5  Community Calls

rOpenSci Community Calls are Zoom calls held several times a year featuring a panel of speakers on a specific topic with a significant Question & Answer period. Calls cover a variety of topics, from technical (“A Journey through Arrow in R”) to community (“Set Up Your Package to Foster a Community”). Most topics are in English, but we are introducing Calls in Spanish (“Proyecto Multilingüe”) as well as in Portuguese (“A comunidade R fala português”, part of this Pilot).

For general organizing, see our blog post “How rOpenSci Runs Community Calls” as well as our “Checklist for a Community Call”.

In this chapter we will address the specifics of running a Community Call to support first time contributors to open source software.

5.1 Communication

This communication project connects our community calls with the mini-hackathon or mini-translathons that follow. Each channel is used to build momentum, share stories, and invite participation.

We create a event page in our website under Community Calls to share the main information of the event:

  • Date
  • How to join
  • Speakers + Bio
  • Resources

The event page is shared through our communications channels:

  • Newsletter: Our newsletter reaches a large audience (>1000 opens per month). We shared all upcoming community calls in our HQ section and the resources (like video, articles and slides) after the call.

  • Social Media: Before the call, we use social media posts to announce the theme and raise awareness. We set the same agenda for all community calls: a “Save the date” announcement a month before, a reminder one week before the event, one day before the event and one hour before the call. During the community call, we live-post under a dedicated hashtag (#translathon and #rohackathon2025), sharing screenshots, participant quotes, and quick updates to capture the energy of the event. After the call, we post highlights and linked to the recap blog, while beginning a countdown to the hackathon.

  • Slack: Ahead of the call, we post reminders and spark conversation about the event theme using different prompts, for example:

    • “Do you remember your first time contribution…?”
    • “Do you remember the first time you helped someone contribute…?”

    These short stories added a personal touch to our communications and inspired people to join the events.

    The “Save the date” announcement is also shared in the Slack workspaces of several communities which may be interested in the events, like R-Ladies, R-Devel and LatinR.

  • Forums: We also post the Community Call in the event category in several forums related with the topic, like The Carpentries Discuss, Posit Community and Sustain Forum. We share a short summary, the speakers and the link to the event page in these posts.