Cascadia-R

Then/Now/Next

Jessica Minnier

Ted Laderas

2023-08-19

Answered Questions

• Can you organize a conference with just 6 people?
• What is the Cascadia R Community Like?
• Should you volunteer for the next Cascadia-R?

Outline

• Then (How we started)
• Now (How the conf has evolved)
• Next (What we hope for the future)

Then (2017-2018)

The origins

Gigantic Brewery

cascadia-R <- pdx_r |>
  add_group(oregon_state) |>
  add_group(seattle) |>
  add_group(vancouver) |>
  add_group(u_oregon)

• Lots of R Groups: PDX-R, Oregon State University, Seattle-R, University of Oregon, Vancouver-R

• beeR discussion: “How can we bring these groups together?”

• “How can we make the conference accessible to the most people?”

• “Where can we hold it?”

Our Values

• Home-Grown
• Informal vs. Academic
• Social
• Local people and R

• Inclusive
• Accessible
• beeR

2017-2018: It was just 6/7 people

• Chester Ismay
  
• Jessica Minnier
• John David Smith
• Lilly Winfree
• Scott Chamberlain
• Ted Laderas
• Aaron Makubuya (2018)

Cascadia-R Organizer Team

Tools that helped make the conference

• Trello (pull plan)
• Slack
• Asynchronous Decisions
• Everyone did their part and it all came together

Plan for a Minimum Viable Conference

• A Venue
• Speakers
• Audience
• Workshops
• Scholarships

• Code of Conduct
• Snacks/Beer
• Bartender
• Childcare
• Recording

Timeline: 2 1/2 months

Venue: OHSU/PSU Collaborative Life Sciences Building

• Med school student classroom (275 capacity)
• Lots of Outlets / Fast Internet
• Lots of begging on my part

Who Gets to Talk?

Distribution of Talk Proposal Scores

What Happened on the Big Day?

• Chaos (In a good way)
• Registration: Relatively quick!
• Agenda: updating website day of
• Workshops
• Lightning Talks + Free Beer

Registration Booth

Keynotes

Lesson: it doesn’t hurt to ask!

• Vinay Prasad
• Gabriela de Quieroz
• Alison Hill
• Kara Woo

Workshops

• Home-grown
• gRadual intRoduction to Tidyverse
• Happy R Users Purrr
• Deep Learning with TensorFlow
• R with Databases

Charlotte Wickham Teaching purrr

Panel Discussion

• Impostor Syndrome
  • Frank Discussion of what it means

cascadia_r |>
  drop_feeling("impostor")

cRaggy: Visualizing Data Together

• Nike Biketown Data
• This is for fun
• Be supportive and kind to each other!

Childcare/Travel Scholarships/Student Tickets

• Wanted the conference to be accessible to everyone
• Used a portion of ticket sales to handle this

beeR

• Painful logistically but worth it
• Hiring bartender and food service
• Promising facilities not to make a mess
• People were still chatting afterwards

cascadia_r |>
  add_beer()

Who are the Cascadia R Attendees?

2018: 254 People Registered!

Wide picture showing 254 people

How far did people travel?

https://milesofme.com/portland-or/1000

Diverse in Skill Levels

Diverse in Backgrounds

Talks

• Lisa Karstens
  • Microbial community analysis in R

• Amelia Abreu
  • Improving the Developer Experience

• Daniel Anderson
  • Contribute to Open Source with Pretty Slides

• Kalbi Zongo
  • Introduction to sparklyr

Lightning Talks

• Amy Williams
  • Using R for Behavioral Data: The Fun and Frustration of Factorial and Repeated-Measures ANOVAs

• Jacqueline Nolis
  • Using deep learning in R to generate offensive license plates

Friends we made along the way

• Caitlin Hudon
• Jacqueline and Heather Nolis
• Sondra Stegenga
• Dror Berel
• Isabella Velaquez
• Alison Hill

• Daniel Anderson
• Ellis Hughes
• David Severski
• Kara Woo
• Meike Niederhausen
• Charlotte Wickham

How was the Conf?

They Really Liked It!

How did we do?

How did we do?

I was seriously blown away. Of all the conferences I’ve been to over the years this was the most beneficial and well structured conference I’ve attended. It’s an amazing deal that can’t be beat!

Amazing conference! love the one day thing, the schedule, and the location!

Had a great time and glad I came! Thanks for keeping the coffee flowing.

How did we do?

10/10 for enchantment!

Child care was great!

The venue was amazing. The value was exceptional. The conference was very well organized. I loved the code of conduct. I’m having a harder time than expected finding an analytics job and this conference inspired me to keep going, keep learning, keep trying, and keep improving my R skills.

How did we do?

I love this conference, it was absolutely a great use of my time

y’all did a great job, thank you.

Please keep doing these conferences. They are valuable

Thank you so much for making this accessible/affordable to students!

I’d rate this conference 11/10 and look forward to attending again in future years.

What Did We Learn?

• Volunteers are awesome and step up
• Home-grown is cost-effective (balanced our budget)
• Workshops take work, but are well received
• Amazing speakers are all around us
• A conference is all about the people
• Cascadia R community members are amazing

The Legacy of Cascadia-R

• Brought local R users together
• Commitment to Diversity and Inclusion
• Workshop material is still being used
• Accessibility is appreciated (cheap tickets, scholarships, childcare, lactation room)

Now: Cascadia-R Beyond Us

Cascadia-R continues to evolve

Conference has continued on and become something even more amazing

Pandemic Lessons

The Cascadia-R that Wasn’t (2020)

• Year of COVID
• University of Oregon
  • Daniel Anderson
  • Brendan Cullen

A lifeline

• CascadiaRconf continued virtually 2021-2022
• Maintained a community despite decentralization of information (rip #rstats twitter) and isolation
• Uplifting to be here together again!

Hybrid/Virtual

• Improve accessibility if done well
• Online networking, sharing of info
• Code of Conduct for both

Togetherness

The value of “seeing the community” is that all the different threads can come together: people who may not have recognized each other as partners, all of a sudden had a common purpose. - John David Smith

Next

Goals

• Get out of Portland

• Keep values upheld

• Encourage participation from all
  • (even a 5 minute talk on something you learned! we are all learners)

• Continue to learn how to increase diversity, accessibility, reach underrepresented groups

Answers to the Questions

• Can you organize a conference with just 6 people?
  • Yeah, with the help of the R community!

• Who is the Cascadia-R audience?
  • Talented people who do amazing things

• Should you volunteer for the next Cascadia R?
  • Yeah! You really should.

• What is that {ggplot2} Barbie theme?
  • theme_barbie() from {ThemePark}

Thank You and Gratitude

• OHSU, Posit, ProCogia, Fred Hutch, and R-Consortium and other sponsors
• Cascadia-R Organizers (past and present)
• You! The amazing Cascadia-R audience and speakers
• Made with Quarto