First Annual Meeting R-Ladies Mexico

Ana B Villaseñor Altamirano, Averi Giudicessi and Joselyn Chávez
Last updated on Jan 30, 2021 8 min read Posts

R-Ladies Mexico

The R community is characterized by promoting a supportive and inclusive environment through established groups such as Bioconductor, useR, RStudio and R-Ladies. Specifically, R-Ladies chapters have had a great impact on local circles by promoting an inclusive environment in programming. R-Ladies is an organization founded in 2012 with a focus on teaching and empowering women and gender minorities to become more involved in programming. In Mexico, our first chapter was founded in 2017 by Teresa Ortiz and Silvia Gutiérrez in Mexico City. We are delighted that in just three years we have ten chapters in our country!

COVID-19 made 2020 difficult for everyone, we live in a global pandemic that has changed our lives on many levels. Although this pandemic has been challenging, it has also created new opportunities such as remote conferencing, virtual meetings, and online workshops that bring together people from different geographic locations and allow us to reach people who normally would not have the opportunity to attend R-Ladies meetings due to geographic limitations.

After a few months in quarantine, several chapters such as R-Ladies Querétaro, Ciudad de México, Cuernavaca and Xalapa organized virtual meetings. However, we wanted to go beyond the individual organization and find a way to unite R-Ladies from all over the country through virtual platforms. The national meet-up idea was from multiple chapter organizers of R-Ladies Querétaro and Cuernavaca who started to organize the first R-Ladies Mexico virtual meeting with the support of members of the Community of Software Developers for Bioinformatics (CDSB), the meeting became a reality.

Let’s cook and prepare R-LadiesMX

The organization and preparation of the first R-Ladies Mexico meeting was a carefully planned process that took place over the summer months. The coordination of the event started with Joselyn and myself ( Ana Beatriz) first contacting all the organizers from Mexican chapters and letting them know the idea of bringing together all the R-Ladies from Mexico. We also invited them to discuss and organize the event. We chose to hold our first meeting in September as Mexican Independence Day is September 16th, it is a symbolic and patriotic month in Mexico. We also wanted to give ourselves ample time to organize the event over the summer and to announce the event with enough time so many R-Ladies in Mexico would have the opportunity to attend.

In the weeks leading up to the event, we defined the program to be a general presentation of R-Ladies global, history and statistics from all Mexican chapters, a panel discussion with challenges and perspectives as R-Ladies in Mexico, virtual networking, short talks from R-Ladies members in different chapters on how they utilize R in their work, and finally how to start a new chapter. You can check our final program at the link (Note: Our website was beautifully designed by Joselyn).

The day has come!

Our event was planned and prepared for the evening of September 24 at 17:00 h (GMT-6). Everything was organized: the slides, presenters, Zoom, and the streaming of the event through YouTube live. The organizers of the different chapters in México were eagerly anticipating the start of the event.

The event was introduced by Joselyn, who welcomed our participants to R-LadiesMX. Then, I presented a brief introduction of R-Ladies Global, an overview of current chapters in Mexico, and R-LadiesMX’s aim, mission, and passion for R.

Following the introduction, each chapter talked about their experiences organizing their R-Ladies group. Each of the co-founders and organizers of the different chapters then introduced themselves and shared how many meetings each chapter has conducted and how many participants has in their respective chapters. Silvia Gutierrez presented Mexico City’s chapter, the first Mexican chapter created in 2017. Xalapa was the second chapter and it was introduced by Marcela Guerra. Then, Driselda Sánchez-Aguirre talked about R-Ladies Queretaro, Averi Giudicessi about Puebla, Leticia Vega about Cuernavaca (with gorgeous plots), Juana Martinez about Tijuana, Mariana Fernández about Aguascalientes, and finally our most recently created chapter in México, Guadalajara was presented by Nancy Manzo.

We also had a very captivating panel discussion with a variety of topics covered. Different R-Ladies shared their experiences and opinions about the R-Ladies community in Mexico and the R-LadiesMX vision and future plans. We also conversed about ways of including unrepresented groups missing in the R-LadiesMX community currently such as people who are deaf or hard-of-hearing, low-income communities in México that are not easily reached, LGBTQIA+ communities, and how to help and facilitate to attend our meetings for women with children. Finally, we discussed motivations, challenges and the actions needed to increase the R-Ladies community in Mexico.

We then continued with short presentations from various R-Ladies members who represented different chapters. The following table summarizes the presenters and their subject matter, all of them were extraordinary and enlightening and we recommend you to visit the recording event where you can watch the topics discussed by each individual panelist. Our guest speakers successfully were able to transmit the passion, power, and diversity that R brings to the table as a programming language.

NameChapterTitle
Aurora LabastidaCuernavacaR in my genomics projects, at home and with my friends
Mirna Vázquez Rosas LandaXalapaR, the microscope of the 21st century?
Yadira Peralta TorresAguascalientesInteRsection of Bayesian Statistics and Educational Psychology
Karen Julia Nuñez RezaQuerétaroR in Biomedical Sciences
Katia GuzmánCDMXSurvey analysis and loops
Nancy ManzoGuadalajaraR in social research

Just before our closing remarks, Karen Morales talked about how to create a new chapter. One of our main goals of the meeting was to increase the R-Ladies community in Mexico with the support of all existing chapters in México.

We hope that this portion of the meeting provided the confidence and inspiration for new R-Ladies to start new chapters in Mexico soon! Lastly, Maria Teresa gave the closing remarks. At the end of the event, we had a networking happy hour, which gave us the opportunity to meet more closely the attendees, as well as hear about their feedback for the event.

Organizing this meeting was an exciting and empowering experience that motivates us to make R-Ladies Mexico meeting an annual event. We hope that this R-LadiesMX meeting inspires other women to join the beautiful community of R-Ladies in Mexico and the world.

We would like to thank the following individuals/sponsors:

  • We felt so lucky to have The Geek Squirrell as a sponsor, who kindly donated two amazing cups for a giveaway. Any participant in the event was welcome to participate by tweeting who their favorite programmer was with the hashtag #R-LadiesMX and tagging @TheGeekSquirrel. Winners were announced via twitter the following day.
  • Thanks to the CDSB Community, who hosts our Slack space for communication among R-LadiesMX members and its support during the organization of this event.

  • Finally but not less important, we want to give a special thanks and owe a debt of gratitude to Leonardo Collado-Torres, who has always been a great ally and supporter of R-LadiesMX. He analyzed our tweets during the R-LadiesMX event and generously helped us with the organization. We also acknowledge that he is not alone, many other men have supported us and we are very appreciative of their help and contributions to the community.
  • We thank each and every one of our attendees and hope that you will join us in future R-Ladies events across Mexico in the coming months! If you have any questions or would like more information about R-LadiesMx or further information about starting your own chapter please contact: rladiesmx@gmail.com or info@rladies.org