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May 03
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Find out about the R Community in Zurich, Switzerland

By Blog, Events

R Consortium’s R User Group and Small Conference Support Program (RUGS) provides grants to help R groups around the world organize, share information and support each other. The wealth of knowledge in the community and the drive to learn and improve is inspiring. We had a chance to talk with Muriel Buri, Statistical Scientist and organizer of Zurich R User Meetup, to find out more about the R community in Zurich, how they’re holding up during the pandemic, trends in R, and what the future holds. 

If you are interested in applying to the RUGS program for your organization, see the How do I Join? section at the end of this article.

RC: What is the R Community like in Zurich?

We started with the RUG in 2015 and by now we have just 2000 members. However, looking at Switzerland, there are smaller communities based in Lucerne and Bern and there is one R-Ladies group in Lausanne, which’s the French part of Switzerland. They all are a bit smaller, however, it’s a nice exchange between the groups and as you might be aware, the Zurich team is very much involved in organizing the Global User R Conference.

Zooming back in on the R community in Zurich, it’s a very diverse community. As mentioned, the Zurich RUG was founded in December 2015 and has been growing substantially since. The frequently organized Meetup events regularly gather a crowd of over 100 people and foster a very lively and intensive exchange among the R community in the Zurich region. The diversity regarding the applications of R, as well as the different occupations of the useRs in the community, such as data journalism, academic research, different insurances, official statistics, foundations, etc. are unique and outstanding characteristics of the Zurich R community.

The diversity is also what I enjoy the most at all these meetings. Not just having an exchange between the group you usually interact with, but having a broader exchange with different people, professions, levels of useRs, application fields, etc. To summarize, the community is very inclusive, and there is no such thing like a stupid question.

RC: How has COVID affected your ability to connect with members?

The Zurich RUG has shifted its focus a bit as many of the RUG members are now actively involved in the virtual global useR! 2021 conference. This has already started when we originally applied for the (planned) in-person useR! 2021 which has by now became the global virtual useR! 2021 conference. Hence, for me, it is challenging to distinguish between how COVID has affected us and how our engagement in the organisation of the useR! 2021 has affected our local activities.

At the start of the pandemic, we did not organise anything. After two or three months into the ‘lockdown’ (which in Switzerland was quite soft in comparison to other countries), the small group of the RUG Zurich organizers met in a park for lunch. At that time, I do recall that we all were a bit Zoom-fatigued. We then waited for a while and organised our first virtual event in October 2020. It was nice and many people attended it. However, what we always enjoyed best was having the beer part afterwards. Having this all virtual just wasn’t the same. It is very difficult to get that socializing part going in a virtual space.

Luckily, the Swiss R community is still active thanks to the Lucerne useR! group (@lucerne_r) which have actually started during the pandemic. They nicely promote their online events on Twitter, and we’d always retweet these tweets for our own community. It is nice to see that the community isn’t asleep.

RC: Can virtual technologies be used to make us more inclusive?

I personally do believe that virtual technologies do have the power to make us more inclusive, yes. As an example, the useR! 2021 conference will be the first R conference that is global by design, both in audience and leadership. Leveraging a diversity of experiences and backgrounds helps us to make the conference accessible and inclusive in as many ways as possible and to grow the global community of R users giving new talents access to this amazing ecosystem. New technologies make the conference more accessible to minoritized individuals and we strive to leverage that potential. Additionally, we pay special attention to the needs of people with a disability to ensure that they can attend and contribute to the conference as conveniently as possible. 

That being said, we will surely do our best to use these innovations also later within our own Zurich based community.

RC: Can you tell us about one recent presentation or speaker that was especially interesting and what was the topic and why was it so interesting? 

There is no specific presentation that I would like to highlight. To me it seems our audience always appreciates events with learning tutorials very much.


For example, we once had a presentation on Docker for R users. Another time, we were able to encourage Martin Mächler to give a talk. That was also really great. His presentation was entitled “What I find important in R programming and recent cool features in R.”

The way we often organize our meetups is that we will have one specific topic and two speakers presenting. As mentioned, the R community in Zurich is very heterogeneous so that we would for example have a financial theme for one meetup and would then look for a bank to sponsor and/or host our event. Or we’d have an insurance related topic and try to organise this event at an insurance company.

RC: What trends do you see in R language affecting your organization over the next year?

In the age of this pandemic, virtual meetups have become an indispensable tool for the community. Based on this, I was wondering if the local R community groups will still be as important as they used to be. It seems to me that the community is moving closer globally and even more (virtual) exchange is happening. 

The question of predicting a specific trend in R language affecting our organization over the next year is challenging. From my personal perspective, as I now work in the pharma industry, I see a big trend moving away from SAS towards R. With this, the promotion of friendly end-user Shiny Apps to present and discuss data analyses to people who are less familiar with the concepts is a big trend too.

RC: Do you know of any data journalism efforts by your members? If not, are there particular data journalism projects that you’ve seen in the last year that you feel had a positive impact on society?

Yes, indeed, there are at least two members at Zurich RUG, Timo Grossenbacher (@grssnbchr) and Marie-José Kolly (@mjKolly). They have both presented their work at our meetups and the community has been very interested in their talks.

Marie-José writes data journalism articles for the Republik magazine in Zurich. One of her articles is about the protection of unborn life and the woman’s right to self-determination. The article allows for a visual journey through the weeks of pregnancy. The article is also nominated for the Swiss Press Award and can be accessed here (paywall, in German).

RC: Of the funded projects on R Consortium, what is your favorite project and why?

To be honest, I wasn’t aware that there are so many different funded projects on R Consortium. What a great effort!

The satRday conferences are events that I enjoy very much. The support of the R-Ladies groups is surely also a project that I personally like a lot.

RC: There are four projects that are R Consortium Top-Level Projects. If you could add another project to this list for guaranteed funding for 3 years and a voting seat on the ISC, which project would you add?

That is a challenging question. I worked myself in Uganda and taught statistics to veterinary medical doctors. R as an open-source program for statistical computing is fantastic as everyone with internet access can make use of it. I think I would personally promote more such projects to promote the growth of the global community of R users by advancing its accessible and inclusiveness. I’d initiate a project that promotes the global use of R. This vision is motivated by my experience of seeking sponsors for the global useR! 2021 conference. We did experience some challenges to gain access to all global communities, e.g. R is used in so many parts of the world but not everyone yet might be aware of the great resources, the worldwide community and the global exchange… Yes, I would suggest a project that pursues this vision.

How do I Join?

R Consortium’s R User Group and Small Conference Support Program (RUGS) provides grants to help R groups around the world organize, share information and support each other. We have given grants over the past 4 years, encompassing over 65,000 members in 35 countries. We would like to include you! Cash grants and meetup.com accounts are awarded based on the intended use of the funds and the amount of money available to distribute. We are now accepting applications! 

Mar 03
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Upcoming Event: The role of data journalism in the COVID-19 pandemic

By Blog, Events

Join us March 18, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. PDT. More information!

The role of data journalists in the scientific process has traditionally been overlooked. However, the most recent pandemic showed how journalism shapes scientific responses and public policy. Thousands of journalists rose to the challenge when the public needed information in order to respond to the rapidly spreading COVID-19 pandemic. Journalists acquired COVID-19 data, visualized it and disseminated their work to help the world contain the virus and flatten the curve. 

In order to effectively respond to the pandemic, the world needs a coordinated response driven by accurate, complete data. The data must encompass local outbreaks and be released quickly so action can be taken. Journalists, with experience collecting local information and releasing articles in a timely manner, were well suited to help inform the public. However, by visualizing and analyzing COVID data, journalists became participants in the scientific process rather than simple conveyors of results. Their efforts help data scientists, inform decision-makers and shape a new role for data journalism in crisis situations. 

On March 18 the COVID-19 Data Forum, sponsored by the Stanford Data Science Initiative and R Consortium, will host a meeting to discuss how a new breed of data journalists collected quantitative data that helped fight the pandemic. The forum will also discuss how data scientists utilize their resources to create better models. 

Speakers: 

The event is free and open to the public!

Join us March 18, 9:00 a.m. – 10:30 a.m. PDT. More information!

Aug 11
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We’ll be at R/Pharma – Oct 12-15, 2020

By Blog, Events

This fall, the R Consortium’s support for advancing data science in medicine continues with the third of three exceptional events, pulling together experts in their fields, including the Covid-19 Data Forum, R/Medicine, and R/Pharma.

What is R/Pharma?

R/Pharma is an ISC working group under the R Consortium. The entire event is a community-lead effort and 100% volunteer run. R/Pharma is vendor neutral and very much an academic conference. Harvard has been very helpful in hosting the event.

To find out more and how you can participate,

https://rinpharma.com/

Aug 06
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Join us at R/Medicine – Aug 27-29, 2020

By Blog, Events

August 27-29, 5:30am PDT / 8:30am EDT / 2:30pm CEST – Register now!

Brought to you by the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, Yale School of Public Health, and the R Consortium, the R/Medicine conference encourages the adoption of statistical modeling and reproducible data processing in clinical practice.

R is the gold standard in reproducible research in academia and industry and has powerful capabilities to create highly-customizable interactive analytic dashboards, as well as predictive models that employ machine learning, deep learning, and artificial intelligence. 

Presentations will showcase how the R ecosystem is currently leveraged in medical applications including clinical trial design and analysis, personalized medicine, the development of machine learning models using  laboratory and patient record data, and reproducible research. 

Registration and more info: https://events.linuxfoundation.org/r-medicine/

Sponsors

Jul 23
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Beyond Case Counts: Making COVID-19 Clinical Data Available and Useful – Aug 13, 2020

By Blog, Events

Thurs, August 13th, 9am PDT/12pm EDT/18:00 CEST – Register now!

Hosted by the COVID-19 Data Forum/Stanford Data Science Initiative/R Consortium

COVID-19 is the first pandemic to occur in the age of open data. Public health agencies around the world are releasing case counts to the public, and scientists are providing analyses and forecasts in real-time. However, the content of this data has so far been limited to simple metrics like cases, deaths, and hospitalizations at coarse geographic and demographic scales. To drive the next phase of COVID-19, scientists need access to higher-dimensional patient-level data, so we can understand how the virus causes disease, why are some more at risk than others, when and how is transmission occurring, what therapeutics are more likely to work, and what healthcare resources are being used. But sharing such data brings up tremendous challenges in terms of patient privacy and data standardization. The COVID-19 Data Forum, a collaboration between Stanford University and the R Consortium, is hosting the event “Beyond case counts: Making COVID-19 clinical data available and useful” to push the conversation forward on these issues. The event will include talks by representatives from international collaborative teams who are working to collect and share detailed clinical and biological data from individuals with COVID-19. The event will be open to the public, and is part of a continuing series focusing on data-related aspects of the scientific response to the pandemic.


Speakers include:

  • Jenna Reps, Observational Health Data Sciences & Informatics (OHDSI) Consortium /Janssen R&D
  • Andrea Ganna, COVID-19 Host Genetics Initiative/Harvard Medical School/Finland Institute for Molecular Medicine
  • Ken Massey, EndPandemic National Data Consortium/Saama Technologies
  • Ryan Tibshirani, DELPHI epidemic forecasting group/Dept of Statistics, Carnegie Mellon University

Registration and more info: https://covid19-data-forum.org

Nov 22
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XI Conference of R Users (Madrid, Spain, Nov 14-16) Welcomes Over 200 Attendees

By Blog, Events

Thank you to Carlos Ortega, Principal Data Scientist, Teradata, for providing this summary and pictures from the conference

The XI Conference of R Users (XI Jornadas de Usuarios de R), held November 14 – 16, Madrid, Spain, was organized by the Asociación Comunidad R Hispano. The ambitious program and the invited international speakers made the participation massive, exceeding 200 attendees. The Conference was divided into two locations, Repsol (Spanish Gas and Oil company) and UNED (Spanish Distance Learning University), highlighting the university-business combination that has been one of the key factors in the success of the conference.

On Thursday, November 14, the opening ceremony was held at the Repsol Campus auditorium and attended by Emilio López Cano (president of the Asociación Hispano R Community), Julio Gonzalo (deputy vice chancellor for research at UNED), Enrique Dameno (Director of Digitalization and Integrated Customer Management of Repsol), and Teresa García (Repsol).

Max Kuhn (R Studio) gave a lecture on “Modeling in the Tidyverse,” and after that, in the round table “R in business,” the crucial role of data scientists in solving problems in diverse areas was covered. Raúl Vaquerizo (Pont Group), Noelia Ruiz (Mutua Madrileña), Jorge Ayuso (Telefónica España), Enrique Lasso (Repsol) and Carlos Ortega (Teradata) participated in the round table.

On the 15th and 16th, at the School of Education of the UNED, an extensive and vibrant program was developed with workshops, communications sessions, “lightning sessions,” poster sessions, round tables and invited conferences. Bernd Bischl (University of Munich) gave a lecture on MLR3, Jo-Fai Chow (H2O.ai) presented “Automatic and explainable machine learning in R,” and Max Kuhn gave a workshop on “Designing R modeling packages.”

Following the multidisciplinary philosophy of using R to handle any kind of data, communications sessions dealt with applications in genetics, data analysis, model and project management, society and culture, surveys and education, medicine and veterinary and economics and company. In addition to these monographic sessions, the “lightning sessions” dealt with many different topics.

A round table on Data Journalism was held to close the conference, moderated by Leonardo Hansa (R-Hispano) in which Virginia Peón (Indigitall), Alba Martín (Newtral), Antonio Delgado (Datadista) and Carmen Aguilar (Sky News) participated. The importance of knowing how to treat the data in an appropriate and honest way was highlighted, so that information that reaches the public is truthful.

In the closing ceremony, the prize for the Best Young Work of the Conference was announced, which went to Rocío Aznar Gimeno (Technological Institute of Aragon) for the work “Multilevel mixed models: An application of the lme4 library to estimate the fetal weight percentile in twin pregnancies.”

Sessions Available

Many of the sessions were streamed and recorded. They are accessible through the UNED Channel (Canal UNED): https://canal.uned.es/series/5dc3f7d05578f252041fc22d

Jul 23
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Interview R/Medicine 2018 conference organizer Micheal Kane

By Blog, Events

The first annual R/Medicine conference is being held September 7-8 in New Haven, CT, and is a collaboration between R Consortium and the Yale School of Public Health Biostatistics Department. As the first public activity of the R in Medicine working group, it’s set to be a key event to bring together the medical community that leverages R in medical research and clinical practice.

Leading the conference committee is Michael Kane, who is an Assistant Professor in Yale University’s Biostatistics Department. With the conference coming soon he agreed to answer a few questions about the R community and the conference itself.

Tell us about the medicine industry’s use of R?

Michael: My first exposure to medicine using R came from my internship at Revolution Computing (now Microsoft R). At the time most companies used SAS and Revolution had started providing validated versions of R and some packages, similar to SAS’s validation process, which would allow R to be used in submissions to the FDA. Since then, the rules have changed, and R sees a lot more use in this space because it provides inexpensive access to powerful tools for designing and analyzing health, genetic, and clinical data. 
We are currently using and developing these tools to find subtypes in immunotherapy studies for treating cancer. Patients can respond very differently to cancer therapies depending which stage of cancer they have, how many previous treatments they’ve had, and the diversity of the tumor environment. By understanding how factors like these are related to prognostic heterogeneity, we can do a better job prescribing people with cancer the most effective possible treatments.

What drove you to create an event to bring together the R medicine community?

Michael: This conference was inspired by R/Finance. The committee does a fantastic job of providing an entertaining and informative conference. The richness and diversity of the talk subjects show how vast finance is and, at the same time, the speakers and other attendees are completely accessible. We want to bring that same sense of inclusiveness and collaboration to medicine, where sometimes practices become siloed. We hope people realize that we, in medicine, are also part of a rich large and rich area of research and we hope the conference helps to jell the community.

What is the organizing committee’s goals and measures of success for this first event?

Michael: Our goal for the first year to better understand the community as a whole. We are expecting submissions from the clinical trials community, the genetics and omics community, and the epidemiology community. We are hoping we get submissions from both academia and industry. We want to see how people are using R to advance human health. I’ll consider the conference a success if attendees find at least one talk where they are surprised, entertained, and delighted by a use of R that hadn’t occurred to them.
Our other goal is to reinvest in the conference. If we are successful, and we are able to secure enough sponsorship, then we would like to make it easier for people to attend the conference. This would include providing more awards for travel, particularly for students.

How do you see working with R Consortium as critical for driving consensus and critical mass in the medicine community?

Michael: The R Consortium has become the umbrella for the entire R community. Their approval lets the community know that this is the conference to go to if you are using R in Medicine.
We thank Micheal for his time, and hope that if you are in the medical community using R that you look to attend this event.
Jul 17
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Come see R Consortium and R Ladies at Open Source Summit NA in Vancouver this August

By Events, R Consortium Project

End of August here in North America means summer is winding down, kids are headed back to school, and the annual Open Source Summit hosted by the Linux Foundation is happening. For those not familiar with the event, Open Source Summit North America is the leading conference for developers, architects and other technologists – as well as open source community and industry leaders – to collaborate, share information, learn about the latest technologies and gain a competitive advantage by using innovative open solutions.

Open Source Summit, being held this year in Vancouver from August 29th – 31st, 2018, connects the open source ecosystem under one roof. It covers cornerstone open source technologies; helps ecosystem leaders to navigate open source transformation with the Diversity Empowerment Summit and tracks on business and compliance; and delves into the newest technologies and latest trends touching open source, including networking, cloud-native, edge computing, AI and much more. It is an extraordinary opportunity for cross-pollination between the developers, sysadmins, DevOps professionals and IT architects driving the future of technology.

R Consortium is excited to participate in this event in two key ways:

Come meet us at the event this August! You can use registration code OSSNA18COM15 to save 15% on your registration costs.

Jun 07
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On conduct and diversity in the R Community

By Announcement, Blog, Events, News, R Consortium Project

An explicit goal of the R Consortium is to help create a welcoming space for everyone, no matter their race, ethnicity, gender, gender identity and expression, socio-economic status, nationality, citizenship, religion, sexual orientation, ability, or age. Diversity and inclusion are essential to foster true collaboration, move ideas forward, and create long-term sustainable community.

R Consortium recently sponsored R/Finance 2018, where it was found that there were insufficient diversity and inclusion practices, including the absence of a prominently displayed Code of Conduct. This illuminated shortcomings with our existing processes for sponsoring conferences. We are troubled and disappointed to have sponsored a conference that does not reflect our core beliefs in diversity and inclusion.

The Infrastructure Steering Committee (ISC) has approved the creation of a new working group to address diversity and inclusion issues in the R community. The R Community Diversity and Inclusion Working Group (RCDI-WG), which will include members from R Community groups that promote diversity, such as R-Ladies and FORWARDS, event organizers, and key industry members, will focus on three areas:

  • Work with conferences organizers to ensure diversity is addressed as a priority in both their program committees and speaker lineups.
  • Establish recommended Code of Conduct and Diversity Guidelines for R Community events, which will be adopted by the R Consortium and required for any event that the R Consortium participates in.
  • Have an ongoing conversation on opportunities to drive diversity and inclusion across the R Community.

This group is open to any member of the R community, and you can join by signing up for the mailing list. The group plans to have a kickoff meeting soon to work on the Code of Conduct and Diversity Guidelines, with the goal to have them established later in summer 2018. Look for updates on progress on the R Consortium blog.

Jan 31
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The 2018 R Consortium R User Group Support Program is Underway.

By Announcement, Blog, Events, News, R Consortium Project

In just one year, the R Consortium through the R User Group Support program sponsored 76 R user groups and 3 small conferences with cash grants totaling just under $30,000. This program aligns with the R Consortium mission of fostering the continued growth of R community and the data science ecosystem, and has already helped bring more people to using R and contributing to the community.

Coming off a successful 2017, we are pleased to announce the opening of the 2018 program today. While the structure of the 2018 program is similar to last year’s program with the multiple levels of support, we have enhanced the program based on feedback from last year’s funded user groups.

Complimentary Meetup.com Pro Account

After a year of supporting user groups, we’ve found that the primary cost for each group is having a page on meetup.com or thier own website ( though the majority prefer the meetup.com platform ). This leaves less funds available things like meetup space, food, or even swag, and thus put more of a burden on the group leaders to attract people to the group.

This year we’ve leveraged our relationship with the Linux Foundation, and now will provide each user group a complimentary meetup.com Pro account. Leveraging this not removes one less cost concern for group leaders, but it will also better enable us to promote user groups through the many features the platform provides for groups. For all the details of the program, eligibility requirements for the three levels of user group grants, the schedule of grants and the details of signing up for the meetup.com pro account please see the R Consortium’s R User Group Support Program webpage.

Small Conference Support

We’ve also seen an increase in the number of smaller, regional focused R conferences happening around the world. Grassroots events like this are critical for sustainability in the R community, but need financial support and community awareness to be successful.  Several reached out last year and we provided funding with excess funds in the program with great results.

These events perfectly align with the mission of the R User Group Support program, we’re formally expanding it this year to provide cash grants in the $500 to $1,000 range to continue to encourage small, R-focused conferences and meetings organized by non-profit or volunteer groups are the world. You can find out more about this new piece of the program on the R Consortium’s R User Group Support Program webpage.

Length of Program

R Consortium will begin taking applications for both R User Group Support and Small Conference Support today. Applications will be accepted through September 30, 2018.

Apply to the 2018 RC RUGS program by filling out this form. You can email us at rugs@r-consortium.org with any questions around the program.

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