Build out an Unconf Toolbox to help folks organize their own unconfs

[angela-li]

I'd like to put together a resource at the unconf for folks to make it easier for folks organize their own unconferences locally, and get that information out of my head! (This is a very meta project)

I envision a few potential parts to this, but more could be added:

• a website template that you could use to set up your unconf website (pkgdown/usethis? Hugo blogdown template?)
• a bookdown guide/wiki as to how to organize an unconf (documenting the process of how we did this)
• a Shiny app that helps you read and judge applications
• a dashboard to report out the status of issues closed at the unconf
• a Twitter bot to tweet every time an unconf issue is closed (?)

So if you're interested in Shiny apps, dashboarding, documentation, or simply in organizing your own unconf, join me! I want to hear from you: what tools would make it easier for you to organize your own unconf? What do you need to know? What seems scary or daunting?

[alexpghayes]

This project also features an obligatory mid-conference Inception viewing.

[maurolepore]

Wouldn't an R package be a useful container for building and sharing this?

I'm totally biased towards a package because that's what I do all the time and have little experience with other frameworks to accomplish similar things.

These is how the features you want map to features in R packages. Please don't take this as mansplaining -- you may know these better than I. I just want to use this as a base for the discussion:

a website template that you could use to set up your unconf website (pkgdown/usethis? Hugo blogdown template?)

• pkgdown::build_site() (+ pkgdown::build_site()?)

a bookdown guide/wiki as to how to organize an unconf (documenting the process of how we did this)

• usethis::use_article() or usethis::use_vignette()

a Shiny app that helps you read and judge applications

• Maybe trigger the app as an RStudio addin?

a dashboard to report out the status of issues closed at the unconf

• Maybe trigger the app as an RStudio addin?

a Twitter bot to tweet every time an unconf issue is closed (?)

• ???

As for distributing the 'kit', future organizers may install the package and maybe start from a package-template you provide (accessible in RStudio), or fork it from GitHub.

[sctyner]

I can contribute knowledge to this! Writing an R package sounds fun, but there's a lot of stuff (people usually call these "soft skills") that can't be packaged. I like the idea of creating a github org and part of that is the shiny apps and the r package but the other piece is the bookdown book with all of the softer stuff.

[angela-li]

Good ideas all! I think having an overarching Github org to aggregate all the things we produce would be fantastic. I'll do some more thinking as to how to scope/split up the work -- maybe we'll end up forming a massive group, in which we have a few sub-teams:

• Package sub-team (website template/Github setup & infrastructure, @maurolepore you could help with this)
• Shiny/App sub-team (making ready-for-use apps, dashboards, bots, other things - I think Eric, Natalie, Sharla all expressed interest in this. Could eventually hook into/be called from the package)
• Bookdown/Knowledge Sharing sub-team (writing up our accumulated wisdom, maybe I and @sctyner take point on this)

In any case, I'm really excited for this! It's something I know will be immediately useful to me and Sam, and others in the future.

[rpodcast]

Count me in! I will add various links I've bookmarked that could be useful as we scope out an infrastructure for the apps and automation pieces:

• If we end up using a Google service for tracking things like application reviews, the `googleAuthR pkg is worth a look.
• Lucy D'Agostino McGowan presented an awesome app called papr that had a way to record a user's interaction (I believe using google drive or dropbox) but the idea could be adapted to our needs.
• For app UI design, I really like the various packages from the RinteRface group such as bs4Dash
• Great post in integratoin R, plumbr and Slack: Starter Guide to R Plumber + Slack
• [Making a Reminder Bot for Automating Meeting Organisation using R and Google Sheets]
  (https://www.granvillematheson.com/post/reminder-bot/)
• Persistent data storage in Shiny apps guide

[emilyriederer]

I'd love to help out here, too! Time and resource permitting.

Some ideas (biased by a work-in-progress package of mine that's also focused on "automating the boring stuff" of project management):

• Take our master schedule / tracker of everything that has to be done pre-unconf and turn it in to issues and milestones on an unconf planning repo (similar to this ) as opposed to using trello
• Alternatively, we could take the same master task list and write a call to the trello API to put it there instead
• Setting up team-level repos for each team to help track progress across them in a standardized way (similar to this. This didn't make so much sense for this unconf since there are a lot more "contribution" versus "new package" projects)

More things I think would be cool as we've gone along:

• Communication / email automation using gmailr (make HTML email templates with RMarkdown that would look nice and could be personalized and send them with a gmailr + purrr workflow)
• Similarly, with gmailr, it would be easy to scrape outstanding issues from Trello / GitHub and send automated weekly updates to planning team with reminders what is open/closed and who is responsible for what (inspired by an idea Heather Turner shared with me on Twitter)
• Not a super clear vision hear, but I wonder if easy pre-commit hooks could be used to help give helpful tips or catch commong "first-time contributor" bugs before they ever reach GitHub?

Finally, one other Shiny app idea I'll mention is a "job board" to help people find projects. For example, in the "tidyverse dev day" spirit, a single dashboard could pull together issues from all the different repos whose maintainers are there and have tagged issues. I have a very minimal proof-of-concept of that here just to show what I mean (but it's incredibly rudimentary at the moment)