Working together to push science forward
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The second rOpenSci OzUnConf was held in Melbourne Australia a few weeks ago. A diverse range of scientists, developers and general good-eggs came together to make some R-magic happen and also learn a lot along the way. Before the conference began, a huge stack of projects were suggested on the unconf GitHub repo. For six data-visualisation enthusiasts, one issue in particular caught their eye, and the ochRe package was born....
Attendees at the May 2017 rOpenSci unconference. Photo credit: Nistara Randhawa In May 2017, I helped run a wildly successful “unconference” that had a huge positive impact on the community I serve. rOpenSci is a non-profit initiative enabling open and reproducible research by creating technical infrastructure in the form of staff- and community-contributed software tools in the R programming language that lower barriers to working with scientific data sources on the web, and creating social infrastructure through a welcoming and diverse community of software users and developers....
This year’s rOpenSci ozunconf was held in Melbourne, bringing together over 45 R enthusiasts from around the country and beyond. As is customary, ideas for projects were discussed in GitHub Issues (41 of them by the time the unconf rolled around!) and there was no shortage of enthusiasm, interesting concepts, and varied experience. I’ve been to a few unconfs now and I treasure the time I get to spend with new people, new ideas, new backgrounds, new approaches, and new insights....
Mara Averick, Data Nerd At Large Mara Averick is a non-profit data nerd, NBA stats junkie, and most recently, tidyverse developer advocate at RStudio. She is the voice behind two very popular Twitter accounts, @dataandme and @batpigandme. Mara and I discussed sports analytics, how attending a cool conference can change the approach to your career, and how she uses Twitter as a mechanism for self-imposed forced learning. KO: What is your name, job title, and how long have you been using R?...
Just last week we organised the 2nd rOpenSci ozunconference, the sibling rOpenSci unconference, held in Australia. Last year it was held in Brisbane, this time around, the ozunconf was hosted in Melbourne, from October 26-27, 2017. At the ozunconf, we brought together 45 R-software users and developers, scientists, and open data enthusiasts from academia, industry, government, and non-profits. Participants travelled from far and wide, with people coming from 6 cities around Australia, 2 cities in New Zealand, and one city in the USA....
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