In May 2017, I helped run a wildly successful “unconference” that had a huge positive impact on the community I serve.

In my training as a AAAS Community Engagement Fellow, I hear repeatedly about the value of extending a personal welcome to your community members. This seems intuitive, but recently I put this to the test. Let me tell you about my experience creating and maintaining a #welcome channel in a community Slack group.

What’s that? You’ve heard of R? You use R? You develop in R? You know someone else who’s mentioned R? Oh, you’re breathing? Well, in that case, welcome! Come join the R community! We recently had a group discussion at rOpenSci’s #runconf17 in Los Angeles, CA about the R community. I initially opened the issue on GitHub.