Let’s be real: 2021 was not an easy year. I said that about last year, too… where in anticipation of the coming year I wrote:
Some exciting projects await in 2021, like… well, finishing my book for one, and I hope continuing and growing my fantastic client relationships.
So, how did I do on those fronts? Well, as projected I got the book published and I continued working with great clients.
This was my third year in business. I’ve heard this is a typical inflection point where many businesses peter out due to financial issues, burnout, etc. I hope to keep going and feel quite invested in this way of working. I’m hooked (and I wrote a book… hence the title)…
Pat on the back, I guess… but shall we dig in on the 2021 specifics?
Published a book
Probably the most significant achievement of the year is that I published a book! You can learn all about it here:
Just a couple of things on the book: I do think it satisfies a very real, unmet need in the analytics skills market. This is the book I wish I had had when diving into the field.
It’s been fairly well-received and as far as impact goes is probably somewhere in the middle of the pack for analytics books. It’s not a best seller and it’s not a worst seller. Not too bad for a first try.
I don’t regret anything about what I wrote in the book, its depth and breadth, etc. I’ve certainly learned a lot about how to market and position a technical book.
In particular, my challenge/opportunity is to show Excel users that learning R and /or Python is not a frivolous sideshow, but that Microsoft expects them to have some familiarith with them through its integrations with Power BI and (probably) Excel (more on those later in the blog).
But enough marketing philosophy… I wrote a book! Let’s celebrate. Have a piece of cake:
Bootcamp complete… more to come?
Besides the book, another giant undertaking wrapped up in 2021: my tenure with the Thinkful data analytics program. I had served as a contract consultant since the beginning of the program, helping with its initial content and then later helping with developing a synchronous version of the program, implementing new learning technologies, and so forth.
This project was so much fun and I feel so lucky to have been involved in the development of a data analytics bootcamp from nearly Day 1 and to have worked on it from various capacities. We took the program from zero enrollments to it being the largest at Thinkful, minting several hundred data analysts with a six-month placement rate of 85%.
I’m pleased to say the program is in good hands and if you’re looking for a full-on career change into data analytics, I certainly suggest it. You can learn more about the program here.
It’s exciting to see many companies adopt their own internal data analytics bootcamps to ensure their talent has the resources and community available to keep their skills fresh and do their work in confidence.
If you’d like to build a similar analytics academy at your organization — get in touch! I’ve done it before and the positive results are in.
Wrote other stuff
A common thread among so many of my projects is writing. In fact, Stringfest Analytics is in part so named due to the connection with “strings” in computing.
In addition to Advancing into Analytics, I published a couple of reports with O’Reilly Media. This is a great opportunity for me to learn something new through expert interviews and to share my own authority in the field.
Modern Analytics Platforms is a 35-page report exploring legacy and contemporary approaches to analytics, what’s coming next, and how analytics can unlock organization agility:
Transforming Customer Data into Insights is a ~50-page report exploring the origins of direct-response marketing, from letters and email through to customer relationship managment (CRM) systems and now the customer data platform (CDP). You’ll learn what’s gone wrong with marketing technology, where CDPs can help the customer experience, and how to get started.
Then, of course, there’s the blog. I wrote about everything from resources to learn data visualization in Excel to how data literacy programs were affected by the pandemic.
Historically, “how-to” type posts perform the best. And I’ll keep going with some of them. But how-to content is by definition cursory; they tell readers what to do rather than how to think about doing it. They perform, though… does that say something? 🤔 Again, enough philosophizing, let’s continue…
Grew the email list
One pretty significant win is that I fnally hit 1,000 email subscribers! This is a goal that I had years ago and one thing finally got me over the edge: the 30 Days to Data Analyst checklist:
This is a “30 day challenge” type handout readers get when signing up to the newsletter. It’s available as part of my analytics learning resources library. This checklist along with these white papers and reports have really helped in growing the newsletter list:
Again, there’s so much how-to content out there. I think people are looking for help contextualizing it all and seeing the forest from the trees. That’s presumably why these big-picture checklists and white papers that bridge the gap between tools have been so well-received.
Lots of speaking
I presented quite often this year. Here are some in no particular order (and yes, they were all online):
I also presented quite a few free online workshops on my own via Eventbrite.
I’m on the fence about continuing such an aggressive speaking schedule in the future. Speaking is a great opportunity to give back to the community, along with good communication practice. But at this point I am confident in my speaking abilities and I can give back to the community in other ways.
Perhaps because everything’s now online, I find that while you do get a pack of loyal attendees who show up wherever you speak, they become accustomed to picking up your knowledge and speaking with you directly without paying for it.
And while I’ve tried presenting on different topics, industries, etc. in an attempt to segment my audience and see where to focus, the only segment I seem to have found are people who will attend nearly any webinar (again, as long as it’s free).
Maybe I’m all wet and haven’t figured out how to work these presentations into my funnel.
Speaking the meetup circuit in particular is not something I see the extremely successful names in this space doing, so I think that says something.
New courses
On top of all the writing, speaking and consulting, I put together some new courses!
- R for Power BI Users. This one is available on Enterprise DNA’s website and should be available as a standalone on Udemy in the future. There’s such an opportunity for Power BI and Excel users to learn R… in fact, it’s officially integrated with Power BI so it’s like Microsoft wants you to! I hope in this course to demistify R and get learners excited about using it in Power BI. Learning R is likely not as impossible as you think!
I’ll likely be adding a course or two to this series in 2022, so stay tuned and please get in touch with any questions or suggestions!
- Advancing into Analytics: The Full-stack Analyst. This was a cohort-based course based on the book. I had a ton of fun putting this on and will likely do so again in the future, although I haven’t quite decided in what format.
My idea for the course is just to take readers to the next level where they are comfortable building and sharing basic statistical models using R or Python with GitHub. This is a near-mandatory stack for anyone with the tiniest inclination toward real quantitative analysis these days, and the book is such a great jumping-off point to get there.
Working adults are busy and I may have been overoptimistic for what could be accomplished in a three-week period. So if the idea of taking your skills to the next level in analytics appeals to you, please sign up for the course waiting list and we’ll be in touch with what the next cohort will look like.
- Advancing into Analytics: Let’s Learn Python. My idea here was to serve as a crash-course for learning Python based on the concepts in the book. Unlike the full-stack analyst, attendees did not need to come in having read the book; we started from scratch and by the end of the workshop attendees were able to automate tasks, build beautiful visualizations and conduct rigorous data analysis.
I may continue with similar workshops in 2022, although it’s too soon to tell. The time differences and other considerations make live sessions like this understandably difficult, so more self-paced learning may be a better option for the future.
Had some uglies
Probably the best sign you’re on to something is if you’re getting gratuitous sour grapes dropped in your way. Then there are the inevitable wipeouts and awkward run-ins you face as a business owner. I had some doozies this year:
- I got Zoombombed during an online workshop. This was fun as I had a heck of a hard time figuring out how to block this person and spent quite a while putting together a plan so it wouldn’t happen again. I still fumble around with this stuff in Teams…
- One-star reviews on Amazon. I can handle negative criticism, but posting untrue and borderline defamatory claims about my book is uncool. Amazon doesn’t do much about it. So, moving on…
- Then there’s all the typical annoying stuff that comes along with running a business. To paraphrase Michael Scott: it’s not quite hate, although I hate it: customers asking for a refund when I stated no refund and already sent part of the product, getting my email reported as spam when I’m just trying to sell something, because my newsletter is a business and not a charity, and so forth.
- I also tried some paid workshops and other products that some quite small turnouts. It’s odd because the free webinars I offer draw very solid-sized crowds, but that hasn’t often funneled into paid relationships… yet.
I’m only including this section to highlight that it’s not all rainbows and unicorns at Stringfest. “We” have our challenges just like everybody else. Hang tough.
What a story, George…
So, where does that leave me for 2022? In the spirit of wanting to be vaguely right versus precisely wrong, I’ll share some basic goals:
- I’m working on a second book! This one may not even hit shelves until 2023 because it’s several hundred pages long, but I hope to share something more concrete about it perhaps in the first quarter of 2022.
- More courses: As mentioned, I have some tentative R for Power BI users courses lined up and I’ll continue to iterate with all things Advancing into Analytics courses. I may try for a hybrid or self-paced approach, we’ll see
- Back to blogging: I can’t overlook my blog; it’s what’s got me this far. I’ve got a couple of ideas lined up. Expert profiles and interviews tend to do quite well so I will likely feature some of those. Then there are the “how-to” posts which I lamented earlier… but they get read! So you may see some Excel tutorials on here, just like the olden days…
- On the prowl for more bootcamps: Besides the blog and book, probably the professional achievement I’m most proud of is building Thinkful’s data analytics bootcamp. I would love to do something similar for an organization. Not to repeat myself but… if you want to team up for this, please get in touch!
Hopefully it’s clear that I love what I do and am in it for the long run. These are the services and resources I wish I’d had when entering the field, and it’s so exciting to see the marketing taking things like analytics upskilling seriously.
Thanks so much for being a part of this journey with me and bearing through the stream of consciousness of this year’s review! (I’m ending the last few weeks of the year with a horrible bug, so “lucid” is not quite the word…)
As I’ve said many times before, I’d be nowhere without my audience. So thank you. Make sure to subscribe to the newsletter if you’ve not already so we can keep in touch.
And if you think of any opportunities to work together in the coming year, you know where to find me! Maybe your organization could use an analytics academy or you’re looking for some help implementing basic R and Python in your department. I’m here for it, all year long 😎.
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