rOpenSci OzUnconference coming to Melbourne

For a second year running, there will be another rOpenSci OzUnconference in Australia. This one will be held in Melbourne, on 26-27 October 2017.

Unlike regular conferences, there are no talks and there is no pre-determined agenda. It brings together scientists, developers, and open data enthusiasts from academia, industry, government, and non-profit to get together for a few days to work on R-related projects. The agenda is mostly decided during the conference itself, and involves participants dividing into small groups to work on the projects of most interest to them. Past projects have related to open data, data visualization, data publication and open science using R.

I’ve been to two of these events in the past, and they are a load of fun and productivity. At the first one, I helped produce the eechidna package. Then, earlier this year, I worked on the ozdata package which provides an interface to data.gov.au and the Australian Macro Database

Nominations open

We are currently looking for nominations of people wishing to attend. Please nominate yourself if this sounds interesting to you. You don’t have to be a top R developer to participate. We are keeping some places available for less experienced R users who want to get involved with the Open Science movement.

Sponsors required

In an effort to make the event accessible to a wide range of people, we are looking for sponsorship to help people with travel and accommodation costs (estimated at about $600 per person on average). We are also looking for sponsorship of catering. Any organization out there who is interested in being associated with this event, please contact me.

Projects

All OzUnconference ideas will be begin as GitHub issues on the OzUnconf repo in the weeks before the event. You can see some of the projects proposed for last year’s event in Australia, and the projects proposed at the unconf in LA earlier this year.

We will be calling for project ideas closer to the date, but if you already have something in mind, feel free to start proposing on github.

Further details

Details about the upcoming OzUnconference are available on our website.