ConnectR: crowd development platform for R - how to get the R you want

This presentation will introduce ConnectR, a new part of the R ecosystem, for the R user and developer communities. It is aimed specifically at providing a feedback loop between the user and developer communities, growing and rewarding both, incentivising developers to create R tools that users actually want, and encoring.

It is there to change the way open source software is developed, and to make R the most effectively developed tool of its kind, with massive developer and tester bases, but also rapidly and directly responsive to user needs.

ConnectR allows R users and developers to interact effectively, identifying R development that the community needs, and rewarding R developers in the process. It works through a combination of crowd funding and crowd sourcing. R Users can request new R development vote on existing requests, thus identifying the most popular development requests, which developers canthen create for fortune and glory. The entire R community benefits, with development driven by aggregate demand. As well as new packages and code, users can request information, most notably through new surveys to be conducted through the ConnectR site. Requests can be targeted to specific developers and teams, propose changes to any part of the general R ecosystem, and even new features or modifications to ConnectR itself.

About our Speaker: Dr Eugene Dubossarsky is Chief Data Scientist and Advisory Board Member at Emagine International and Senior Advisor, Data Science at Contexti, a premier Big Data Analytics Managed Services, Support and Training company. He is the head of the Sydney Users of R Forum and Data Science Sydney, as well as a long time supporter and sponsor of MelbURN. He has been using R and it parent language S for over 20 years. As well as being the Founder of ConnectR and a consultant specialising in data analytics strategy, Eugene runs training courses in Data Science, Predictive Modelling, Machine Learning, R and many other topics in Business Analytics through his company Presciient.

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