Charlottesville R Users

Vision & Community Building

Talks start at ~6:15
Meet your fellow R users until then!

20:00

Welcome!

Tonight’s agenda:

  1. Social & networking
  2. Goals and community
  3. Technical topics:
    1. Practical R Packaging with Docker (Pete)
    2. AI-assisted coding in Positron (Stephen)
  4. Wrap-up
  5. Social & networking

Why We’re Here

  • R is a powerful and growing ecosystem
  • 2025 is a great time to start or keep using R
  • We need a local space to learn, share, and support each other
  • Let’s shape this community together

CRU Intentions

  • Openness & inclusivity
  • Collaboration & reproducibility
  • Sharing ideas across academia, industry, and beyond

Discussion:
What values matter most for this community?

CRU Scope

  • Learning-focused (talks, workshops)
  • Project-focused (code clinics, hack nights)
  • Networking & social (career paths, collaborations)

Discussion:
Which of these appeals most to you?
What’s missing?

Meeting Formats

  • Short talks + discussion
  • Hands-on workshops
  • Panels & roundtables
  • Show-and-tell nights

Discussion:
What formats excite you?
Would you lead one?

Building Community

  • Frequency: bi-monthly?
  • Location: SDS? Vault? Local company offices?
  • Communication: Discord. Google Group. Something else?

Discussion:
How can we make this sustainable?

Open Discussion

  • What do you want from this group?
  • Topics or speakers you’d like to see?
  • Barriers that might prevent you from joining?

Discussion:
Other ideas coming later? Write to me or post in the Discord.

Demos

pracpac: Practical R Packaging with Docker

Positron Assistant, Codex, Databot

Wrap-up

Join the mailing list for future event notifications!

  • Next meeting: TBD (mid-November / early December?)
  • Location: TBD (Your company/org? SDS?)
  • Format: TBD (Email me! Discuss in Discord!)
  • Topic: TBD (Email me! Discuss in Discord!)
    Creating your own R-universe, duckdb, Typst, OOP with S7, MCP/mcptools, R/Exams, Tidyplots, Positron potpourri, Python in Positron 😱, data science for fun and profit with ellmer, RAG with ragnar, book club, time series modeling and forecasting, Shiny tips and tricks, how you’re using R at your organization / in your classroom / in your research / etc., Quarto for blogs, websites, books, etc…


See also: Charlottesville Data Science Meetup, Oct 6 here at SDS: Vibe Coding: Is It Right For Data Science? Register at meetup.com/charlottesvilledatascience.