04 Call Digest

[stefaniebutland]

Hi @Openscapes/2024-epa-cohort !

Thank you to Tina Ures, Engineering Geologist, Division of Water Quality, California EPA & member of the California Water Boards Openscapes Team for guest-teaching Coding Strategies this week.

Our final Cohort Call on June 5 is for you to share your Pathway with your peers. We have plenty of time for one presentation from each team and one from every / anyone who has participated as an individual. 3 minutes to share your pathway + 2 minutes for questions. The whole cohort would love to hear from you, but you’re not required to present. Please see the Call 04 digest below for details. Questions? Ask us in Teams Chat, or by email.

We're excited for the last Coworking session on May 30. Alena Reynolds will share “How we've incorporated R code into our workflows for reproducible reports”. Don’t use R? Don’t make reports? No problem! Alena is great at explaining how she plans and sets up projects, so there will be something for everyone. Alena Reynolds is an Environmental Program Biologist, Skokomish Department of Natural Resources & Tribal Exchange Network Group (TXG). Alena will be joined by Angie Reed, Water Resources Planner for Penobscot Indian Nation, and TXG Vice Chair. We will also have time for more folks try out some of the Quarto + GitHub repo things we practiced in May 16 Coworking.

Cheers,

Stef, Julie, Gayle, Jeff, Farnaz, Mike

Digest: Cohort Call 04 [ 2024-epa ]

Openscapes_CohortCalls [ 2024-epa ] folder - contains agendas, recordings, pathways

https://openscapes.github.io/2024-epa/ cohort webpage

Goals: We discussed open communities and coding strategies for future us.

Tasks: please see the Agenda doc (under Closing) for details

• (optional but awesome) Attend Coworking Thursday
• Prepare to present your Pathway work-in-progress on our final call. Questions? Ask in our cohort Teams Chat
  • Each group or individual has 5 minutes to share their pathway: (3 min present + 2 min Qs)
  • Team leads are encouraged not to present!
  • See Champions Series - Pathways Chapter for more details and examples
  • Share your Pathway Doc in our Pathway folder

Slide Decks:

• Open communities (slides)
• Coding strategies (slides)

A few lines from shared notes in the Agenda doc

• Reflecting on incremental progress, 2hrs for learning/implementing, prioritizing & advocating for time
  • It is possible for our team to work much more collaboratively than we currently do. We can also learn from each other by working openly. +1
  • Working better with GitHub projects – less emails asking the status of things or where things are. Fewer things in emails that would need to be forwarded
  • I think my team could transition our web-based project into the Github framework, including putting code on the EPA Github org, writing database documentation and user manuals into a Quarto webpage, and documenting progress during a website update using the Github Issues function.
  • My team needs to all be working on the same page.
  • Get very proficient in all aspects of data cleaning/ data handling within the tidyverse +2
  • Organizing file structure and code. Coding with a team member using Github.
  • Breaking larger work into smaller tasks that I complete (get satisfaction for finishing something!) +1
  • Trying it out on my own and seeing how it works with my own work
  • block out time on the calendar
• Open communities
  • Folks have participated in the EPA groups and find the topics relevant and valuable; recordings of past sessions are available
  • “lurking” in a community has great learning value
  • found posit community via googling questions. Asked questions there and found people helpful and friendly.
  • not too familiar with these types of communities
  • likes in R Users Group when there are tutorials, where the folder and installation is sent ahead of time so I can follow along and then come back to
• Coding strategies
  • I love the “be kind to yourself” message, as I and my team members think our code is not very pretty and sometimes takes a roundabout path. +1+1
  • I need to learn more about R markdown as a way to output usable tables and graphs for publications
  • In meetings, presenting R generated figures in an Rmarkdown file as opposed to a powerpoint.
  • I definitely need to work on my naming conventions to keep them consistent across all program and teams +1
  • Have you come across any guidelines for annotation of R scripts, when R markdown is not a good fit?
    • If scripts are functions, you can use R package development tools, like roxygen documentation. https://roxygen2.r-lib.org/
    • https://slides.earo.me/rladies-pkg/ - great slides to introduce and use roxygen