It’s been just over a week since we wrapped up the final session of rstudio::global(2021). This first virtual RStudio conference broke new ground with:

• A 24-hour conference: RStudio::global ran around the clock with 3 keynotes from renowned data scientists, 3 industry and professionally-focused X-Sessions, 30 technical talks with live Q&A, 20 rapid-fire lightning talks, and 30+ birds-of-a-feather sessions. No matter what time zone attendees logged in from, rstudio::global had streaming conference sessions available to view. And best of all, the conference was free to attend!
• More than 17,000 attendees from 148 countries: This was the largest conference RStudio has ever hosted, and it had the most global reach as well. While only about half of attendees reported their locations, you can interactively explore the wide variety of attendee locations by visiting our interactive rstudio::global registrant map.
• 74 Diversity Scholars from 32 countries. Diversity Scholars represent groups who are typically underrepresented at in-person rstudio::conf() events. These groups include people of color, those with disabilities, elders and older adults, LGBTQ folks, and women/minority genders. In past years, we have had to limit our scholarships geographically due to visa issues and international travel restrictions, so we were happy to have no such limitations for our virtual conference.
• New modes of interaction to create the feel of an in-person conference. As an experiment, we hosted spatial gathering rooms using the spatial.chat platform where conference attendees could gather and interact in ways similar to an in-person conference. While we wait to hear what attendees thought of this experience (see the survey link below to add your thoughts), most visitors to the spatial chat rooms seemed intrigued to try it.

If you are now kicking yourself for not attending rstudio::global(2021), fear not: All of the prerecorded talks from the conference are now available on the RStudio.com site at https://rstudio.com/resources/rstudioglobal-2021/, complete with closed captions in English, Spanish, and Mandarin Chinese. The live question and answer questions will available as well as soon as they’ve finished post-processing.

If you attended rstudio::global(2021) and haven’t yet provided feedback to us, please take 5 minutes and fill out our survey at rstd.io/global-survey. Your feedback will help us plan future RStudio events. In the meantime, thank you to everyone who participated in rstudio::global(2021), and we look forward to seeing you at a future RStudio event!