On a cool Monday evening in late July almost 40 women (and a few brave men) gathered at Michigan State University’s campus to kickoff the R-Ladies East Lansing Chapter. The group included women in industry and academia who were using the R-language (or planning to use it) for a variety of applications including computer science, human health, earth sciences, political science, statistics and finance.
Over pizza and pop the group warmed up with introductions and engaged in discussions about their R-interests. A series of R and data science lightning talks has been scheduled for August and September for members to share how they are using R in their work or for fun. Attendees were overwhelming interested in learning more about data visualization, R Markdown and WebApps with Shiny and the group hopes to host a few workshops to address these topics in the future.
R-Ladies East Lansing supports leadership by women and other gender minorities and welcomes women and men to participate by leading an r-specific discussion over slack and in the bi-weekly Fall R-Ladies discussions (2nd and 4th Mondays) on MSU’s campus. The group aims to build a rich R-support community in East Lansing engaging users from academia and industry.
Connect with the group on Meetup, Twitter, Facebook, and Slack.