Dive into the world of validation at the first R Validation Hub community meeting of the year! What defines a validated R package? Is it ensuring reproducibility across systems? Prioritizing bug-free and well-maintained packages? We want to hear YOUR take!
This is your chance to share your perspective, learn from diverse viewpoints, and help shape the future of validation in the R ecosystem. Whether you’re a developer, user, or enthusiast, your insights are valuable.
Let’s Discuss
What does validation mean in the R world to you? Join us to debate, learn, and network. Mark your calendars and prepare to contribute to shaping the standards of R package validation.
The R Consortium is excited to announce the opening of our call for proposals for the 2024 Infrastructure Steering Committee (ISC) Grant Program on March 1st, 2024. This initiative is a cornerstone of our commitment to bolstering and enhancing the R Ecosystem. We fund projects contributing to the R community’s technical and social infrastructures.
Enhancing the R Ecosystem: Technical and Social Infrastructures
Our past funding endeavors have spanned a variety of projects, illustrating our dedication to comprehensive ecosystem support:
Technical Infrastructure: Examples include R-hub, a centralized tool for R package checking, enhancements in popular packages like mapview and sf, and ongoing infrastructural development for R on Windows and macOS.
Social Infrastructure: Initiatives such as SatRDays, which facilitates local R conferences, and projects for data-driven tracking of R Consortium activities.
Focused Funding Areas
The ISC is particularly interested in projects that align with technical or software development that aids social infrastructure. It’s important to note that conferences, training sessions, and user groups are supported through the RUGS program, not the ISC grants.
Ideal ISC Projects
We look for proposals that:
Have a broad impact on the R community.
Possess a clear, focused scope. Larger projects should be broken down into manageable stages.
Represent low-to-medium risk and reward. High-risk, high-reward projects are generally not within our funding scope.
Projects unlikely to receive funding are those that:
Only impact a small segment of the R community.
Seek sponsorship for conferences, workshops, or meetups.
Are highly exploratory.
Important Dates
First Grant Cycle: Opens March 1, 2024, and closes April 1, 2024.
Second Grant Cycle: Opens September 1, 2024, and closes October 1, 2024.
You can learn more about submitting a proposal here.
We eagerly await your proposals and are excited to see how your ideas will propel the R community forward. Let’s build R together!
Are you passionate about financial economics and eager to learn more about empirical research methods? Then our upcoming webinar is an unmissable opportunity for you!
Discover Tidy Finance: A Revolutionary Approach in Financial Economics
Tidy Finance isn’t just a method; it’s a movement in financial economics. This webinar will introduce you to this innovative approach, which is grounded in the principles of transparency and reproducibility. With a focus on open source code in both R and Python, Tidy Finance is changing the game for students and instructors alike. You’ll learn about its applications in empirical research and how it’s reshaping the way we teach and learn in the financial domain.
What You’ll Learn
Introduction to Tidy Finance (10 mins): Get an overview of Tidy Finance principles and its significance in the field of financial economics.
Accessing and Managing Financial Data (20 mins): Dive into the practical aspects of using R to import, organize, and manage various data sets.
WRDS & Other Data Providers (10 mins): Explore different data providers, including open source and proprietary options.
Q&A Session (15 mins): Have your queries addressed directly by Christoph in an interactive Q&A session.
Who Should Attend?
This webinar is tailored for students, professionals, and anyone with an interest in financial economics, data management, and empirical research. Whether you’re just starting or looking to deepen your understanding, this webinar will provide valuable insights and practical knowledge.
Register now to secure your spot in this enlightening session. Embrace the opportunity to learn from a leading expert and elevate your understanding of Tidy Finance and financial data management.
Are you seeking faster R data processing and enhanced machine learning capabilities for massive datasets in databases? Look no further. Join us in our upcoming webinar to discover how Oracle Machine Learning for R (OML4R) can transform your data analysis and machine learning endeavors.
Webinar Highlights:
Seamless In-Database Access: Engage directly with your data, eliminating the need for time-consuming extractions.
High-Performance Data Processing: Tackle massive datasets with unmatched ease and efficiency.
Integrated Machine Learning: Develop and deploy powerful models within your database, streamlining your data science workflow.
Simplified Production Deployment: Transition your R scripts to production effortlessly, making your projects more impactful.
We’ll also demonstrate real-world applications, including product bundling, demand forecasting, and customer churn prediction, showcasing OML4R’s potential to revolutionize your R workflows.
Don’t Miss Out!
Elevate your data science skills and streamline your processes. Register now for our webinar and unlock the full potential of in-database analytics with OML4R. Take your R to the next level.
Quick update on the 2024 R User Groups (RUGS) Program. The review of the first batch of grants is in progress, marking the beginning of the awarding phase. But there’s still plenty of time for you to apply!
Interested in building up your own R User Group and creating a strong R community where you live? R Consortium would like to help!
User Group Grants: Support for enhancing user engagement and user-centric initiatives.
Conference Grants: For organizing or attending events aligned with R Consortium goals.
Special Projects Grants: For groundbreaking ideas needing an initial push.
For details and to apply, visit here. Your participation is pivotal for the growth of the R language.
R User Groups: Strengthening Global Connections
With 74 active groups and over 67,000 members, R communities are a melting pot of knowledge and innovation. Discover what other RUGS organizers are doing and how they have solved tough problems restarting in person meetings or finding good locations or communicating effectively with their community… on our blog. Many RUGS case studies are available.
Key Dates:
Application Period: Open through September 30th, 2024, but don’t wait!
Note: Grants are not for software development or technical projects. For those, consider the ISC Grant Program. Learn more here.
Join us in building the worldwide R community. Apply now and be part of the journey!
The R Consortium is excited to open the doors to the 2024 RUGS Program, starting January 8th, 2024! We are committed to supporting R User Groups (RUGS) worldwide in your efforts to organize and share information and strengthen their local communities. We’re now inviting applications for our program.
This year, the RUGS Program is structured around three distinct categories of grants:
User Group Grants: Tailored for groups seeking support to enhance user experience or develop user-centric projects.
Conference Grants: Ideal for those looking to host or attend conferences that align with the program’s objectives.
Special Projects Grants: Designed for innovative and unconventional projects that require a boost to get off the ground.
For full details and to submit your proposals, visit here. Your contribution can significantly support the ongoing evolution of the R language.
R User Groups: Global Impact
With 74 active R User Groups (RUGS) worldwide and 67,458 members, R communities welcome individuals of all backgrounds and skill levels, from beginners to advanced users.
Community Spotlight
Explore our blog for interviews with R User Group organizers from various industries, offering insights into their experiences and impacts.
The application period for the 2024 RUGS Program opens on January 8th, 2024, and will close at midnight PST on September 30, 2024. Note that these grants do not cover software development or technical projects. For such initiatives, consider the ISC Grant Program, which opens for proposals twice a year. You can learn more about the ISC Grant Program here.
Join Us in Strengthening the R Community
Your participation can significantly contribute to the development and cohesion of the R community. Apply starting January 8th, 2024, and be part of this exciting journey of growth and collaboration!
Contributed post by Mike Smith, Senior Director Statistics at Pfizer
Photo credit: R-Ladies at LatinR 2023
There’s likely a group of people meeting fairly near where you are right now, regardless of where you are in the globe, discussing how they use R in their work, research, or just for fun. If you feel like you’re the only person using R and struggling to keep up with latest developments or are feeling “stuck” and needing some advice or input, that’s where the growing network of R communities comes in.
R Communities are great places to learn, share, or just meet up with like-minded people. Local and regional R community meetings like R User Groups and R Ladies tend to be smaller in size than conferences, so you are less likely to feel overwhelmed by numbers or a mismatch between your level of comfort and expertise in R compared to others.
If you can’t make it in person, there are also online communities and groups and huge array of video content on sites like YouTube where videos of webinars and meetups are shared. So come along, sign up,and see what the global R community has to offer.
satRdays are R-focused conferences that are held on Saturdays. They happen all over the globe, and are organized by local R community organizers to help and grow the local community.
The R Consortium is revamping satRdays and we are building a new satRdays website template that enables satRday organizers easily spin up a website. Formerly, the satRdays website template was based on Hugo, and this creates an extra hurdle for R community organizers who are novices to Hugo seeking to spin up a website for a potential satRday event.
The new template is based on Quarto, and the output is HTML which can be easily hosted on GitHub Pages, Netlify, etc. The GitHub repository for this project is a template repository and therefore, a satRday organizer can create their satRday website GitHub repository using this template. The main goal of the template is make it very easy and quick to launch a satRday website in a very minimal number of hours. This means adding components like speakers, schedule and even customizing the countdown would be so easy as editing the related YAML files (e.g. https://github.com/satRdays/quarto-satrdays-template/blob/main/program/speakers/speakers.yml)
The R Consortium is pleased to announce that on Sept 27, 2023, the R Submissions Working Group successfully completed the follow-up to the pilot 2 R shiny based submission and received FDA CDER response letter!
To our knowledge, this is the first publicly available submission package that includes a Shiny component.
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 initial submission was submitted through the eCTD gateway on Nov 18, 2022. FDA verbal responses were received from Jan-June 2023 during R submission working group meetings. The FDA response commented on minor findings on warnings and recommended best practices on filters, documentation and package source. The updated submission package addressed reported issues and was submitted on July 19, 2023. The final response letter from FDA was received on Sept 27, 2023.
As a next step, the R Consortium R Submission Working Group initiated submission pilot 4, to explore the use of novel technologies such as Linux containers and web assembly to bundle a Shiny application into a self-contained package, facilitating a smoother process of both transferring and executing the application.
The initial announcement of the R Consortium R Submission pilot 2 can be found at:
The inaugural LatinR event kicked off in Buenos Aires, Argentina, followed by a second chapter in Santiago de Chile, Chile. These early events were more than just conferences; they were festive gatherings that celebrated the robust bonds the community had built over the years.
The R Consortium has regularly been an enthusiastic sponsor of LatinR, and this year is no exception.
During COVID-19, Zoom rooms replaced physical auditoriums, but the essence of shared learning and vibrant exchange persevered. But let’s face it, we’ve all missed the face-to-face interactions, the hallway conversations, and, of course, the local flavors of each host city. That’s why there’s a buzz of anticipation for this year’s event: LatinR is returning to its roots with an in-person conference on October 18-20th, 2023. Pack your bags because we’re heading to Montevideo, Uruguay!
LatinR has evolved into the cornerstone event for the R community in Latin America, a testament to what can happen when a community comes together with purpose and enthusiasm. The Montevideo edition of LatinR isn’t just another conference; it’s a homecoming, a celebration of how far we’ve come, and a toast to the exciting road ahead. So, whether you’re an R newbie or a seasoned data scientist, LatinR promises to be a confluence of minds, methods, and, most importantly, people united by a common language, both in code and culture.
For more details and to catch all the updates, don’t forget to visit https://latin-r.com/en/.
