My experience at R unconference Chicago 2019

During the past weekend March 9th and 10th, I had the privilege to attend the RUnconference in Chicago. It was a fantastic event, where I got the chance to meet an incredible group of people and learn from them.

What is an unconference?

Inspired by the rOpenSci unconference series, the purpose of this event was encourage open source contributions and development in the Chicago R community.

People with a background on industry, academia, government, nonprofits, and more, worked together building R packages and learning from each other.

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How it works?

During the week previous to the conference, the participants suggested different ideas as Github issues.

Each participant has the chance to discuss each issue and share ideas and comments about how to work on it.

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So, what did you do during the R Chicago Unconference?

Since the moment that I received the confirmation email, I started to think in how to contribute – in the best of my limited abilities – with something tangible and useful to the community.

During the week previous to the R Unconference, all the attends have the chance of create their own issues and check the issues created for the rest of the attended, I checked that list in order to evaluate in which area I could contribute: Bingo! Emily suggested to create a gallery of examples of a gt package, and because I have some experience working with ggplot2 and plot.ly, I though that project could be a good small project for this weekend.

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I was fortunate because I ended up at the same work table than John Blischak, the author of the workflowr package and one of the mentor of this event. The workflowr R package combines R Markdown and version control (Git) to create a website containing time-stamped, versioned, and documented results.

The first day I learned how to use the package and finished the day with a prototype, during the second day I continued working on complete the gallery of gt examples. But also I have the incredible chance to spent some time learning about Shinny apps, and I created my first Shinny app!

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What did you learn?

More than words can express because there were two days of continuous learning in an environment full of people extremely talented, experienced, and generous to answer not only your specific question but explaining basic concepts related to your question.

Working with Karl Borman, Zaynaib Giwa, Jorge Argueta and John Blischak under the of general idea of using gt package and workflow package, I learned:

• How to use the workflow package
• How to use the gt package creating examples
• How to create a simple shinny app
• How to collaborate with open source projects
• How to use Github in a collaborative environment.

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At the end of the second day, there was a small presentation from each workgroup, and that was another space of learning from the other participants and the way they solved their projects. You can check the final projects here.

Leaving aside the technical aspect of the conference it was inestimable to have interesting conversations and learn from other attendees, people with very different backgrounds and still using R.

I had the opportunity to talk with Katherine Simeon about how she used R for her research work, with Mauro Lepore about his work, as well as speak with Jorge Argueta about his experience studying the MsCA at @UChicagoo and about his long career at GE.

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Why should you (the reader of this article) participate in an R-unconference?

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Because it is an excellent opportunity for learning from a seasoned member of the community.

Because if you are a beginner, you will give others the opportunity to mentorship to you.

Because the only way to improve and move on is learning and practicing, so why do not take the chance to jump some steps learning from others and accelerate your learning process?

Because now, you are a beginner but in the future, you will be one of the seasoned members of this community, and you remembered how was your first impression into an R-unconference and perhaps which were the best way to teach others.

Because you will learn after, during and later of the R-unconference:

• After during the process of checking the issues into Github repo and try to figure out how to solve them,
• During the weekend of the R-unconference,
• And later, at the moment to implement the solutions that you learned. It is not about the just two days, it is more than that.

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Conclusions

It was a great weekend of work and learning, in a relaxed and fun environment.

If you have the chance, do not hesitate to participate!

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Acknowledges

Thanks to all the attended who created an amazing environment.

Thanks to John Blischak @jdblischak for mentoring the small gallery of examples using the gt package, and for explain a variety of R-questions related.

Thanks to Karl Borman @kwbroman, Zaynaib Giwa
@AmazingSpeciali ‏ and Jorge Argueta @JorgeArgueta ‏ for be an amazing group, I really enjoy spend time with you learning about R and from your experiences.

Thanks to all of the participants, sponsors and the organizers (specially to the amazing Angela @civicangela) for these extraordinary days. Looking forward for the next one!