Hello, R-Users!
We left another year behind, and what a year! We had so many collaborations, but the one we will never be proud enough of is the one with MilanoR. Between meetings, conferences and buffets, we got to know each member of the community and their fantastic projects and ideas. Let’s get a better look at what this awesome partnership has brought to us in 2017!
The biggest event we supported this year was for sure the RStudio meeting in Milan, in the 29th of June. Our two special guests – Nathan Stephens and Joseph Rickert – came from the U.S. to meet the MilanoR community and tell us about the latest news and the newest products from RStudio. We also got to know about the other R communities all around the world. What an incredible opportunity to meet the masters of R! You can find their presentations, along with videos and photos, in the blog entry linked above. Same applies to every meeting we’re going to talk about today!
But MilanoR isn’t new to important personalities. Shortly before that conference, in April 5th, the 8th MilanoR meeting took place at the Microsoft House. The speakers were nonetheless than Stefano Iacus, member of the R Foundation and funder of Voices from the blogs, and Romain François, historical author of the package Rcpp. Stefano introduced us to yuimaGUI, an interactive dashboard built by himself and his collaborators for the analysis and simulation of financial time series, while Romain talked about the possibilities of integration between R and C++.
The last MilanoR meeting (the 9th!) was at the end of the year: the 20th of November, in Mikamai. This time, the structure was quite different: the main presentation was done by Andrea Cirillo, and then we had four (four!) lightning talks, all about the main theme of the meeting: Data Visualization. Andrea presented to us his new package: paletteR. It allows everyone to take the colours from a picture and apply them to a graphic! The lightning talks were given by Stefano Biffani, Stefano Barberis, Nicola Pesenti and Moreno Riccardi. We highly suggest you to give a look at their excellent presentations. This event was also supported by Open Search Network!
Mmh, what’s left? Ah yes, of course: the R-Labs. We supported the start of this awesome project by MilanoR and all its gatherings. The aim is to create labs in which everyone can collaborate to solve Data Science’s various issues. You can participate too! You can find past and next meeting on the official MeetUp.
The R-Lab#1 (March 14th, 2017) was just a start point, but it got an amazing greeting. More than 60 people got together in Mikamai to work each on their own little projects, and showed them afterwards to receive comments and feedbacks.
In the R-Lab#2 (April 11th) things got more functional. After a short presentation to recap the uses of shiny and ggmap, all the participants worked on an app which would help register the latest earthquakes in Umbria. The lab was a success and you can find the working app here.
The R-Lab#3 (May 27th) took an entire day of work. The contributors worked along with the Comune di Milano to create a Shiny app that could make it simple for citizens to check the city’s revenues and spending info. We all know how raw data can be hard to understand! This app was so challenging and interesting that the R-Lab#4 (September 19th) was dedicated to the conclusion and improvement of this same project. At last, the app was completed and you can find it here!
This event concluded last year’s R-Lab cycle. But we already started again, with the R-Lab#5 and R-Lab#6 (January 16th and March 19th, 2018) which were about customizable medicine and its integration in a shiny app. We learned about the transformation from algorithm to R function, Test First Development and at last, we created an (almost) ready shiny app that you can check out here. All R-Labs were hosted by Mikamai!
If you want to reach MilanoR, you just have to choose. MilanoR is fully available on both its blog and its Facebook, but if you want a more formal approach, you can join the newsletter. Don’t forget about the Meetup account, which is a great occasion to keep up with the events and meetings to come!
Thank you for your attention and be sure to keep an eye on this amazing community.
