# R Contribution Working Group Meeting 2025-12-18

## Present

**R Core**:
**Bioconductor Core**:
**R Foundation**:
**MiR**:
**R-Ladies**:
**Forwards**:
**Latin R**:
**Africa R**:
**Asia R**:
**R User Groups**:
**General R community**:

## Agenda

- Welcome + start meeting recording.

### Main items

- Birdaro training for open source leaders (https://www.birdaro.org/2025/07/01/the-birdaro-training-program/)
- Community Playbook module
- Short presentation slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mmPLpwTOT_8GqtG1kjbez0bsBK_qEXDz4xug1WoPiWY/edit?slide=id.g3a73dc6194b_0_39#slide=id.g3a73dc6194b_0_39
- Draft playbook: https://github.com/gmbecker/R_contributor_pathway_pbk/blob/main/the_contributor_pathway.md (private repo at the moment, ask Gabe if he want to make it public)
- Maybe get people to read before next RCWG meeting
- Ask Gabe to present this to everyone then

- R Dev Days (https://contributor.r-project.org/events/r-dev-days/)
- Reports from recent events
- R Dev Day @ Australia + Remote, Nov 21
- R Dev Day @ Australia + Remote, Dec 16+17
- Dates for 2026 (mostly tentative):
- R Dev Day @ Rencontres R 2026, Nantes + Remote, Jun 19: https://pretix.eu/r-contributors/r-dev-day-rr2026/
- R Dev Day @ CascadiaR, Portland, USA, Thu 18 or Fri 19 June, TBC ([e-mail])
- R Dev Day @ useR! 2026, Warsaw, Poland, 10 July, TBC
- R Project Sprint 2026, Birmingham, UK, Wed 2 - Fri 4 September (R Core meeting Tue 1 September), Birmingham, TBC

- Research Software Maintenance Fund update
- Blog Post: https://blog.r-project.org/2025/12/17/rsmf-enabling-the-next-generation-of-contributors-to-r/index.html
- Cross-posted with R Consortium: https://r-consortium.org/posts/650K-for-R/
- Official start 1 March
- RSMF round table in Jan/Feb, identify some dates after New Year
- Move mentee projects to GitHub issues, assign people, think about how to prioritise
- Build of R Bugs spreadsheet to organise triage (needs some automation)

- AOB
- Bioconductor has hired someone working with contributors, based at Limerick. We should look to collaborate!
- Bioconductor is using genAI to improve documentation, forming working group around that. This might generalise to R more broadly.
- Can we create a prompt/context to assist someone contributing to R? A lot of people doing interesting work in this area (e.g. R in AI conference).
- Sharing info on workng groups: maybe R wiki could help with this?
- Possibly organise another forum between R Foundation and R Consortium around February time.

### Next meeting

- Friday, January 23, 2026, 15:00-16:00 UTC ([find your local time](https://arewemeetingyet.com/UTC/2026-01-23/15:00/R%20Contribution%20Working%20Group)).