For our first blog post it seemed fitting to tell everyone out there reading this a little bit more about the last event we held. As we ramp up the excitement for the next one, hopefully this post will tell you everything you need to know about what to expect from an R-Ladies event with a mancunian twist.
The evening began with a mad supermarket sweep style dash around the Co-op and Poundland when we realised we didn’t have any cups or drinks to keep our attendees hydrated, and we arrived at the venue just on time! Speaking of which, we were very kindly hosted by The Federation in Manchester City Centre, a brilliant venue in the basement of the old Co-operative Bank buildings. It’s fully kitted out with presentation facilities, whiteboards, tables and chairs and a comfy area with sofas perfect for networking, chatting and filling up on food before getting down to business. They also provided us with a dedicated quiet space - geat if you need to take a call, or just want to have a break from the hustle and bustle.
As people started to arrive, so did our food for the evening. We’ve worked with Open Kitchen Mcr for the last two events and it’s a perfect pairing for us. Their sustainable ethos, which saves food from landfill as well as reinvesting profits to provide hot meals for the homeless fits really well with the kind of community spirit R-Ladies works so hard to promote. Not to mention it’s delicious - and a change from the usual networking pizza!
Once everybody is fed and watered we always start off with a bit of housekeeping, this time giving a special mention to our sponsors Socium Recruitment and mentioning a couple of job postings they thought would be great for an R-Lady and of course taking the obligatory group photo before introducing our first speaker, Naomi.
Naomi took us on a whistle-stop tour of the Shinyverse, building a working Shiny app in simple, easy to follow steps. Her presentation is on our Github page, and all her code is linked there too, if you want to have a go yourself. To prove how quick and easy it really is, for her grand finale Naomi challenged us to set a timer and went from blank R script to working Shiny App in sixteen seconds. It is no exaggeration to say that the entire room was stunned and suitably impressed, so much so that during the break several people whipped out their laptops to give it a go for themselves!
Once the food had been polished off and drinks refilled, we sat back down to hear our second speaker, Nic, talk us through her TidyTuesday analysis of gun crimes in America. She focussed on the presentation of her results, showing us how to add custom CSS styles to our markdown documents to make reports look very impressive indeed. She overcame her nerves and showed us that even people brand new to data science have something to teach the rest of us! (Her presentation is on Github too!).
And just like that, it was time to pack up. The evening flew by and everyone left eager to put what they had learned into practise, with a full stomach, new friends and a few stickers in their pockets too!
If you like the sound of this, come and join us at our next event on October 1st. We’re back at The Federation, but this time upstairs at Thoughtworks and we’ve got Phrances Perez speaking, a discussion, and we’ll be kicking off the Hacktober series of events going on around Manchester in the month of October too!
We’re always looking for sponsors to help us keep our events free to attend in the form of venue offers and provisions of catering - If you’re a Mancunian business passionate about diversity in tech and want to support us, use the email link below to get in touch!