This is a short PSA about an R resource that I recently learnt about (and participated in): rOpenSci community calls. According to the website, these community calls happen quarterly, and is a place where the public can learn about “best practices, new projects, Q&As with well known developers, and… rOpenSci developments”.

I heard about the most recent community call (“Maintaining an R package”) via an announcement on R-bloggers. The topic was of personal interest to me and the panelists were experienced/interesting enough that I felt I could learn a lot by participating. For reference, here were the speakers/panelists for this call:

• Julia Silge, Data scientist & software engineer @ RStudio
• Elin Waring, Professor of Sociology and Interim Dean of health sciences, human services and nursing @ Lehman College, CUNY
• Erin Grand, Data scientist @ Uncommon Schools
• Leonardo Collado-Torres, Research scientist @ Lieber institute for brain development
• Scott Chamberlain, Co-founder and technical lead @ rOpenSci

Here are some of my quick observations of the event as a participant:

• The calls are publicly hosted on Zoom, which made it really easy to join. Overall the video and sound quality was good and clear enough that I wasn’t straining to hear the speakers.
• At the beginning of the call, Stefanie, the community manager hosting this call, suggested that those who were comfortable share their screen so that we could put faces to names. That was a small simple touch that made the call more personal!
• As the call is happening, attendees can collaboratively update a shared document capturing the key points of the discussion. It is then made publicly available soon after the call is over. (As an example, this is the collaborative document of the call I attended.)
• Through the collaborative document, not only could participants ask the speakers questions, but other participants could answer and comment on those questions as well!
• rOpenSci does a really good job of recording different aspects of the call and archiving them for future reference. Each call has its own webpage with all the resources associated with it. For the call I attended, all the resources are here. There are a list of resource links (including one for the collaborative notes), as well as a video recording of the call itself!

I enjoyed listening in on the call and am very much looking forward to the next one! I hope that you will considering joining in as well.

For the full list of rOpenSci community calls, click here.