Wimlds 2019 Q1 Report

About

Women in Machine Learning and Data Science (WiMLDS) is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) corporation with headquarters in New York, New York. It was founded in 2013.

The mission of WiMLDS is to support and promote women and gender minorities who are practicing, studying or are interested in the fields of machine learning and data science.

Summary

Dimension	Stats	Stats
Data for time period ending	31-Dec-2019	31-Mar-2019
Report published	02-Jan-2019	12-Apr-2019
Number of continents represented	6	6
Number of countries represented	18	27
Number of cities represented (chapters)	39	63
Number of members	21,500	29,000
Total number of meetups organized to date	332	418
Twitter followers: @wimlds	8700	9800
Data reference	data source / visualization URL	Q1 report
Website	wimlds.org	wimlds.org

General note: If a visualization shows "Google Data Studio" on the lower right, you can click on "full screen" icon on lower right to see enlarged images of visualizations in this article. WARNING: it is slow to load to the browser.

Introduction to the WiMLDS Q1 Report

WiMLDS celebrated its 5th anniversary in December of 2018. This meetup community has seen significant worldwide growth over the past five years, particularly in 2018 and Q1 2019. The objective of the report is to share statistics of the WiMLDS community.

Another objective is to improve diversity by connecting the WiMLDS community with the greater data science, machine learning and artificial intelligence communities.

(Interactive) Map of WiMLDS Chapters

Note: put mouse over bubble to obtain chapter name.

Growth

Twenty-four new chapters were founded in Q1 2019, bringing the total number of WiMLDS chapters to 63.

Chapters

By Continent

About 50% of WiMLDS members are in North America (USA and Canada). Two-thirds of all members (67.8%) are in USA, Canada and Europe.

By Country

Five countries make up 80% of WiMLDS members. Those with the greatest membership size are:

1. USA (13.3K, 46.2%)
2. India (4.1K, 14.1%)
3. France (2.3K, 8.0%)
4. Kenya (2.2K, 7.5%)
5. Nigeria (1.2K, 4.2%)

These countries have multiple chapters (more than one city in country with a WiMLDS chapter):

1. USA (18)
2. India (8)
3. Canada (6)
4. Turkey (2)
5. Bolivia (2)
6. Australia (2)
7. Spain (2)
8. Germany (2)
9. Poland (2)
10. Nigeria (2)

By City Chapter

The city chapters with the greatest membership size are:

1. San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA (5.1K)
2. New York, New York, USA (4.2K)
3. Paris, France (2.3K)
4. Nairobi, Kenya (2.2K)
5. Delhi, India (1.2K)
6. Pune, India (1.2K)

By Region

By Events Organized

A total of 418 meetup events have been organized by the various WiMLDS chapters in the past 5+ years. This barchart shows the number of events organized by the different chapters. These 5 chapters have organized ~ 61% of the meetup events since their founding:

1. San Francisco Bay Area, California, USA (97)
2. New York, New York, USA (74)
3. Nairobi, Kenya (30)
4. Burlington, Vermont, USA (29)
5. Boulder, Colorado, USA (26)

The below visualization is of number of past meetup events organized by meetup membership size.

Here are some key observations:

• We can see that the chapters that have been established earlier, such as Bay Area and New York, have greater membership size and also organize a greater number of events.

• Paris, France and Nairobi, Kenya have high memberships, relative to when chapters were founded.

• Burlington, Vermont and Boulder, Colorado are organizing greater number of events, relative to their membership size.

Events, by Year

Number of Meetup Events By Year (all chapters combined)

Number of Meetups Organized, by Chapter (>=1 events organized in 2019)

Table of Meetup Events, by Chapter

Inactive Chapters

A chapter is considered inactive if they did not organize at least one event in past 6 months. The following chapters are currently considered inactive:

1. Detroit Metro, Michigan, USA (last event 08-Nov-2017, new organizer March 2019)
2. Corpus Christie, Texas, USA (last event Summer 2018)
3. Lagos, Nigeria (last event 25-Nov-2017, new organizers March 2019)
4. Abuja, Nigeria (last event 21-Jul-2018, event scheduled 29-Apr-2019)
5. Charlottesville, Virginia, USA (last event 12-Apr-2018, new organizer in March 2019)
6. Chennai, India (founded 23-Aug-2018) (no events organized, to date)
7. Kigali, Rwanda (founded 11-Sep-2018) (no events organized, to date)
8. Tokyo, Japan (founded 06-Nov-2018) (no events organized, to date)
9. Istanbul, Turkey (founded 21-Dec-2018) (no events organized, to date)

Data Table

Note: You can click on "Full Screen" icon on lower right to see enlarged image.

Additional Notes

Delhi, India

• The Delhi, India chapter of WiMLDS uses these 2 forums for communication and events:
  • Delhi WiMLDS Meetup Group
    • 31-Dec-2018: 179 members, 5 events in 2018
    • 12-Apr-2019: 314 members, 6 events in 2019
  • Delhi FB page
    • 31-Dec-2018: 1150 followers, 9 events listed for 2018
    • 12-Apr-2019: 1315 followers, 4 events listed for 2019

Corpus Christie, Texas, USA

The chapter organized two events in 2018:

• IBM visits our Lab, March 2018
• Girls code camp: Women in Technology (WITS) Unmanned Ground Vehicles (UGVs), Summer 2018

Turkey

The two chapters in Turkey (Ankara and Istabul) are counted under the Europe numbers.

Acknowledgement

Special thanks to Prithvi Gandhi, a co-organizer for the WiMLDS NYC chapter, for updating statistics. You can follow Prithvi on Twitter at @prithnpixels.

References

• WiMLDS
  • WiMLDS 2018 Annual Report
  • Overview of WiMLDS Chapters Oct 2018
  • WiMLDS Meetup (almost real time) map and statistics
• AI Index 2018 Annual Report
• Video celebrating WiMLDS 5th Anniversary (10-Dec-2018)