The Early Careers at BSAS and EAAP (European Federation of Animal Science) came together to provide a webinar in R programming which ran as part of the Developing talent sessions at BSAS 2022.  We thought this would be an excellent topic as we found that a lot of our Early-Career members have started, or would like to start, using coding and programming in their work. We chose to focus the webinar on data visualisation as this extends from the Young EAAP data session at the EAAP 2021 annual meeting and the 2-day 'Introduction to R' course that BSAS runs annually.

The session was opened by Eric Newton, the global representative of the ECC, and Torun Walgren, the president of YEAAP, who gave us some background on both early-career committees. We then heard from Marcin Pszczola, the YEAAP secretary, who introduced us to the topic of data visualisation in R, before handing over to Christos Dadousis who gave us a practical run-through. The session was aimed at attendees with a basic understanding of R, so Marcin and Christos kept the session very beginner-friendly and used relevant examples that can be used to upgrade anyone's work.  We had over 50 attendees join and were delighted to have the opportunity to run this session as a hybrid event so that attendees could follow along both at home and in person. Attendees were provided with everything they need to get started in R and were given unlimited access to the webinar materials, so if anyone missed the session you can watch it back here (link). The ECC and YEAAP would like to organise a sequel to this webinar at EAAP 2022 in Porto (5th - 9th September) so if there's something in R you are getting stuck on or would like to know more about, please let us know! Additionally, BSAS runs a 2-day course every summer for anyone who would like to use R but is not sure where to start. Please contact bsas@bsas.org.uk for more information. We would like to extend our thanks to Damilola Kareem for his technical assistance during the session, Sophie Hazelden for providing us with an excellent introduction to the ECC (you can find out more about membership here (link to video), and most of all to Torun, Marcin, and Christos at YEAAP - we look forward to organising the next one with you! 

The ECC has also been working with the Global committee to connect with The Australian Association of Animal Sciences (AAAS). We are looking forward to talking with the young members at AAAS soon on how to build our early career communities and opportunities, so watch this space!'

Designed specifically for students and early career researchers, the developing talent programme provided a packed schedule of bespoke sessions and workshops, specifically designed to enhance and support those in their early careers.

The oral and digital poster sessions gave presenters a great opportunity to communicate their research to a supportive scientific audience. The change from a traditional paper poster to a short 3-minute presentation was well received, with feedback highlighting the digital poster session as being more engaging and well-paced. Jen Waters from AHDB did an excellent job, as chair, creating a safe and supportive environment in which speakers could share their work, many presenting for the first time. The quality of speakers was extremely high leading to a great learning and enjoyable experience.

Attendees were also able to partake in an interactive discussion about the future of farming with Joe Stanley of the Allerton project, alongside honing their coding skills at the YEAAP R-stats workshop. Taking part in the human bingo networking session also initiated some valuable conversations with senior scientists that may not have taken place without an icebreaker.

"AHDB are proud to have sponsored the Developing Talent sessions, as we are passionate about developing applied scientists that can deliver benefit to our levy-payers in their future careers. We look forward to working with BSAS and particularly the Early Careers Council to keep evolving these sessions going forward." Alex Brown, AHDB