1 About the event
ConectaR 2019: Encuentro de Usuarios R en Latinoamérica, took place during January 24-26, 2019 at the University of Costa Rica, in San José, Costa Rica. It was the first event in Central America endorsed by The R Foundation, and it was held completely in Spanish. The majority of the attendants were from Costa Rica (85%), but we had participants from 12 countries: Costa Rica, Guatemala, Peru, Colombia, Mexico, Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Spain, the Netherlands, France and the USA. The three-day event consisted of talks, workshops, and poster sessions.
The primary purpose of ConectaR conference was to provide a space to create a community among R users in industry, academia, citizen science and teaching. In this way, we aim to encourage the use of R, promote learning and advance the development of R packages adapted to our regional needs.
ConectaR 2019 was organized by the University of Costa Rica -through the School of Statistics, the Development Observatory, and the Research Center for Pure and Applied Mathematics- the company ixpantia, and the research institution Bioversity International. The initiative originated thanks to the encouragement of Heather Turner, who contacted several networks in the region, through the R Users Groups, R-ladies groups and other connections.
From the 150 registered participants, \(33\%\) were female and \(23\%\) were full time students. Professionals from finance, government and data companies were present, as well as faculty members from all four major universities in the country. The event was possible thanks to the effort of a team of about 50 people including 4 chairs, a 23-member scientific committee and a motivated group of 23 volunteers.
2 Conference program
The first two days of the conference were dedicated to talks (invited and contributed) and poster presentations. On the third day of the event (a Saturday) four workshops ran in parallel: two during the morning and two during the afternoon.