Motivated by the growth of the R Consortium over the past several years and the expansion of activities, the R Consortium Board of Directors has taken a step to ensure long-term, consistent oversight of day-to-day activities.
The R Consortium is pleased to announce that Joseph Rickert has been appointed to the position of Executive Director reporting directly to the Board of Directors.
Joseph has been active in the R Community since he joined Revolution Analytics in 2009 and has held prominent, community-facing positions at both the R Consortium and RStudio (now renamed posit). He is deeply involved in multiple R Consortium technical working groups, is an organizer of the Bay Area useR Group (BARUG), and has been on the R/Medicine conference organizing committee since the first conference in 2018. Joseph served on the R Consortium Board of Directors from August 2016 to July 2023, serving as Chair from 2020.
After serving as chair of the board for the R Consortium and being involved in multiple R Consortium committees both on the technical and community development sides, as well as participating directly in R-focused events, webinars, and countless other R activities, Joseph Rickert is stepping away from the position. The board will be conducting elections to decide the next chair.
Joseph has been with the R Consortium since it was first conceived in 2014. His initial role was as Community Officer. In 2018, he began to also serve as Secretary. In 2019, he was elected chair of the board.
Thank you for your tireless interest in promoting R and supporting developers and user groups around the world who are working to improve the R programming language.
The R Consortium is sponsoring the New York R Conference, presented by Lander Analytics! This in-person and virtual conference will be running from July 13-14, with workshops (tickets sold separately) from July 11-12. The New York R Conference grew out of the New York Open Statistical Programming Meetup (also known as the New York R Meetup), with currently over 14,000 members. Topics from the meetup include data science, visualization, machine learning, deep learning, and so much more. The New York R Conference is where enthusiasts and data scientist gather!
Will you be attending? Let us know! Use promo code RSTATS20for 20% off conference & workshop tickets.
The conference gathers data scientists and professionals from all over the world. This year the conference will include a series of talks covering topics like creating beautiful maps, using OpenAI Embeddings API, data-driven approaches to marketing, using data for journalism, and much more!
There will be workshop sessions from July 11-12. Workshops are a way for generating revenue for OS developers, workshops will include:
Causal Inference in R by Malcolm Barrett & Lucy D’Agostino McGowan Tidy Time Series and Forecasting in R by Mitchell O’Hara Wild
🎙 Join Jon Krohn with special guest Chris Wiggins, Chief Data Scientist at The New York Times and Associate Professor of Applied Mathematics at Columbia University, for the SuperDataScience live podcast.
Ari Lamstein is a Director of Analytics at MarketBridge, a Marketing Analytics Consultancy.
Back in 2018, when I was most involved in developing choroplethr, Joe Rickert, R Consortium Director, recommended that I submit a proposal to the R Consortium to create a Working Group related to Census data. I was intrigued to see what a group like that could accomplish and submitted a proposal. The proposal was accepted, and the group’s main accomplishment was publishing A Guide to Working with Census Data in R. After publishing the Guide, however, the group went dormant.
Fast forward 5 years, and last month I published a new package related to Census data: zctaCrosswalk. When discussing the package with Joe he mentioned that he recently spoke to some leaders at Census who were interested in revitalizing the R Consortium Census Working Group. He asked me if I was interested in meeting the people who were interested, and of course I said yes!
We just had a preliminary meeting, and several exciting ideas were discussed. One is to write a new version of ‘A Guide to Working with Census Data in R.’ We are still in the early stages of deciding what a new version might look like, but one goal would be to remove links to deprecated software such as American FactFinder. More broadly, the original guide was written as a survey of both Census data and CRAN packages. Perhaps the Guide might be more useful if it was written more as a tutorial to the most popular datasets and packages.
We also discussed ideas for longer-term projects. For example, applying for funding from the R Consortium, and directing that funding towards the development of R packages that might improve the R ecosystem for Census data.
If you have an interest in following our work or participating in our next meeting, please sign up below.
The R Consortium has begun the disbursement of grants to help R User Groups (RUGS) around the world organize, share information, and support each other. We are currently accepting applications until September 30, 2023!
With these grants, the R Consortium looks forward to facilitating and supporting the person-to-person exchange of knowledge in small group settings on a global scale. RUGS grants are intended to help people form enduring R user group communities. The RUGS program is supporting both virtual and in-person events.
Beatriz Milz, teacher at Curso R, Ph.D. Student in Environmental Science, and co-organizer of R-Ladies São Paulo, recently received a grant from the R Consortium. The grant was requested to help facilitate R-Ladies São Paulo Meetups which host 40-50 people per meeting. The Group intends to use the funds to continue to host events for locals of the São Paulo area. With the funds provided, the group has been able to offer transportation assistance for low-income participants that otherwise can’t come to the event, children caretaker per event, R Swag, snacks, and team apparel. The group hopes to continue with its momentum and offer more meetups to new and experienced R users.
In these Meetups, R-Ladies São Paulo organizes different talks and trainings including some of their most recent ones:
The 2023 RUGS Program is currently taking applications and will close at midnight PST on September 30, 2023.
These grants do not include support for software development or technical projects. Grants to support the R ecosystem’s technical infrastructure are awarded and administered through the ISC Grant Program which issues a call for proposals two times each year.
The R Consortium, a Linux Foundation project supporting the R Foundation and R community, today announced that Parexel has joined the R Consortium as a Silver Member.
Parexel is a clinical research organization providing Phase I to IV clinical development services. Parexel uses R for a wide range of internal decision-making and regulatory interactions. They have a team of more than 21,000 global professionals collaborating with biopharmaceutical leaders, emerging innovators delivering clinical trials worldwide.
“We are thrilled to welcome Parexel as a member of the R Consortium and connect more closely with the rest of the R Consortium community,” said Joseph Rickert, R Consortium Board Chair, and Posit’s R Community Ambassador. “Parexel brings expertise in using R as a tool to perform analyses as part of clinical trials to their sponsors. We look forward to collaborating with the Parexel team to expand the use of R in drug development.”
“Upskilling our personnel in the use of R, coupled with enhancing our computing environment to incorporate R holistically with our other, more established software options, provides Parexel with additional tools in performing analyses of clinical trial data and opens up new avenues to innovative techniques,” said Michael Cartwright, Associate Biostatistics Director, Parexel.
About The R Consortium
The R Consortium is a 501(c)6 nonprofit organization and Linux Foundation project dedicated to the support and growth of the R user community. The R Consortium provides support to the R Foundation and to the greater R Community for projects that assist R package developers, provide documentation and training, facilitate the growth of the R Community and promote the use of the R language.
About Linux Foundation
Founded in 2000, the Linux Foundation is supported by more than 1,000 members and is the world’s leading home for collaboration on open source software, open standards, open data, and open hardware. Linux Foundation projects like Linux, Kubernetes, Node.js and more are considered critical to the development of the world’s most important infrastructure. Its development methodology leverages established best practices and addresses the needs of contributors, users and solution providers to create sustainable models for open collaboration. For more information, please visit us at linuxfoundation.org
The R Consortium gives grants to help R User Groups (RUGS) around the world organize, share information, and support each other. We are currently accepting applications!
The R Consortium RUGS Program has grown from being a relatively modest R user group support program to being the primary vehicle for the R Consortium to award Social Infrastructure Grants. Social Infrastructure includes meetings, events, conferences and any other activity intended to strengthen the social, organizational, and identity structures of the R Community.
In 2023, there will be three categories of RUGS Program grants:
User Group Grants
The intent of user group grants is to facilitate person-to-person exchange of R knowledge in small group settings on a global scale.
Cash grants typically vary between $200 and $1,000 and depend on group size and special needs.
All groups who are accepted into the RUGS program who are not already participating in the R-Ladies Meetup.com Professional Account program are enrolled in the RUGS program which covers Meetup.com dues.
Conference Grants
To qualify for a RUGS program conference grant, an event must be focused on the R language and offer at least one full day of technical talks and presentations and aim to attract participants with diverse backgrounds. These grants are for conferences organized by non-profit or volunteer groups.
Special Project Grants
With our Special Projects Grants categories, we hope to stimulate the imagination of local R community builders.
There are currently 98 R User Groups (RUGS) organizing and learning and spreading the use of R globally. These groups welcome individuals from any background, from beginner-level users to experts.
Check out our recent blog interviews by organizers of the R User Groups across all industries:
The 2023 RUGS Program is currently taking applications and will close at midnight PST on September 30, 2023.
These grants do not include support for software development or technical projects. Grants to support the R ecosystem’s technical infrastructure are awarded and administered through the ISC Grant Program which issues a call for proposals two times each year.
Join us at R/Medicine 2023! The 6th annual conference will be fully virtual from June 5 through 9 and feature two days of workshops followed by a day of demos, a Hackathon, and a poster session. The last two days will be filled with speaking sessions, presentations, and lightning talks. This year’s keynotes include Jeff Leek, Vice President and Chief Data Officer, at Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and Neale Batra, President of Applied Epi.
The R/Medicine conference provides a forum for sharing R based tools and approaches used to analyze and gain insights from health data. Conference workshops provide a way to learn and develop your R skills. Midweek demos allow you to try out new R packages and tools, and our hackathon provides an opportunity to learn how to develop new R tools. The conference talks share new packages, and successes in analyzing health, laboratory, and clinical data with R and Shiny with a vigorous ongoing discussion with speakers (with pre-recorded talks) in the chat.
Check out some highlights from the 2022 conference on our YouTube channel!
Here’s a glimpse of the 2023 R/Medicine workshops:
Using REDCap and R to rapidly produce biomedical publications
R/Medicine 101: Introduction to Clinical Data Analysis with R
🐦 Early Bird Registration is now open until May 5th so sign up for the conference now! We are accepting proposals for 30 minute talks, 30 minute panel discussions, and 10 minute lightning talks.
📣 Interested in sponsoring R/Medicine? Please take a look at our sponsorship brochure.
Anyone familiar with R will know that in addition to being a superb language for statistical computing, it comprises an ecosystem and community of extraordinary depth and commitment. Because of the tradition of providing multiple levels of documentation within contributed R packages, CRAN and Bioconductor have become great repositories of statistical knowledge. However, as with any human enterprise that is meant to persist over time, there is a need not only for ongoing maintenance but also for continuous improvement. It is in this spirit that the R Consortium’s Infrastructure Steering Committee (ISC) would like to announce the Kaizen project for R package documentation.
Beginning with the present open call for proposals, the ISC will award grants for projects to improve the documentation of “essential” R or Bioconductor packages. By essential, we mean packages that help to form the backbone of R’s capabilities in some area of statistical or computational analysis and are important to an identifiable segment of the R Community. It is likely that a significant proportion of the packages in CRAN Task Views and on Bioconductor will meet these criteria.
Documentation projects might include providing a missing vignette, updating the examples in the package HTML and PDF help, or writing a tutorial (not necessarily in English) to be published in a publicly accessible web page.
To apply, please follow the procedure on the Call For Proposals webpage. In your proposal, please include statements affirming that you have already contacted the package maintainers, that they would support your efforts and will incorporate your contributions where applicable, and that you will publish your work under a license that is agreeable to the package authors.
Note: Kaizen 改善 is a Japanese word that describes the concept of continuous improvement. Look here and here for discussions of kaizen philosophy and history.
The R Consortium is happy to announce that on Nov 18th, 2022, the R Submissions Working Group successfully submitted a test submission package with a Shiny component through the FDA eCTD gateway! The submission package has been received by the FDA CDER staff. All submission materials can be found at: https://github.com/RConsortium/submissions-pilot2-to-fda
The objective of the R Consortium R submission Pilot 2 Project is to test the concept that a Shiny application created with the R-language can be bundled into a submission package and transferred successfully to FDA reviewers. The application was built using the source data sets and analyses contained in the R submission Pilot 1 Project.
To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available submission package that includes a Shiny component. We hope this submission package and our learnings can serve as a good reference for future regulatory submission efforts, when considering Shiny as a tool for a more user-friendly interface to navigate through analysis results. Additional agency feedback will be shared in future communications.
To learn more about the R consortium R submission Working Group and the Pilot 1 submission, more information can be found at:
