My broad plan for my SSI Fellowship (2025 cohort) has been to nurture rainbowR - a community for LGBTQ+ folks who code in R - and make it sustainable for the long-term future. It's been a pivotal year for the community. Supported by the fellowship, both financially and with mentorship from Yo Yehudi, rainbowR has gone from being a community run largely by me, figuring it out as I go along, to one with an elected leadership team, a constitution, and increased engagement by community members.
Pivotal to these developments was the opportunity for the rainbowR leadership team to meet and work together in-person for the first time. This was an idea suggested to me by Yo, based on her experiences of bringing the OLS leadership team together.
At the time we met, in November 2025, the rainbowR leadership team consisted of me and Rhian Davies (both in the UK), Hanne Oberman (Netherlands) and Daniel Sjoberg (US). We knew we all got on well from our online team meetings. Some of us had never met in person, though, and we weren't sure it was going to be logistically possible. But, with financial backing from my fellowship budget, and everyone's diaries lined-up, we appeared set. Unfortunately, at relatively short notice, Daniel needed to stay in the US, but Hanne, Rhian and I met in Oxford, to work and socialise together, including Daniel on Zoom meetings as much as was possible given the time-zone contraints.
Bringing the leadership team together in-person was wonderful for many reasons. From a work point-of-view, it was hugely productive. We had two days set aside, far more time than we can usually dedicate to the community in one go, given all our work commitments. We spend the first day finalising a proposed constitution for rainbowR, as well as a committee policy, figuring out the details of how to involve the community in the process, and planning for the AGM. On the second day, we reviewed the work I had done for and about the community while taking part in the Community Engagement Fundamentals course run by the CSCCE earlier that year. That course was wonderful, and I came out of it with many more ideas and plans than I could implement alone, so having the chance to bring the rest of the committee up-to-speed with what I'd done was fantastic. We ended our time together with a future planning session - we've noted absolutely everything we can think of to do with the community in the years ahead - from practical next steps to blue-sky ideas that may take years to come to fruition.
Aside from the work, the social time we spent together was valuable too. It was a pleasure for me to introduce Hanne and Rhian to the many delights of my East Oxford neighbourhood (they were staying in an AirBnB round the corner from my home), including a trip to the local bouldering centre - a hobby we all happen to share. We had fun! But more than that, the social time allowed for conversations that enabled us to get to know each other better, which in turn led to us working even better together.
We're delighted that subsequently (on Jan 28th, 2026), the AGM went ahead, the constitution was formally adopted, and a leadership team was elected. All four of the existing team successfully stood for election, and we're delighted to be joined by two new members, Tina Rozsos and Katlyn Bagley-Sepsey (both of whom have been valuable members of our conference organising committee).
After the big success of our first get-together, we hope to be able to do something similar this year or next. The fact that there are more of us, and that we can no longer rely on the budget from the fellowship, may make that tricky. But given what a productive, positive and joyous experience our first meeting was, we'll certainly try to make it happen again.