Python or Language-Agnostic R User Group Alternative?

[marcdotson]

I love my R User Group, but it doesn't fit my current needs as well anymore. Does anyone run or know about a Python or (even better) a language-agnostic R User Group alternative?

[mduvekot]

A language-agnostic R User Group may be hard to find. What are your needs, exactly?

[randyzwitch]

@marcdotson

Does anyone run or know about a Python or (even better) a language-agnostic R User Group alternative?

This is what we're trying to cultivate here, though it's been a bit slower going than I'd like. Although many of our categories are R-focused (for historical reasons), for those who have been here for a while, they have seen us re-organize the categories towards what people are trying to accomplish (e.g. "Publishing Your Results" instead of solely "R Markdown"). We obviously have a ways to go though.

You might find more relevant communities if you take a similar approach around the "job-to-be-done" that you're interested in. A data visualization group tends to be more broad-based, or at least, open to presenting on R, Python, JavaScript because it's about the technique they are demonstrating (i.e. sankey charts, geospatial) and not specifically about the language.

If you'd like to stick around here, we'd love to have you! Feel free to suggest categories that would be interesting, and we can try and spur some of that conversation.

Best,
Randy

[marcdotson]

Thanks, Randy. I fully expect a language-agnostic community to be shepherded by Posit.

I was specifically looking for the in-person meetups for workshops and networking that R User Groups foster, but not just for R. I see PyData might be an alternative, but still not language-agnostic.

[mduvekot]

For example: The Data Visualization Society, DVS offers these for people that coalesce around, well, data visualization. https://www.datavisualizationsociety.org/ I happen to think they are absolutely lovely and amazing. They have a fairly active slack channels, online events, meetups, mentorship, their own journal, a conference. There are other, similar organizations, for other topics.