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GSOD 2021 Proposal
NOTICE: The R Project is an accepted organization for GSoD 2021. We have already selected the writers for our project. The below proposal is kept for reference.
R is an integrated suite of software facilities for data manipulation, calculation, and graphical display. It includes
- an effective data handling and storage facility,
- a suite of operators for calculations on arrays, in particular matrices,
- a large, coherent, integrated collection of intermediate tools for data analysis,
- graphical facilities for data analysis and display either on-screen or on hardcopy, and
- a well-developed, simple, and effective programming language, which includes conditionals, loops, user-defined recursive functions, and input and output facilities.
R is available under the GNU General Public License (first major release in the year 2000). There are thousands of add-on packages available through the Comprehensive R Archive Network (CRAN), extending the core functionality of R to cover a wide range of tools for modern data science.
R is used by millions worldwide across academia, industry, government, and the non-profit sector. It is especially widely used in life, earth, and social science research; finance, healthcare, retail, manufacturing, and the public sector.
The R Foundation is a not-for-profit organization working in the public interest. It has been founded by the members of the R Development Core Team in order to
- Provide support for the R project and other innovations in statistical computing.
- Provide a reference point for interacting with the R development community.
- Hold and administer the copyright of R software and documentation.
useR!, the main conference of the R user/developer community organized by the R Foundation, is organized by a different team of (mostly voluntary) organizers each year. Although organizers from one conference will pass information from one year to the next, this usually comes in the form of a massive information dump and the new organizers have to wade through many local/event-specific details to find information relevant for the current year. Long-term history is lost, so each set of organizers often re-evaluate/re-design similar tools and processes. Organizations that work with organizers across years, e.g. the R Foundation Conference Committee (RFCC) that selects hosts, or Forwards, the R Foundation taskforce for women and underrepresented groups, often end up re-explaining details and it can be difficult to ensure improvements made one year are carried over. There has been some effort to gather information centrally, but it is patchy and not in an easily digestible/navigatable form.
Organizing the useR! documentation will ease the burden on community organizers and help us to sustain a high-quality conference for R users and contributors. This is especially important as useR! plans to move to a more distributed conference model, with a main conference and regional satellite conferences, each with their own organizing team.
This project will gather existing pieces of documentation currently stored in git repositories and organize these into two outputs:
- A useR! knowledgebase in the form of a web book, for HOWTOs. A good example of a knowledgebase from the wider R community is the satRdays knowledgebase. The DISCOVER cookbook is another nice example that focuses on diversity and inclusion in scientific computing conferences.
- A useR! information board that aggregates and organizes links to resources, and presents facts and figures on past useR!s. The ideal information board will provide utility for exploring (filtering, sorting, summarizing, visualizing, etc) historical information, for the purpose of planning future events. Dashboards have proved useful in the R community to aid the organization of projects (e.g. the R Consortium Infrastructure Steering Committee Projects Dashboard) and to provide a record for the community, promoting engagement (e.g. useR! 2019 Tweets).
Existing documentation includes:
- The set of HOWTOs written by Forwards, on aspects that support diversity and inclusion:
- Practical implementation of the code of conduct
- Organizing community-focused events as part of the conference (newbie session, sessions for community groups)
- Outreach initiatives (diversity scholarships, conference buddies)
- The event best practices written by Forwards, on creating a conference that is accessible. Some work on extending this to the virtual conference setting was done in this blog post by the useR! 2021 diversity team.
- The useRorganization GitLab, created by the RFCC and useR! 2021 organizers. This includes information about:
- Captioning.
- Logo files and a corporate identity manual.
- Tools and processes for reviewing contributed presentations and tutorials.
- Email templates (e.g. invite emails).
- Past sponsorship brochures.
The useRorganization GitLab also contains data that would be made accessible with the information board, currently:
- past keynote speakers (2004-2020)
- past program committee members (2004-2019)
- numbers of presentations, of different formats (talks, lightning talks, posters, 2015-2020)
- photos of speakers, the venue, and other highlights (2018)
- tweets about the conference (2014-2020)
The information board could be extended to summarize the demographics of participants and people in notable roles, where data is available. Some summaries have been published by Forwards, the R Foundation taskforce for under-represented groups on their Data page, but this information is not up-to-date (covers 2011-2017).
For both the knowledgebase and information board, gaps in the existing documentation would be identified and filled as time allows.
We have received a lot of interest in this project from strong candidates. We propose to hire one technical writer to focus on the knowledgebase and one technical writer to focus on the information board, each working ~5-10hrs/week for 6 months. We will also hire an editor/senior writer with direct experience of useR! organization to work 4-6hrs/month to direct the work and ensure the pieces fit together.
The project will benefit from the mentoring and advice of 5 highly-experienced volunteers:
- Heather Turner (@hturner), a member of both RFCC and Forwards, can assist with gathering facts and figures, navigating existing documentation, and creating a work plan.
- Achim Zeleis (@zeileis), co-founder of useR! and a member of the RFCC can assist with questions on past useR! conferences.
- Nathalie Vialaneix (@tuxette), chair of useR! 2019, can advise on relevant data to include and what would be useful for organizers.
- Yanina Bellini Saibene (@yabellini), a global co-ordinator of useR! 2021, can advise on recent developments especially regarding tutorials, branding, and community partners.
- John Nash (@nashjc), author of several books on numerical computing and past editor on publications including American Statistician, SSC Liaison (Statistical Society of Canada), can help with copy-editing.
Most of the volunteers are able to offer their time without requiring a stipend.
The project will be successful if the knowledgebase and information board become the central and authoritative sources of documentation on the useR! conference. The importance of the documentation should be reflected by organizers using it and contributing back to keep the information up-to-date. However, since the useR! conference takes place in July, we would not expect heavy use of the new documentation before the final evaluation.
Therefore, we will consider the project a success if
- At least 80% of the conference-related markdown files currently maintained in the useRorganization GitLab repository and the Forwards conferences and event_best_practices GitHub repositories are deprecated by incorporating and updating that information in the knowledgebase.
- The information board documents key information (e.g. keynote speakers, program committee members, presentation numbers) for at least 5 years, up to the present year.
- The new dashboard is used by useR! organizers and the wider R community. This would be measured by searching for links to the dashboard in the organizer communication (e.g. Slack workspace) and internet (e.g. with Google Search Console).
- At least two community members that are not directly involved in the project contribute corrections/updates to the documentation or data sources it relies on, by making a pull request or commit to the git repository.
| Budget item | Amount | Running Total | Notes/justifications |
|---|---|---|---|
| Technical writer 1: organize and update existing documentation on useR! organization into knowledgebase | 4500 | 4500 | Experienced technical writer from lower-middle-income country |
| Technical writer 2: setup useR! information board and add references to knowledgebase | 4500 | 9000 | Experienced technical writer from lower-middle-income country |
| Senior writer/editor: direct and review updates to knowledgebase and information board | 3000 | 12000 | Experienced technical writer from high-income country |
| Volunteer stipends | 500 | 12500 | Only 1 volunteer stipend required |
| Admin | 1690 | 13250 | 3% payment processing fees on incoming and outgoing payments |
Previous experience with technical writers or documentation: Heather Turner, one of the admins and project mentors, is currently co-mentoring a student developer who is working on the first draft of a contributor guide for the R project: rdevguide. This project started in mid-February and will finish in mid-May, so we will be able to apply experience from this documentation project to the current project. Heather is based in the UK, her co-mentor is based in the US and the student developer is based in India. We have weekly 30-minute Zoom calls to discuss the documentation plans and advise on content. We are supported by a wider group of volunteers from the R Contribution Working Group, a group working on initiatives to encouraging new contributors to the R project. Co-mentors or volunteers review pull requests to the documentation via GitHub and provide additional support through the R-devel Slack workspace. As the current project is spread over a longer time period, we plan for the writers to meet monthly with the Senior Writer/Editor and monthly with the volunteers. The documentation would be maintained on GitHub/GitLab, so we can track progress and review pull requests as required. Further support would be provided by email. The volunteer team has a wealth of relevant experience, including writing documentation for R packages published on CRAN, documenting historic algorithms, contributing content for the R project website, editing the R Journal and Journal of Statistical Software, authoring and translating data science teaching materials, and writing some of the existing documentation on useR!.
Previous participation in Season of Docs, Google Summer of Code, or others: The R Projects has not participated in Season of Docs before, however, we have participated as a Google Summer of Code (GSoC) organization every year since 2008. We typically have around 20 student projects, with a low failure rate (all students completed successfully in 2020). The program has supported the development of code, tests, and documentation for a larger number of new and existing R packages, as well as other infrastructure, such as the R Community Explorer. Many students remain engaged with the R community, returning as GSoC mentors/admins or becoming involved in other community groups such as R User Groups (meetups) or https://rweekly.org/. The volunteers on this project include a past GSoC admin who has mentored several GSoC projects over the years (John C. Nash, @nashjc) and another past GSoC mentor (Nathalie Vialaneix, @tuxette). Their experience will help to onboard the technical writers and to ensure this project stays on track. The R Project also participated in Google Code-In 2019 successfully.