[This article was first published on rOpenSci - open tools for open science, and kindly contributed to R-bloggers]. (You can report issue about the content on this page here)Want to share your content on R-bloggers? click here if you have a blog, or here if you don't.What? People would fund me and mentor me building my own R package?My first time hearing about rOpenSci was, interestingly, at a bird conference. At an ornithological conference in 2023, I was chatting with my bird friend / colleague Steffi LaZerte, who highly recommended that I apply for the rOpenSci Champions program given my strong interest in developing R packages.I mentioned my concerns and hesitation about whether I am “qualified” to make an R package, which at that time sounded like what professional developers do. She simply asked, “Can you write functions in R?” “Yes, I can.” “Then you are good to go! R packages are simply putting functions together in an organized way!”So here we go, I took the motivation and sent out my application for the 2024 rOpenSci cohort. A few months later, I was selected as one of the 20 participants around the world;I remember the strong excitement when I received the confirmation letter from rOpenSci.I was probably even more excited than when I got my PhD admission!bbsTaiwan R package – a combination of my dreamsI have been an avid R user for a long time, and I am particularly fascinated by the open science nature that comes with it.My proposed package, “bbsTaiwan”, aims to solve a common issue with an open-source dataset, the Breeding Bird Survey (BBS) data of Taiwan.While the BBS dataset is publicly available online and stored in Global Biodiversity Information Facility, it is structured in a specific machine-readable format that requires a certain amount of data wrangling to make it usable for downstream modeling and ecological inference.bbsTaiwan is a data package as well as a wrangling toolbox, and it can be particularly useful for undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers who need BBS data for their dissertations.Most importantly, I see it as a crucial way to contribute my skills back to my beloved homeland – Taiwan. I want to use this package to show my care and love for the land.The mentor and the learningI was very lucky to have Eunseop Kim as my mentor during the Champions program.He was extremely patient, supportive, and understanding.Eunseop has a background in statistics and is very fluent in package development. He provided me with a lot of freedom on the project and emphasized that he would be there to support and help if I had any questions along my journey.I sought suggestions from him frequently in terms of package design, usability, resources, and references. He not only taught me how to make R packages, but he also showed me the importance and power of being a supportive mentor.Being able to study references on how other people developed their packages improved my own philosophy of making packages as well.One rule that still sticks with me until today is “be kind.”Be kind to your users, be kind to your collaborators, and be kind to your colleagues.If we can put extra thought and effort into thinking from other people’s perspectives (what users might like to see and what makes a package easy to use), then it will be a tool that people genuinely enjoy using.rOpenSci program as a path to future opportunitiesThe rOpenSci Champions program not only opened my door to R package development, but it also provided me with invaluable opportunities.I was selected as an “Opportunity Scholar” for posit::conf(2024), where I connected with fellow programmers and was inspired further by the possibilities of this programming language.After the Champions program, I was presenting in the rOpenSci Community Call “From Novice to Contributor: Making and Supporting First-Time Contributions to FOSS”, where I had a chance to share my experience and contribute back to rOpenSci.Furthermore, I received support from Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada and the R Consortium to create my second R package, birdnetTools, in collaboration with the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.It was a dream come true!!None of this would have been possible if I hadn’t participated in the rOpenSci Champions program a few years ago.Meanwhile, my story with rOpenSci will continue.Thank you to the community at rOpenSci. Thank you for bringing excitement, fun, and care to this world.To leave a comment for the author, please follow the link and comment on their blog: rOpenSci - open tools for open science.R-bloggers.com offers daily e-mail updates about R news and tutorials about learning R and many other topics. Click here if you're looking to post or find an R/data-science job.Want to share your content on R-bloggers? click here if you have a blog, or here if you don't.Continue reading: Happy Birthday rOpenSci — My Journey from First-Time Developer to Current Opportunities