Insights from the recent R community development and growth in Latin America

Abstract

Talk in English. This talk summarizes some of the recent work that put Latin America (LatAm) in the international R user map. In January 2017, R-Ladies Buenos Aires (BA) was founded. R-Ladies BA encouraged the foundation of other R-Ladies groups in the region (e.g., Santa Rosa, Santiago). In two years, LatAm went from one to 29 R-Ladies active groups. English-only materials can be a barrier to R. Hence, LatAm R-Ladies led efforts to translate into Spanish: R for Data Science (es.r4ds.hadley.nz), R-Ladies code of conduct and policies (bit.ly/2UwP79x), and R Consortium 2017 (bit.ly/2Tpt8RR) and RStudio 2018 surveys. The creation of new regional conferences was another R-Ladies-led effort. Thanks to the R-Ladies network, LatinR (latin-r.com) got rapidly started and LatAm had its first SatRDay. Among other achievements, these events impulsed the regional community in the form of new and diverse R user groups (e.g., Rosario, Montevideo). In a nutshell, in the last two years, the LatAm R user community has seen fast growth and regrouping, mainly spearheaded by R-Ladies. This presentation details key aspects of this process and seeks to inspire other R regional communities worldwide.