StackOverflow is a site where programmers can post questions, and others can provide answers and vote up the best ones. Questions are categorized by topic, and the R tag on StackOverflow now contains dozens of interesting questions about R with useful answers.
One of the primary reasons why StackOverflow is such a useful resource for R users today is because three R bloggers/Twitterers -- Mike Driscoll, JD Long and Dan Goldstein -- organized a "Flash Mob" during OSCON back in July to populate the content. A flash mob is a sudden, apparently spontaneous congregation of people who suddenly group together and do ... something ... and then just as suddenly disperse. Last Friday (which would have been Michael Jackson's 51st birthday) groups of dancers suddenly appeared in various locations around Seattle and performed a routine to "Beat It", to the bemusement and amusement of onlookers.
The OSCON event was similar, except instead of dancers it was R users, instead of Seattle it was a meeting room in San José, and instead of grooving to the beat they were asking and/or answering questions about R.
Now a second R flash mob is scheduled for this coming Tuesday at 10:04AM Pacific Time. (It's listed in the R Community Calendar.) This event is online only: all you need to do is sign into stackoverflow.com at four minutes past the hour exactly, start asking and/or answering questions, and don't stop until you get enough (or 50 minutes has passed, whichever comes first). Full details in the link below. See you there!
Decision Science News: R Flashmob #2: Tuesday, 8 September 2009
To be clear, I (Goldstein) didn't have a role in the first R Flashmob, though I am connected to the birth of the whole global Flash Mob thing, which was started by Bill in New York (as documented in this Time Magazine article on Flashmobs )
Hope to see all the Revolutions blog readers there on Tuesday!
Posted by: Dan Goldstein | September 03, 2009 at 11:20