Ella Kaye - rainbowR - a community that supports, connects and promotes LGBTQ+ people who code in R

Hello, my name is Ella Kaye and today I'm going to tell you about rainbowR, a community for LGBTQ plus people who code in R Everything I talk about today, you can find out more at rainbowR.org

How rainbowR began

At the useR conference in 2017 I was chatting with the guy who I just met and I mentioned in passing my wife. I didn't know it at the time But the guy I was speaking to is also gay and it turns out that he was finding Socializing at the conference at such a large conference to be rather overwhelming But as soon as he knew he was speaking to someone else who's also gay, he felt a sense of camaraderie that he could relax

from there we got to talking about the possibility for, the need for even, an LGBTQ plus community within the broader R community and that's how rainbowR was born That was seven years ago. The community is now going to over a hundred people

From our time together today. I'd like you to take away that and why we exist as a community Some of what we do and how you can get involved

What rainbowR does

we exist to connect support and promote LGBTQ plus people in the R community and to spread awareness of LGBTQ plus issues through data-driven activism When it comes to connecting, supporting and promoting people we have two main initiatives

We run monthly meetups over zoom usually on the fourth Wednesday of the month These are really relaxed, friendly, supportive sessions where people come together to chat mostly about R It's an opportunity to ask and answer questions To demonstrate packages or resources you've come across recently and find helpful Or to show and tell your own work in a really supportive setting

We run a buddy scheme to encourage deeper connections within the community Which gives people an opportunity to be randomly paired with a buddy in the community We open up every three months a form Where if you want a buddy you can fill it in with a little bit of information about yourself and your interests We then run an R script which gathers the form responses Randomly allocates buddy pairs and then automatically generates and sends emails to each pair Where the email is pre-populated with information from the form And suggestions of things that you might want to talk about or do together

We do this because we know it can be nerve-wracking to meet somebody new And we want to help get those conversations started The next round of the buddy scheme will allocate pairs at the beginning of September The sign-up sheet is already open. You can see the website for more details. I'll share the link again at the end

We do this because we know it can be nerve-wracking to meet somebody new And we want to help get those conversations started

Data-driven activism

On to data-driven activism We host a repo, Tidy Rainbow Which contains data sets with data relevant to LGBTQ plus issues The data is there for anybody to use and can be used in a variety of ways For example, it can be used to practice data visualization or data analysis along the lines of the Tidy Tuesday project Or it can be used to provide example data sets when teaching or writing blog posts Something that hopefully will be of interest to allies as well

We're about to start our first ever book club, the book under discussion Is going to be Queer Data, using gender, sex and sexuality data for action by Kevin Guillen This book club is open for everyone, LGBTQ plus folks and allies alike The book club is going to run in the autumn. There are more details on our website

How to get involved

If you're LGBTQ plus and would like to join the community, you can do so via the join form accessible via our website If you fill that in you will shortly thereafter receive a postcard If you fill that in you will shortly thereafter receive a personalized welcome email from a member of the Rainbow R team An invitation to the slack group and an opportunity to sign up for our newsletter

For those of you here at the conference There's going to be a lunch tomorrow And also on the slack there is a channel specifically for people who are here So please do sign the join form if you're interested to get access to that Unfortunately, I am not personally at the conference But Daniel Soberg is. He's a member of the Rainbow R team. He should be here in this room if you're watching this live and He's looking forward to meeting you

So if you're LGBTQ plus and you want to join a vibrant and supportive community of fellow R enthusiasts Or you're somebody interested in promoting LGBTQ plus people in the R community and beyond Please visit our website rainbowr.org to learn more and get involved Thank you very much. I hope to meet you soon