SDS 308: Your Tribe

Welcome back to the SuperDataScience podcast ladies and gentlemen, super excited to have you back here on the show. And today’s episode is going to be interesting because I was thinking to myself, what should I share? What’s happened in my life? What was interesting, insightful or can be insightful for others that I want to put on the podcast. And so I looked through my calendar for the past couple of weeks and I was thinking, okay, where was I? What happened? And I was actually very surprised at what I discovered for myself. And that is that I’ve been part of several communities in just the past couple of months. And in fact, I’ll be part of two more in the coming weeks. So it just so happens that September, October are too quite busy months with lots of events going on. I think it’s got to do with the fact that we’re just after the summer holidays, or in the Northern hemisphere, summer holidays.

And this is when all the major events are happening. And so just in the past couple of weeks, if you’ve been following the podcast, then you would already know about these events. So in the past couple weeks, Hadelin and I were at a business conference in South Dakota. We’re just part of the C-Suite Network, which is run by Jeffrey Hayzlett. It was our very first time, really enjoyed a great community. We met lots of executives, lots of business owners, entrepreneurs who get together to discuss ideas and ways to improve their businesses and see how they can better contribute and give back to communities and things like that. So it was a very insightful, very insightful conversations and a great community there. Then from South Dakota, Hadelin and I flew to San Diego where we attended the DataScienceGO conference. It’s our annual conference where we get together with lots and lots of students and other data scientists from all walks of life.

This year there was 640 people attended. Amazing community, great talks, great speakers. But what I really love about this event is the community that we have. It’s really great to see how people have grown in the past year, how our students have developed. And also to connect with everybody, connect with newcomers, connect with people who have become intermediate, advanced and all different data scientists. And you know this from other episodes that I’ve recorded, I really feel part of that community, really feel at home when I’m there. So that was number two.

Number three is where we are now. Right now, Hadelin and I are in Berlin where we are attending the Udemy LIVE event. It’s an event run by Udemy. It’s for instructors so there’s over 200 instructors here who teach all sorts of topics from artificial intelligence and technology to psychology, to business, to professional development, personal growth and many, many other topics. A really fun event, great to connect with the 200 instructors. See how they’ve progressed over the past year. That’s another annual event that like I’ve been, this is my third time coming to this event. Also there’s 50 of the Udemy staff. The CEO’s here, the executive team is here, lots and lots of great, amazing people from Udemy as well. So it’s amazing to connect with them too.

So that’s already three events in three communities that we’ve been part of in the past couple of weeks. Next I’m going to go to San Francisco, I’m going to be part of the Udemy for business community. So that’s like, it’s called the People Innovators Summit and that is mostly HR and L&D leaders, learning and development leaders, people who are responsible to make sure that what they’re teaching in their companies or their educational, the trainings in their companies are relevant and appropriate to the employees.

I’m going to be giving a talk on artificial intelligence and the future of the workforce and how AI is impacting that. I’ve never been to that event, but very looking forward to that event and also in being part of that community. Again, it’s a different community. This time is going to be HR and L&D leaders. And I can’t wait to see what I will learn from them, how I will network with them, whom I will meet there. You know, what insights I will get. And then after that Hadelin and I actually going to meet up again in Cancun, in Mexico, where our whole SuperDataScience team is going to fly from all over the world. So SuperDataScience is a decentralized company. We don’t have an office. Everybody can work from home or from wherever they like, and they are not required to work any kind of specific hours.

They can work any hours they want as long as there’s results and the work that gets done. And that’s the culture we have. But what that means is that everybody’s all over the place. And you know, from Bali to South America, from Europe to the US, there’s people pretty much almost on every continent. I don’t think we just have anybody in Africa. Not yet. But basically everybody works from everywhere. And that means we don’t often get to see each other, not often get to be in one same place. And that’s why we have this annual ‘get together’ where for one week we choose our annual location in the world. We get together and we have workshops, do fun activities, and even have sessions where we just sit and do our normal work, but in an office type environment. So we get this feeling of being connected, being part of one community.

And that’s a fifth community that’s I’m going to be part of just in the space of two months. And as you can see, they’re all different from communities of business executives to data scientists, to online instructors, to HR and L&D years to the community, and I would even say family that we have in the SuperDataScience team.

And why I’m bringing all this up is that this gives me a very strong sense of belonging and hence the title of the episode, your tribe. And what that gives me and why I bring this all up is that it gives me a very strong sense of belonging, strong sense that I’m part of a community, part of something bigger than myself. And if you look at the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from bottom to top, they go from physiological needs like air, water, food, shelter, sleep to safety needs, personal security, employment, resources, health, property to love and belonging, friendship, intimacy, family, sense of connection, to esteem, which is respect, self-esteem, status, recognition, strength, freedom and to self-actualization, which is a desire to become more than one can become.

So these communities give me a sense of, they fulfill this middle layer in the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. Number three, which is love and belonging. Like I feel, I belong. Maybe, you know, maybe I try out a community and I don’t feel I belong and that’s okay. Then I move on to another one. But many of these, like the DataScienceGO family, the SuperDataScience team, the Udemy LIVE conference. I’ve been coming back to year after year, because I get something that I cannot get anywhere else, I get the sense of ‘yes, these are my people’. These are people that I can connect to. If I can relate to people, I understand people that I had shared certain things with, whether it’s values, purpose, ideas, passions and so on.

And what I want to ask you today is what gives you a sense of belonging? What is your tribe? Where do you feel at home? Is it a sports, activity that you do every week or every month? Is it some event that you go to every year? Is it some, is it your family at home? Is it your community at the workplace? And, and I think that it’s important to consider these things quite consciously because as data scientists, we can get quite carried away in a work. Even when we’re at the workplace, we can be so engaged, so sucked into these algorithms, which is great, which is a great way to learn and grow and contribute to the world. But at the same time you might be not connecting, communicating with the people around you, then you come home and then you’re learning more. You’re growing more. But at the same time, again, you’re in front of your computer, you’re creating visualizations, dashboards, algorithms, running code, learning scripts and so on and you’re not connecting.

So I encourage you to think about what communities, what tribes are you part of, where do you feel at home, how often do you get to have that feeling and what does it mean for you? What does it bring to you? And I’m sure once you ask yourself those questions, you will see the importance of being part of something bigger, part of a community, having the sense of belonging. You’ll see that it’s actually quite fulfilling to you as well. And then just decide how can you add more of that to your life? So these examples are again are quite extreme. It’s again, it just so happens that September, October are very busy and this is where all these events are piled up. But even if you can add a week, once a week or once a month or several times a core events like that or not, or like even just meetups that you can go to or things, things where you can feel that you are with people who understand you, who have similar needs or similar values, I think that can add a great deal of purpose and fulfilment to anybody’s life.

On that note, I hope you enjoyed today’s episode and I hope that gave you something to think about or some inspiration to go out there and meet some more people. Be more involved with the tribes, communities, families that you are already part of. And on that note, I can’t wait to see you back here next time. 

Next week, we’re actually going to have a very interesting, very special guest. I’m not going to reveal any more details about that, but wait and see. I think you’ll be quite surprised once you learn who’s coming on the show next week. So look forward to seeing you next time. And until then, happy analyzing.