How 2021 went?

Once again we come to the end of a complex year. Reflecting on what happened is a way to improve in the future (or so I hope). This is my summary of my highs of this 2021.

Teaching

• I taught at two graduate programs - Data science applied to public policies at Guillermo Brown National University and New technologies for agriculture at Universidad de la Empresa (Uruguay) - and a Data science diploma. The courses are Big Data, Visualization and Introduction to programming.

• I started teaching at the undergraduate level again. It is an undergraduate degree in Data Science at Guillermo Brown National University. The course is Data Management.

• I renew the Creating interactive tutorials with {learnr} package and co-create the How to teach programming online for MetaDocencia.

• I taught 11 courses for MetaDocencia, including the two new courses I just mentioned.

• After an intense year of work, in May, we proudly announce that we have a stable version in Spanish of Teaching Tech Together.

• I taught my first Instructor Training for The Carpentries organized by MetaDocencia. Completely in Spanish and on-line. The checkout percentage exceeded 80%.

• I took 66 exams for RStudio certification and certified 22 people as Tidyverse and/or Shiny instructors. I am thankful for the opportunity to see so many different ways to teach and to solve problem using R.

• I was teaching assistant in Mine Çetinkaya-Rundel’s course What they forgot to teach you about teaching R for the RStudio::global conference.

• I taught R in English for the first time with the course From spreadsheets to R as part of the RS Camp: Beyond the Spreadsheet and MetaDocencia.

Events

I was part of 53 events from January to December, but I would like to highlight the following events:

Conferences

I was co-chair of useR! 2021, LatinR 2021, the 50 Argentine Conference of Informatic (JAIIO) and the 13th Congress of AgroInformatic.

• useR! 2021 was a global, accesible, inclusive and diverse on-line conference. I’m so proud of the organizing team and what we achieved. We had the largest participation in the history of the conference with 1800+ people and 120 countries. A program committee and organizer with people from 4 continents and each day of the conf designed for different time zones. Keynotes that ensured different dimensions of diversity, with a keynote in a language other than English for the first time. Accessibility thought from day one. Content in three languages, prices according to your work status and country of residence. Fee waivers and financial assistance to participate without having to convince us why you needed it. Social events for first time attendees, yoga, trivia, draws, art gallery, communities meetings so you can have networking opportunities. A beautiful job, with a wonderful team. A conference that expanded what was possible to do in an event. A work that, I hope, will serve as a foundation for us to continue improving the conferences, so that less and less people are left out.

• LatinR was a success. Completely virtual. Two weeks. Four tutorials (in Spanish and Portuguese). Two luxury guest talks (In English, one of them with subtitles in Spanish) and 49 contributions in Spanish, Portuguese and English. We closed with an inspiring panel of women scientists that developed packages.We broke our record with 1000 registrants.

• The 50 JAIIO were also virtual with 14 symposia and a student contest. +500 synchronous presentations were made on 3 YouTube channels ( Room 1, Room 2, Room 3). We have 10 keynotes, one for each day of the conference in Spanish and English. They were a success of participation during the 10 days of conference.

• The Agroinformatics Congress was held during 2 synchronous virtual days using Zoom + YouTube with 40+ trilingual presentations (Spanish, Portuguese and English) and 2 INTA’s scientific as keynotes.

Talks

• I gave 13 talks, of which three of them were keynotes:

  • Data Science Applications in the Agricultural Sector at the X international seminar on applied statistics,

  • Teaching to teach without losing anyone along the way at the 50 JAIIO and

  • Data Science applied to Agriculture at the Statistics Virtual Seminar “Big data and Data Science” in Colombia.

• My talk about education at RStudio::global was special because was the first talk in a language other than English. I generated this web page for the talk.

Communities

• MetaDocencia received a two-year grant from CZI and fiscal sponsorship from CS&S.

• I joined The Carpentries, first as an instructor, then as a trainer and now as a member of its Executive Council elected by the community.

• The R-Ladies Global Team is expanding and slowly resuming activities, we have been working hard behind the scenes, hopefully by 2022 we will be able to show some results. As always the chapter organizers are the heart of the community.

• The R community in Latin America continues to grow, I have already talked about LatinR, RStudio certifications, the participation of Latines at useR! and R-Ladies.

• I was interviewed by María Nanton to add a personal history to the Communication Chapter of the The Turing Way

• I have been invited to other communities but my participation is not as active as in these others I mentioned. If you are not yet part of any community, I invite you to give them a try, they have changed my life in an extremely positive way.

Health and family

last but not least, lets talk about health and family:

• My youngest son finished kindergarten and my little sister graduated with a degree in Communication Sciences (she is already a Radio and TV Broadcaster and Journalist).

• My son with a language impairment now reads stories to me.

• I had a hysterectomy in November after a year of struggling with fibroids. I’m recovering and everything is going really well.

• I finish another pandemic year without getting COVID-19 and without the need to get tested. I have my 3 doses of the vaccine and my children have their two doses. I feel very fortunate and completely aware of the privilege I have.

Finally, I answer the question I am often asked when reading these summaries:

Yani, how do you do so many thing?. Because I don’t do it alone.

This whole list of wonderful things that I am a part of are always, always, always carried forward and supported by talented and generous groups of people. Groups that I am very fortunate to be a part of. No one can achieve so much alone. Beware of those who would have you believe otherwise.