguide.python.org
- Join core-mentorship and python-dev
- Find issue in bugs.python.org
- Propose pull request
All these steps can be done by non-core members
@mariatta
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Getting to be Invited to Be a Python Core Developer
Promotion to core dev depends on trust
Trust earnt by core devs getting to know people via
- Pull requests (PRs)
- PR review
- Interacting on mailing lists, IRC, Zulip
- Becoming a Developer on issue tracker (able to triage issues)
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Mentoring
Victor Stinner in his PyCon 2019 proposes mentoring as a scalable solution to both core dev burnout and lack of diversity
Recent/current work by Python Core devs (Ref1, Ref2)
- Move to GitHub (2017)
- Document promotions process (dev guide)
- Mentoring guide
- Contributor tutorial
- Core dev office hours (public and private)
- Adding enforcement procedure to code of conduct
typically a few emails a week, less onerous than GSoC
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
More Ideas from Other Communities
Rust: mentored projects (diversity scholarships)
- mentees invest 2-5 hours per week over 3 months
- expenses paid scholarship to Rust conference following year
Various: outreachy projects for underrepresented groups
- paid internship, 40 hours per week over 3 months
- require mentor(s) to invest 5 hours per week
vs 2-3 hours for google summer of code project
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Outreach from R Core
- Call for help Reviewing Bug Reports (R Developer Blog, October 2019)
- At useR! 2020
- outreach slot adjoining keynote talk
- parallel session dedicated to R Core speakers
- tutorial by Tomas Kalibera on contributing to base R
- Considering "Requests For Proposals" on perceived deficiencies in R
- community teams propose solutions
- At useR! 2020
heatherturner.net/talks/satRdayJoburg2020 @HeathrTurnr @R_Forwards
Summary
We can all support community-driven efforts for better inclusion of under-represented groups
- Forwards is playing its part here
A lot of ideas from outside and inside R community of how to get more contributors from under-represented groups
- Currently don't have enough active members on Forward on-ramps team
- Needs active participation of R Core and other contributors