Meeting Info
- Location: Remote
- Date: Feb 2nd, 2021 10:00 AM (ET)
- Agenda:
- Introductions
- Approve minutes from January 19th board meeting
- Updates on sponsorships
- Discussion of annual reports with Geraldine
- Debrief on Spring Intro to R workshop
- Discuss next workshop for Spring
- Participants: Brandon Merriell, Trista Brophy, Massimiliano Tagliamonte, Narayani Barve, Brian Stucky, Vijay Barve, Alethea Geiger, Audrey Smith, Neeka Sewnath
- Meeting Chair: Trista
- Meeting Secretary: Brandon
Notes
Approve Meeting Minutes
- Minutes approved.
- Still have not heard back from SNRE - will follow up within next week.
- Max will follow up with Vet med.
- Still have not heard back from School of Pharmacy.
- Still have not heard back from UFGI - Vijay will follow up.
- Still have not heard back from ag and bio. engineering - Audrey will confirm contacts and follow up.
- Perhaps we include a ‘respond by’ date in our sponsorship emails to motivate responses
- Request response by end of February
Annual Report
- Send out an annual report to our sponsors (hasn’t been done lately)
- Need to clarify when the report should be sent out
- Need to update master list of workshop partcipants
- Will return to next meeting
Debrief: Spring 2021 Intro to R Workshop
- Workshop polling improved as workshop went on
- People initially thought we moved too quickly, but as workshop progressed they thought it was just the right pace
- We adjusted pace some, and participants got more comfortable with R/slack/etc. over course of workshop
- Positive feedback regarding use of Slack
- Vijay: Great first experience teaching and organizing workshop, pacing of 2nd day was better than first
- Narayani: Teaching and organizing was very good learning experience, noted that many people indicated the pacing was too fast
- Too many data structures to cover all in one session
- Neeka: Really positive experience, willing to help with future workshops
- Fewer people attended 2nd day than first
- ~32 participants first day
- ~25 participants second day
- Dropped down as low as ~20 by end of 2nd day
- Not everyone responded to confirmation email within specified deadline, so spots were given to others on the waitlist
- Some people who lost their spot due to lack of response subsequently sent angry email about losing spot
- Organization of workshop felt a bit rushed - especially recruitment of instructors/helpers
- Given number of helpers, we could have handled more participants without being overwhelmed by questions
- Perhaps bump registration limit to 40 or 45 participants
- Could we make workshop signup for each day independent?
- Register for first day, separately register for 2nd
- May make keeping track of workshop registrations difficult
- We can request participants not share the Zoom link with others for future workshops
- Prevents non-registered parties from attending (and prevents Zoom-bombing)
Future Workshops
- Instructor training
- We have 6 slots allocated for virtual instructor training
- Can choose to sponsor additional participants, but its pricey ($1000+ per added participant)
- Tentatively target end of March for next workshop
- Should we run another Intro to R workshop again?
- 7-8 people who did not attend most recent workshop indicated desire to attend
- Run a Genomics workshop in early May?
- Want to avoid late April since that’s finals period and semester wrap-up
- Target break between Spring and Summer semesters - this is when people are likely available
- Need to make sure we have the instructional expertise to run this one
Next Meeting
- Ideas for next workshop
- Annual report discussion with Geraldine
- Budget discussion
Info for Next Meeting
- Next meeting: Feb 16th, 2021 10:00 AM (ET)
- Meeting Chair: Brandon
- Meeting Secretary: Audrey
