The rainbowR buddy scheme is designed to connect LGBTQ+ people who code in the R language. We hope it's fun for the folks who take part, and that it helps foster the community. We envisage this buddy scheme as primarily social -- you don't have to talk about R, though it will be something you have in common. Any experience level with R is welcome!
- Folks opt-in via this sign-up form
- Buddy pairs are randomly assigned
- E-mails are sent to each pair making the introduction.
This is implemented in R.
For the first iteration, we'll send the emails on November 30th, 2023. We trust that the assigned buddies will want to communicate with each other, and get in touch with each other via email. We anticipate that buddies will arrange a meet-up (most likely online), though there are no firm expectations/requirements to do so. Maybe they'll just meet once. Maybe they'll become friends for life! We plan to run the scheme every three months (people will need to opt-in each time).
In the form we ask for a little about yourself and things that you'd be interested in talking about or doing together, and give some examples of things you might consider:
- Discuss/get feedback on a project you're working on (either R-related or something completely different)
- Explore a TidyRainbow dataset together
- Work on some Advent of Code puzzles together (either new ones in December or some from previous years)
- Do some pair programming
- Play some online games, e.g. some of those listed here
- General chat is fine too!
To help get the conversation started, what you write about yourself and your interests will be included in the emails introducing each buddy pair (though buddies are assigned randomly, not on mutual interests).
We want the scheme to be fun and safe for everyone, so it operates under the rainbowR code of conduct. All the information entered in the sign-up form is confidential. It is seen just by me (Ella Kaye, the organiser of rainbowR) and the assigned buddies. There is a GitHub repo for the implementation of the scheme, but no personal details will ever be checked in there. If you're interested in taking part but have any questions or concerns, please email rlgbtq@gmail.com and I will do my best to address them.
It would be wonderful to get a good number of people involved in the scheme, so please do sign up if you're interested! If you know anyone else who might be interested, please do share this post with them. The deadline for signing up for the first round of the scheme is November 29th, 2023.
This is the pilot run of the scheme, so around the middle of February 2024, I'll be in touch with everyone who participated to ask for feedback on how it went and what we could do to improve subsequent rounds. Once that feedback is incorporated and the scheme is ready to run again, I'll email again with the details. There's no obligation to take part in future rounds, and anyone who wants to will need to sign-up again.