Our two cents about Transform 21

After a productive week in Transform 2021, some of us GeoLatinas in attendance got around to chatting about our experience in the event. We would like to share our collated insights below that may potentially contribute to enhancing future Transform meetings.

Things we enjoyed

• High quality of tutorials
• Diverse topics across all geoscience disciplines
• Use of jitsi for video calls
• The lightning talks host created an inviting and engaging atmosphere
• The community, solidarity, and efforts to help the community learn. This has always been SWUNG's goal, but it is definitely highlighted during Transform.
• The Gather town was a fun platform for networking.
• Inclusion of other languages tutorial
• "I personally liked the open-source publications lighting talk" -Diana Acero-

Recommendations for Transform 2022

• Gather
  • It would be nice to have a "welcome team" or some type of lobby in Gather, or even a first stop table to get directions. It is a good icebreaker for those new in the community or shy people that may feel overwhelmed by a new online environment.
  • Add a common space in Gather instead of specific tables for hackathon projects. We feel that some people might have been intimidated entering the Gather space and not relating to the specified table topics.
  • Add a space in Gather for non-topic or simple chit-chat or open networking.
  • Wider promotion of Gather and the networking events (for the new class, should be basics (~ 4 months) ??)

• UnSessions. In Transform2020, we enjoyed the UnSessions. These time slots allowed for conversation and discussion about various topics. We felt that Transform2021 lacked this type of session and participation. We recommend more promotion of these types of "sessions" and to change "Birds of a Feather" for a more descriptive name.
• More languages. For Transform 2022 would be nice to have an international (non- English) slot tutorials (for example, like T21 while the Spanish tutorial was happening at the same time a tutorial in another language, i.e., mandarin) (added by Diana A)

• Tutorial Labels. It would be nice to have tags for the tutorials similar to the tags used on Github (see image). Because some tutorials are designed for participants to follow along with each step, others are fast and more demonstrative. Some label suggestions are introductory, good first tutorial, hands-on, demonstrative, intermediate, real data applied, multiple packages.

• Involve under-grad/ grad students. We can assist with this and further promote the event to various Earth Science departments, especially in Latin America. The GeoLatinas community is growing and we currently have university contacts across many countries, such as Colombia, Perú, Mexico, Argentina, Venezuela, Puerto Rico, Chile.

• Incorporate Instructors based in Asia. It seems that the participation "all over the world" was missing participants from Asia

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