I know Thursday isn't quite the end of the week, but I thought it'd be a good time to reflect on my first four days at The Data School.
Day 1 - Introductions and Tech Set-Up
After being offered a place at The Data School, I had a two month wait before my first day arrived. So needless to say, the nerves were real when arriving at the office after my first rush hour on the Tube. However, I had nothing to worry about. Upon entering the office space I was greeted by lots friendly faces, and my nerves eased up.
After meeting the rest of DS cohort 36, my first morning consisted of introductions, from The Information Lab founder Tom Brown, head coach Carl Allchin, and one of our coaches, Ruth Amarteifio.
After a lunch break where my cohort quickly became acquainted with the office ping-pong table, it was back to more introductions, this time with Tableau Zen Master Craig Bloodworth. Craig was also in charge of getting us set up with all the tech and software we would need for our time at the DS. After many hours of turning computers on and off again, creating accounts and navigating new online workspaces, we reached the end of our first day, with everything we would need to get stuck into our first day of learning.
Day 2 - Modern Data Architecture and a delayed #MakeOverMonday
Tuesday brought us more introductions, this time with Lorna Brown, another Tableau Zen Master. Lorna then spent the morning introducing us to data pipelines, before setting us loose on our first Makeover Monday challenge. The time pressure of creating a Tableau viz in only an hour was new to all of my cohort, and we certainly felt the pressure, but it was a good chance to get stuck in and receive valuable feedback. We went through our finished visualizations together, and it was great to see what the rest of my group had done with the same data. Definitely getting some inspiration for my next #MakeOverMonday!
Day 3 - Alteryx Time
I had thought that by my third day of making my way to work, I would have worked out how to navigate Bank tube station, but after getting thoroughly lost on Wednesday morning, I proved myself wrong. Let's see if I can figure it out before the end of my time at The Data School...
Wednesday started with a introduction to Alteryx. Having used Excel and R for data analysis whilst at university, the potential of Alteryx meant great excitement for me. After going through some examples, we got to work with exploring different tools, and running workflows. With only 3 weeks to go before our Alteryx Core exam, it was full steam ahead with our Alteryx learning, and we spent the afternoon working our way through as many tools as we could get through before 5.30pm.
Day 4 - More Introductions followed by an Introduction to Tableau
Tube strikes made Thursday a much quieter day in the office. Our morning started with introductions to a few more colleagues, before getting stuck into our first session with Tableau Prep. Like Alteryx, Tableau Prep is useful for cleaning and transforming data, and is combined with Tableau's user friendly design.
After taking us through some of the software's the different functions and tools, our coach Ruth guided us through a Preppin' Data challenge. We ran through some workflow examples, and then were left to try a second challenge on our own, which, after breezing through the first challenge, we all felt confident to try. By the end of the time we were given to try the challenge, I realized I had not quite been ready to attempt the challenge solo, but neither it seemed had anyone else. We went through the problem again with our coach Ruth, and by the end of the session felt secure in our first attempts at using Tableau Prep.
Plans for Friday
Tomorrow will be our first presentation day. Needless to say I'm a little nervous. I'm also amazed that tomorrow is Friday - I don't think a week has ever gone quicker for me?