R Exchange 2026
Established in 2020, R Exchange provides a regional opportunity for open-source data science enthusiasts from New Zealand and Australia to connect and learn from each other about how to make the most out of R and Python in your organisation and projects – from research to corporate to public sector.
WHERE
The Auditorium,
Aitken Street entrance,
National Library of New Zealand,
Wellington
WHEN
Thursday 7 May 2026
Call for speakers is now open!
Submit a talk to share your work and ideas and join our distinguished line up of speakers.
If you would like to contribute, please send your proposed title and a short bio (<100 words) and abstract (<300 words) to events@epi.group by December 19, 2025.
R Exchange aims to showcase how organisations across a variety of disciplines are using R, Python and related tools to create insights for decision-making and align them with strategic goals. Learn with us how to better visualise outputs, automate reporting, and scale up workflows and data products.
Open source tools are commonly used to complement proprietary products to tackle more complex problems providing analysts and data scientists with the flexibility they need for their work.
If you haven’t worked with open-source tools yet, get inspired by how others use them and what can be done.
Whether you're taking first steps or already are an expert, our diverse programme caters for different levels of skill. Meet with fellow open-source enthusiasts to connect and learn about best practices and what is new in the open-source data science and analytics world.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us at events@epi.group and keep up-to-date on the latest announcements via LinkedIn and our newsletter.
Detailed schedule will be released in January 2026
For an idea of what it will include, check out last year's schedule.
Is R Exchange for me?
The numbers speak for themselves.
Established in 2020, R Exchange has been attended by over 300 participants from 90 organisations.
It is quite humbling to see how this event has grown so much in only a few years. We remember the first R Exchange, when we were in a small, 30-person room on the Terrace and stopped at the supermarket on the way to the event to get some baking for the breaks.
The event would not exist without the enthusiasm of New Zealand’s open-source data science community and it is a real privilege for us to organise and host this event as part of our B Corp commitment to support local communities and to be about more than just profit.
Here's what our attendees say
"This was my second year attending and I very much enjoyed it. We work on an application that uses R in a bespoke manner for reporting purposes, so it’s highly useful to see the ways R is used elsewhere across the public service."
"I have definitely gotten a lot of connections and learnings out of it. I even felt motivated to do some sharing in the future too! Looking forward to next years' R Exchange."
"Many companies try to spearhead their respective user communities but it’s almost always artificial and profit driven. You can tell in attending R Exchange how much you are truly trying to support all the R community, not just current and potential customers. Huge respect!"
