Why I’m going to eRum this year instead of useR!

I have attended the useR! conferences every year now for the past 9 years, and loved it! However, this year I’m saddened that I won’t be able to go. This is because this year the conference will be held in Australia, and going there would require me to be away from home for at least 8 days (my heart goes to the people of Australia who had a hard time coming to useR all these years). Ordinarily I would do it, but given that my wife and I have a sweet 8 months year old baby (called Maya), I’m very reluctant to be away from home for that long.

The eRum 2018 conference

Fortunately for me, and for many other R users out there, we have a backup plan called eRum (a.k.a: The European R Users Meeting). It is an international conference, similar to useR!, that occurs every two years (specifically, in the years in which useR is taking place outside of Europe), and organized by Gergely Daroczi and others.

About the plan for this year:

• Time and location: the conference will take place on May 14-16, 2018 @ Budapest, Hungary
• Crowd size: The expectation is for ~500 R users from mostly Europe (you can see a visual breakdown of people’s country of origin here)
• Content: The program has 5 keynote speakers, 12 invited speakers, 7 tracks of workshops and 2 tracks for contributed talks (picked after sifting over 150 abstracts). Knowing some of the people in the program, I can vouch for the high quality of the program.
• The registration closes this Sunday, so hurry up and register! (the price is relatively cheap, starting from 80 Euro for students, and up to 275 Euro for industry).

If you get to see me around, feel free to come and say Hi