R Hackathon 1/Planning Steps

Participants

• Assemble participants through invitation and open calls for participation
  • Done (see participant list, Call for Participation, and Call for End User Participation)
• Arrange travel and accommodation logistics
  • Done

IT resources & setup

1. Supporting software & resources
   • Mailing list Done (wg-rhack1, all participants subscribed).
   • Source code repository
     • Dedicated repository on Google Code, Sourceforge, RForge, or R-Forge Done, created umbrella project on R-Forge. --Hlapp 10:55, 6 December 2007 (EST)
     • Help needed by participating packages needed to move to cvs or svn?
     • Do participating packages need to branch prior to hackathon?
     • svn repository on NESCent server needed? No. --Hlapp 10:55, 6 December 2007 (EST)
   • File share Done. URL: https://webdav.nescent.org/rhack1
2. Hardware
   • Loaners needed? No.
   • Wired network needed? One person so far.
   • More wireless access points needed? No.
   • Power strips Communicated to Jeff and Jack.
   • Projector, screen, whiteboards, flip charts Should be all set up.

Preparing for the event

• Achieve consensus list of prioritized goals
  • Consolidated input from participants in response to invitation questions: Goals from an end-user perspective and from a programmer perspective
• Develop agenda Tentative agenda is on the hackathon front page
• Determine preliminary subgroups
• Items to be prepared by participants
  • Lightning or other presentations - which ones are useful, what scope, who are the presenters?
    • Everyone introduces him/herself, stating objectives for hackathon
    • Package owners in addition give highlights of their package, plus future goals they have with it
    • Also see agenda
  • Package-specific information to be compiled on the wiki - overview, relevant programming info, and future goals
    • On-going, see package overviews and current data representations
  • Bootcamps - which ones are needed? Current plan is to have bootcamps on
    • Vignette and documentation writing
    • S4 programming
    • Using Subversion
    • Numerical methods
• Documentation & testing
  • Determine prior reading (R vignette howto), training, and setup needed
  • Collect data sets for testing/validation

Reading and book list

We have started to tag references for reading material using the tag rhack1 on Connotea. Anyone is welcome to add references to this list using this tag.

Books:

• Emmanuel Paradis, Analysis of Phylogenetics and Evolution with R. Springer, 2006 -- Errata and updates can be found here.

• Paul Murrell, R Graphics (Computer Science and Data Analysis). Chapman and Hall, 2005
• John M. Chambers, Programming with Data: A Guide to the S Language. 3rd ed., Springer, 2004
• W.N. Venables and B.D. Ripley, Modern Applied Statistics with S. 4th ed., Springer, 2002
• Peter Dalgaard, Introductory Statistics with R. 3rd ed., Springer, 2004