The first week of the Data School is over and it's been........

It started of really relaxed on day one, we spent the day installing programs on our laptops and meeting lots of people that would be important to us. The second day got a little bit more technical but it was still okay. We were introduced to what it means to truly understand data and the handshake between data analysis and data visualisation.

This was followed by a lesson on modern analytics architecture ......

You're probably just as confused as I was. I'd definitely never heard of this before and I can promise you that as the session was going on, my understanding was not getting any better. Thankfully, although it didn't feel like it at first, we were then given two hours to try and make our own architectural diagram. Many questions later, lots of research, and some help from other members of the information lab, we were able to come up with something and I'm proud to say, all members of DS34 were on it.

Here's my architecture diagram below. Maybe I'll come back in a month or two and update it. Maybe not.

On the third day we focused on the fundamentals of Alteryx. Despite spending over 4 hours on the programme, we only got through 7 tools out of about 200+

(⊙＿⊙')

There's really not much I can say about it, I think I was too overwhelmed. Watch this space though, i'm going to be an Alteryx master soon and I'll be updating you all with everything I understand.

Day 4, we were introduced to the mentorship programme and support groups. We then spent the rest of the day working with Tableau Prep. I have to say, this program is A LOT of fun. Even when running my hands through my hair in frustration, I was still enjoying myself. The program is very intuitive and the challenges are perfect for learning new things and practicing what I'd learnt earlier. Challenge #30 from 2022 definitely made the prettiest work flow out of all the challenges we did today.

Day 5, the final day of the week. To be honest, it felt much more relaxed after the last two days. We had a few hours in the morning to create a short presentation on some of the things we had learnt during the last few days, and then we had to present in in front of a ourselves and our coach. We were paired up and my group did a presentation on the summarise tool/aggregate step. The programs we use are super interesting and I look forward to using them more and more as the weeks go by.

Some other things i've learnt throughout the week:

• It is very easy to have a coffee / hot chocolate addiction when there's a coffee machine that makes an amazing cuppa
• The voice in my head has a completely different accent to me when I'm blogging
• Standing up during sessions helps you stay awake on the days you've had little sleep (coffee absolutely doesn't help)
• Dell makes really good laptops (This is my first time not using HP)
• Have a relatively flat structure with staff is sooooo nice. Obviously you know who's boss but it just doesn't feel like it