Hosting My First Panel Discussion (Meetup)

I really enjoyed helping host the Launching a Data Science Career 🚀 panel discussion in collaboration with the Bethesda Data Science meetup. It was a good meetup that the team hoped would help people with navigating their careers at the entry-level, mid-level and director level. I just felt that with the current economy the way that it is, there’s so much negativity and hopelessness. There are so many people who are hurting right now due to the fact that they can’t find employment. I, along with the Bethesda Data Science team, wanted to do something about it. We wanted to let people know that there are others out there that care about them. We wanted to give people the chance to ask questions and have their questions answered with specifics. We wanted to give people practical tips that they could implement right away. We don’t know if this meetup helped people at all, but we did everything that we could to put out a meetup worthy of peoples’ time and respect. We prepared questions in advance, had the panelists prepare answers in advance, and there was a lot of communication to make sure the event was a success. There was a high RSVP number and we expected a big turnout. However, around one hour before the event, there was inclement weather in the form of a thunderstorm. The thunderstorm turned out to be not that serious, but it dampened the audience turnout. But hey, it happens! The show must go on, and it did. We ended up doing the meetup and it was a total success. Thanks to the panelists for speaking and Applied Photons for hosting.

I think I also learned something from the panelists myself given that I was the moderator. I remember my friend Zyriek Neal saying that as a data scientist, he didn’t always know what the answers were at his internship. Therefore, he had to find the answers himself and look for the information that he needed to solve the problem at hand. This ability to learn on one’s own is a valuable skill for any data scientist and really any technologist. It’s a skill that all technologists must improve at all times, and that includes me! I learned from my friend George Gomes that as a data scientist, it’s all about how you communicate the findings in a way that the business stakeholders would understand. This is so important because as technologists, we often care far more than we should about the model and the technical aspects of what we do. But the stakeholders are often business people and the technical work has to ultimately tie back to business objectives. Therefore, the technologist has to speak in a way and communicate concepts in a way that business stakeholders would understand. This is so important as one advances up the ranks in an organization and something that is always important to be reminded of. Lastly, I learned from my friend Alan Feder that it’s important to have good instincts and good data sense. This means that you understand the data landscape fully and holistically, to the point where you are able to solve a problem by looking at it from multiple perspectives. You can go both into the trees and at the same time see the forest. This is an incredibly rare skill that only comes with years of experience and practice. I’m not there yet, but I’m getting there. I want to thank my friends for agreeing to be on the panel and it was a real treat for me to learn from them. I hope they enjoyed the questions I asked!