Nate Burgos's Blog, page 5

Strategist Jefferson McMillan-Wilhoit Seeks to Craft Amazing Stories Driven and Backed by Data

Pietà (14981499) by Michelangelo (14751564). Photo by Art Gallery ErgsArt.

Jefferson McMillan-Wilhoit is the Director of Health Informatics and Technology at the Lake County Health Department and Community Health Center. He recently spoke of storytellings essential role in data analytics/science as a part of modern data-skills school Promotables series of events. He statedand restatedthe importance of this step:

Take the data and have it tell its story.

A prime directive. No magic formula....

Slalom Consulting’s Erinn Mitchell on Having Data Not Getting Lost in Translation

In the Harvard Business Review article You Dont Have to Be a Data Scientist to Fill This Must-Have Analytics Role, the authors highlighted the emerging discipline of Analytics Tanslator as crucial in the increasingly converging worlds of data and business:

At the outset of an analytics initiative, translators draw on their domain knowledge to help business leaders identify and prioritize their business problems, based on which will create the highest value when solved. These may be...

Travel Writer Tim Brookes Studies, Carves and Advocates the Writing Systems of Indigenous and Minority Cultures through His Endangered Alphabets Project

What are you working onon the side?

If something is important, we write it down.

Ten years ago, I discovered that most of the worlds writing systemsperhaps 90%are in danger of extinction. No longer taught in schools, lacking official status, used by a small and dwindling number of elderly people, these writing systems nevertheless have served, in some cases for 2,000 years, as a primary means of expressing and recording the accumulated experience and wisdom of their cultures. Lose the alphabet,...

Business Intelligence Manager Sam Koperski of Kin Insurance on How to Build and Democratize a Data Org

Kin Insurance is a Chicago-based startup that matches customers in disaster-prone regions with optimal home insurance policies. The staple ingredient for this mission is datamassive amounts of it. Their Senior Manager of Business Intelligence, Sam Koperski, was tasked with building a data org. He shared steps to make this happen, including:

Communicate objectives to leadership about the data-org effort from the get-go. If an executive member sparked the initiative of building a data org, this...

Data Scientist Annie Condon of Knauf Insulation Clarifies the Path to Having a Data Analytics Career in a Promotable Webinar

The worlds of data and science are, plainly put: massive. The resulting discipline of data analytics/science implies vast experience required to break in as a profession.

During her recent Promotable webinar, Annie Condon, a Data Scientist at Knauf Insulation, debunked the typically assumed path toward becoming a data analyst/scientist:

Data science roles can often be about so much more than just the technical skill. Theres a lot of well-roundedness, and it sounds like looking at your guys...

Copywriter Brooke Randel Co-Creates a Family Memoir with Golda Indig—Her Grandma and a Holocaust Survivor

What are you working onon the side?

For the last few years, Ive been co-writing a memoir with my grandma Golda Indig titled Also Here. My grandma is a Holocaust survivor who, after being held in three Nazi concentration camps, never spoke about it. Then one day, she started telling me I should write her story. It came out of nowhere for me. I was a copywriter at a small agency in Philly at the time, creating scripts and billboards, brochures about sausage casings, that sort of thing. I had no...

Embarking on a Journey of Data and Business Goals with Discover Financial’s Amit Shivale at a Promotable Webinar

A recent, data-themed webinar by data-skills school Promotable featured Amit Shivale, a Data Scientist and Product Strategist at Discover Financial Services, where he proactively tethers the value of data analytics/science to solving business challenges. To Amit, the journey here matters as much as the destinationespecially when businesspeople dont readily value or even consider the benefits that the disciplines of data analytics/science can offer. Throughout his presentation, there was this...

Optimizing Data Visualization for Comprehension, According to Analytics Consulting Manager Malcolm McIlraith of Publicis Media

At a recent talk by Chicago-based data analytics training firm Promotable, data analyst Malcolm McIlraith gave a tactical talk about presenting your data visually. Once you/your team have produced findings, how do you convey them as clearly as possible? Malcolm suggests:
Mind the colors so they more than sufficiently contrast. If you reacted with thats painfully obvious, exactly! When the color contrast is not apparent, it can muddle the findings derived from the data. Retina fatigue ensues.A...

Walgreens’ Analytics Manager Steve Schept Clarifies Data’s Magic in Business and Tech

It takes work to make data useful. At a recent event organized by data-skills school Promotable, the speaker was Steve Schept, Senior Manager of Analytics and Reporting, Compliance and Privacy at Walgreens. A statement he made thoroughly resonated with me:

“It’s not magic.”

Steve’s context was the substantial work involved in data analytics to discover and determine insights. Collecting data—modeling and interpreting it are essential to make sense of information in order to communicate findings...

Design Feast’s Makers Series—106th Interview: UX Designer and “We Should Get Together” Author Kat Vellos Researches and Advocates Lasting Friendships

I discovered Kat Vellos, a UX Designer, through her side project “Better Than Small Talk” (read her interview in my series on Side Projects), an activity centered on community and designed to reduce friction in making human connections. Her work explores social wellness, the challenges of friendship during adulthood, and how to create relationships that are authentic, durable and rewarding. She recently launched her new book “We Should Get Together: The Secret to Cultivating Better...