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(This article was first published on <strong><a href="http://blog.revolutionanalytics.com/2017/05/runconf17.html"> Revolutions</a></strong>, and kindly contributed to <a rel="nofollow" href="https://www.r-bloggers.com/">R-bloggers)</a> </div>
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<p>Last week I attended the <a rel="nofollow" href="http://unconf17.ropensci.org/" target="_blank">ROpenSci Unconference</a> in Los Angeles, and it was fantastic. Now in its fourth year, the ROpenSci team brought together a talented and diverse group of <a rel="nofollow" href="http://unconf17.ropensci.org/#participants" target="_blank">about 70 R developers</a> from around the world to work on R-related projects in an intense 2-day hackathon. Not only did everyone have a lot of fun, make new connections and learn from others, but the event also advanced the ROpenSci mission of creating packages, tools and resources to support scientific endeavours using R.</p>
<p>During the two-way workshop, the attendees self-organized into teams of 4-8 to work on projects. There were <a rel="nofollow" href="https://ropenscilabs.github.io/runconf17-projects/" target="_blank">20 projects started at the ROpenSci conference</a>, and all of them produced a working package. You can <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs" target="_blank">details on all the projects on Github</a>, but here are a few examples to give you a sense of what the</p>
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<li><a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs/skimr" target="_blank">skimr</a>, a tidyverse-compatible way of summarizing data sets</li>
<li>A census of <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs/data-packages" target="_blank">R packages containing interesting data sets</a></li>
<li>A set of <a rel="nofollow" href="https://ropenscilabs.github.io/r-security-practices/" target="_blank">best practices for security in R packages and scripts</a>, and a <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs/notary" target="_blank">package for signing and verifying R packages</a></li>
<li>Test <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs/testrmd" target="_blank">infrastructure for code in Rmarkdown documents</a></li>
<li>An <a rel="nofollow" href="https://github.com/ropenscilabs/miner" target="_blank">R interface to Minecraft</a>, to encourage young developers to learn R</li>
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<blockquote data-lang="en" class="twitter-tweet" data-conversation="none">
<p dir="ltr" lang="en"><a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/LucyStats" target="_blank">@LucyStats</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/rdpeng" target="_blank">@rdpeng</a> Including an R-generated maze with an R-generated bot that can find his way out! <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/Inchio" target="_blank">@Inchio</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/revodavid" target="_blank">@revodavid</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/kwbroman" target="_blank">@kwbroman</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/daroczig" target="_blank">@daroczig</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/alikzaidi" target="_blank">@alikzaidi</a> <a rel="nofollow" href="https://t.co/92SQg4xmcu" target="_blank">pic.twitter.com/92SQg4xmcu</a></p>
<p>— Brooke Anderson (@gbwanderson) <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/gbwanderson/status/869659461010563072" target="_blank">May 30, 2017</a></p></blockquote>
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<p>I was very fortunate to be part of that last team: we had a blast connecting R to Minecraft, like creating a procedurally-generated maze and an AI bot to navigate it. (I plan to write a full blog post about the project in due course.) But for more on <a rel="nofollow" href="https://twitter.com/search?q=%23runconf17" target="_blank">#runconf17</a>, take a look at <a rel="nofollow" href="https://storify.com/_inundata/4th-annual-ropensci-unconf" target="_blank">Karthik Ram's storify</a> which will give you a good sense of the conference as it unfolded in tweets. I also highly recommend checking out these post-conference wrap-ups by <a rel="nofollow" href="https://jasdumas.github.io/2017-05-28-runconf17-experience/" target="_blank">Jasmine Dumas</a>, <a rel="nofollow" href="http://kbroman.org/blog/2017/05/27/ropensci-unconf-2017/" target="_blank">Karl Broman</a> and <a rel="nofollow" href="https://rud.is/b/2017/05/28/l-a-unconf-idential-a-k-a-an-ropensci-runconf17-retrospective/" target="_blank">Bob Rudis</a>.</p>
<p>Thanks to the organizers for such a fantastic event, and also to the sponsors (including my own employer, Microsoft) for making it all possible. I'm looking forward to next year already! </p>
<p>ROpenSci: <a rel="nofollow" href="http://unconf17.ropensci.org/" target="_blank">Unconference 2017</a></p>
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