useR! is a great opportunity to organise community events that allow people to network, share knowledge, mentor, and socialise. The Forwards community events tend to focus on communities we want to support, amplify, help take space, etc. Previously we have organised social events for:
- Diversity scholars
- First-time useR! attendees, aka newbies
- Forwards
- RainbowR
- RUGs
- satRdays
- Joint community organisers events for R-Ladies, RUGs, satRdays, and other local conferences and meetups organisers
In addition, R-Ladies usually organise an R-Ladies lunch, in which Forwards members take part.
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Casual Some of the social events are very free-form. We would ask a community member to lead them, or have a Forwards member do it if none are available. They will introduce themselves, organise an ice-breaker, and then either let people form small groups freely or facilitate a group discussion around emerging topics. It's a great way to get new people to interact with long standing community members, or for peers to connect. In the Forwards event we often answer a lot of curious questions about our work, and get new ideas for what we could do next, and who we can collaborate with. This has been the case for the diversity scholars, Forwards, and RainbowR in useR! 2019 for example.
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Working group or knowledge sharing For social events aimed at organisers, we have typically asked a few organisers to help form an agenda for topics they would like to try to tackle at scale to avoid re-inventing the wheel. We have also seen that people who are curious about volunteering and organising to support existing events, or start new chapter often join. This is a great opportunity to welcome them to your community, get to know them, and onboard them to your knowledge base and communication channels. This has been the case for the satRdays, and the joint community organiser events in useR! 2019 for example.
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Lunch As mentioned above, R-Ladies usually organise a lunch based event where R-Ladies and allies network, and the famous R-Ladies picture is take. It has also informally become an event for exchanging local version of R-Ladies hex stickers, and other swag, and many people wear purple tokens or shirts to show support.
If you are organising a lunch you simply need to ask the organisers which lunch / open space area you could use, so you can easily guide attendees. This could be done a bit more spontaneously by posting signs to direct people and tweeting the location once you are at the conference.
If you are organising a casual or working group event, we suggest to plan for a lunch or coffee break as well. You can ask the organisers which room you can use, as there is usually an empty breakout room where people can more easily find each other and feel at ease interacting with others away from the crowd.
Either way we strongly encourage you to coordinate timing and location with the organising committee to that these events are spread throughout the conference, and don't clash. They may also mention them on the schedule, or on a page directing people to side events. Here is an example for the side events page from useR!2019
We recommend asking the relevant communities to share the events via their slack and twitter channels, along side the Forwards and main conference twitter channels. Ideally your events will also appear on the schedule, or on the side events page of the official conference website. Lastly, you can create a markdown file on the Forwards GitHub repository to add more information about each event. If the other communication channels point to it, you can easily keep it up to date with location updates, or changes to points of contact and agendas for each meeting. Here's and example for the markdown file for the Forwards supported side events and acitvities during useR! 2019