Last week I had a great time at the FLISoL 2018 Tucumán. First organized in 2005, the Festival Latinoamericano de Instalación de Software Libre (Latin American Free Software Install Fest) is the biggest event for spreading free software in Latin America and Spain.
The Tucumán Linux User Group, organizer of the local chapter, accepted my talk proposal about data science and R, so I had plenty of reasons to be excited. I deliberately built my talk for a begginer audience with no technical background needed, the only requirement was interest in data analysis. That said, I knew the challenge ahead was big but worthy of a shot because I believe we need to work harder on outreach about these topics in my local region. After all, being a data scientist means one has to be able to communicate concepts to non-technical audiences all the time.
I was happy to see so many young people attending the talk, highschoolers in particular. They seemed very interested in the subject, taking notes and asking questions. After the session, a couple of high school teachers wanted to know more because, judging from what they saw, they thought R can be a neat tool in the classroom. The whole experience made me felt good, and I can call this mission accomplished.
If you are interested in the PDF slides (in spanish) and further details, please check out the talk page.