# Breakout Room Discussion

[1. Program and Content](#1-Program-and-Content)
[2. Diversity and Partners](#2-Diversity-and-Partners)
[3. Tech](#3-Tech)
[4. Finance and Sponsors](#4-Finance-and-Sponsors)
[5. Communication](#5-Communication)

## 1. Program and Content

Program committee, abstract submission & review, keynotes, talks, elevator pitches, tutorials. (social program in next breakout)

Things you liked about our way to work together:

* I like to working with all of you and I will organize another conf +1+1+100
* Honest interactions and feedback
* Highly collaborative + complementary skillset
* Personal relationships with the committee
* GitLab issues & delegation really helped
* Biweekly sprints (w/ timed agenda) were really helpful to stay on top of tasks +1+1
* Hard to find people who continually engage | because this volunteer work and is really demanding! A combinaton about skills and motivation.
* The dedication, energy, and commitment brought on by the team relentlessly day in and day out!

Things you think we could have improved in our way to work together:

* Team building -- Getting to know each other
* Plan ahead
* Make checklists + timeline
* Incentivizing/reward system -- find the right incentives -- $$, web development, social media presence, networking, GitHub portfolio building, etc.
* GitLab issues w/ others too

Things you want to continue having at useR!

* This team! :D
* Team we can trust and work together with
* Document experience and pass for future useR, not only 2022.

Things you would change for another useR!:

* I wouldn't do the tutorial stuff "by hand". I will do this in the main conference plattaform
* Future UseR organizers engaging more actively with past useR organizers to learn from the experience rather than 'reinventing the wheel'
* hire professionals event managers? Amt of work put in by a few members > 2mo full-time
* Reflect on how we selected the submission. +1

What did I learn personally:

* I can take note in English ;-) :tada:
* The nitty-gritties of what it takes to host an accessible conference +1
* Specific ways to include and engage with URMs
* The level of attention & detail that goes into the review process, program development to ensure equity
* That one doesn't need lots of experience to make a contribution, one just has to show up. :)

:wave: anyone want to talk about finance, tech or comms? :)

## 2. Diversity and Partners

Accessibility practices, social program, community partners (R-Ladies, MiR, AfricaR, LatinR, Forwards), diversity survey, code of conduct

Things you liked about our way to work together:

* Learning proccess, training together. Having time to discuss, be prepared to handle an incident report
* Accesibilty, diversity statement and CoC were present during the conference and before the conf during organizaion
* The deliberate effort put into inclusion and accessibility was absolutely mind-blowing!
* Documentation

Things you think we could have improved in our way to work together:

* discuss which dimensions of diversity are relevant, how this affects all other items in the conference
* If the CoC team is more diverse in the future, have extra meeting sharing views on why diversity dimensions are important, why the unexpected behaviours are unexpected

Things you want to continue having at useR!

* Making people agree to guidelines when submitting their proposal
* Putting guidelines on website as a resource
* Captions
* either live captions or pre-recorded ok as long as not automatic. Pre-recorded does not allow so much time for presenters to prepare.
* seemed to be better than last year: seemed to get jargon and accents better
* diversity of attendees
* mantain diversity and accessibility as essential features of future conferences
* having a diversity statement
* require reading the Frame Shift Consulting book on CoC to be part of the CoC response team
* Social events, in which CoC and accesibility were considered from the beggining

Things you would change for another useR!:

* Encourage more use of accessibility guidelines -
* webinar on how to make a good presentation?
* share real examples
* feedback would be great but labour intensive
* People saved xaringan as PDF or made xaringan from screenshots of PPT, so need some help!
* Not clear that people needed to host their own HTML (not just Rmd, or HTML without images it depended on)
* could these be hosted on useR! website?
* at least share instructions
* Decision to host things where was a bit last-minute
* Schedule captioners much longer in advance, so can give more prep materials - before schedule finalised
* Andrea can help to document
* Maybe record talks in Zoom to avoid embedded live captions?
* Add own captions - how to generate your own (almost automatically with Youtube; you can also translate them easily); add to accessibility guidelines
* Pay for English captions of non-English talks.
* Slack - not accessible, handling links is still not acccesible. Liz has a draft of a letter to Slack
* invite other organizations to write a common letter to slack
* CoC: be prepared for incident reports that may occur before the conference
* Set expectations - communicate them
*

What did I learn personally:
* how to present taking into account accesibility, will be used in other meetings and conferences
* how to enforce a CoC
* having one-in-one/small interactions were decisive on how to take action and work on group
* organization skills and how to collaborate
* gain more confidence to work in an international team, even speaking in English
* communication between the team / executive skills
* documenting decisions and discussions
* which people we left behind if we don't take accessibility into account
* learn technical skills
* opportunity to learn, and learn from each other
* good practices

## 3. Tech

Chat: [Issue on The Lounge](https://github.com/thelounge/thelounge/issues/4285). We identified that the problem is in The Lounge itself. We cannot implement a solution ourselves. We need The Lounge's devs to work on it. Plans: get them to commit on solving the issue. Contact with the useR2021 team will help, if they decide to use The Lounge for their online platform.

There needs to be some continuity between conferences. Local tems should inherit tooling and documentation. R-Foundation can commit to using Conftool (or some other tool) for the next 5 years or so. Then local teams only worry about what they want to worry about (e.g. they can contribute to the abstract submission system without having to spend resources into other moving parts).

Global team that supports the local teams and the global side of the conference.

## 4. Finance and Sponsors

Managing finance (ETH, R Foundation, Open Collective), registration and tutorial fees, financial aid, stipends, awards

Things you liked about our way to work together:

*

Things you think we could have improved in our way to work together:

*

Things you want to continue having at useR!

*

Things you would change for another useR!:

*

What did I learn personally:

## 5. Communication

Twitter, LinkedIn, Blog posts, opening and closing sessions, communication during organization and conference (between organizers and participants)

Things you liked about our way to work together:

*

Things you think we could have improved in our way to work together:

*

Things you want to continue having at useR!

*

Things you would change for another useR!:

*

What did I learn personally: