[2024.09] Data Umbrella Newsletter: September 2024

We organize data science events for the community.

Sep 03, 2024

Data Umbrella is a non-profit global community for underrepresented persons in data science. We organize online data science events for the community. All levels are welcome. Our Code of Conduct applies to all of our spaces.

Announcements

Community News

Breaking Down Barriers to Belonging for Women of Color in Tech

Women of color continue to be underrepresented in the tech industry. In this article, the author describes the findings from her doctoral research on workplace belonging. The goal of the study was to measure the level of workplace belonging reported, the top belonging contributors and detractors, and to identify recommendations to increase it.

Official AnitaB.org Organizational Restructuring Statement

AnitaB.org, a non-profit whose mission envisions a future where the people who imagine and build technology mirror the people and societies for whom they build it, announced that they have conducted a restructuring that includes a reduction in force affecting a significant proportion of their workforce.

Source: Stacy Devino on LinkedIn: Official AnitaB.org Organizational Restructuring Statement - AnitaB.org

Resources

Text Analysis Pedagogy Institute 2024

Welcome to the Text Analysis Pedagogy (TAP) Institute, your gateway to mastering text analysis and data skills across disciplines. Whether you're an instructor or librarian looking to enhance your teaching repertoire, TAP Institute offers a FREE series of courses and webinars tailored to your needs.

OSPOs for Good 2024 Highlights

OSPOs for Good conference was at the UN HQ in NYC in July 2024.
Check out the videos!

Qiskit SDK by IBM Quantum

The open-source Qiskit SDK provides tools for mapping problems to quantum circuits and preparing for execution. Qiskit also provides services to run, optimize, and orchestrate quantum workloads.

Timestamps

We would like to thank the following community members for their timestamps contributions:

Sam Miyamoto for the video Visualizing Energy Transitions (Exploring Climate Change).
Susan Maina for the video Build with Gemini, an LLM Model

CONTRIBUTE TO TIMESTAMPS: We still have about a dozen videos which need timestamps. We have instructions on how you can contribute to this project on GitHub. Help us help the community. Pick a video and get started.

Call for Suggestions

Do you have suggestions for future webinar topics or speakers? Would you like to speak on a topic? For these and any other suggestions, please complete our Online Suggestion Box or email us at info@dataumbrella.org.

Call for Speakers

We are looking for speakers on the following topics:

Data Privacy
Data Engineering
Generative AI
Software engineering
Code quality

Email us if you are interested in speaking or have a speaker or topic suggestion: info@dataumbrella.org

Join our Meetup!

Upcoming Events (free & online webinars)

Best Practices for Creating a Data Science Team

September 10, 2024

Most data projects fail, often without reaching production or delivering business outcomes. Many companies, in their pursuit to be data-driven, adopt an "upside-down approach," leading to wasted resources and no return on investment. Success hinges on four key elements: a strong data culture, the right problem, accurate data, and the right people.

This session will define the "upside-down approach," explore what constitutes a good data culture, and discuss identifying the right business problems. Finally, we'll offer strategies for maintaining a robust data culture to ensure long-term success.

Polars for Data Analysis in Python

October 8, 2024

Discover Polars, the high-performance DataFrame library revolutionizing data analysis in Python. Built on Rust, Polars offers unparalleled speed and efficiency, outperforming pandas, Dask, and even PySpark. Explore its innovative features like lazy evaluation, memory efficiency, and automatic multi-threading, designed to handle large datasets with ease.

In this session, you'll learn practical techniques for data manipulation and advanced transformations. We will demonstrate Polars' syntax and capabilities, making it accessible even if you’re new to Polars. Join us to elevate your Python data analysis to the next level.

Videos

In case you missed our recent events, the videos have been posted. Subscribe to our Data Umbrella YouTube to receive notifications when the videos premiere.

Why Knowledge Graphs Are Hot Right Now

NOTE: A link to the slides is in the video description.

Take a look at our recent insightful presentation on the rising popularity of knowledge graphs. The talk delves into the various facets of knowledge graphs, including their traditional uses for data integration, search, and discovery, as well as their modern applications in decision-making, analytics, and predictions. We will explore the sudden surge of interest in knowledge graphs and the interplay with AI trends. Additionally, it looks beyond LLMs and RAG to gain a broader perspective on the role of knowledge graphs as we go forward in the data landscape. This session provides a comprehensive understanding of why knowledge graphs are currently a hot topic in the tech industry.

Featured Resources

Video Playlists

Data Umbrella Resources

Visit our blog site: blog.dataumbrella.org, and see articles written by our community members on their experience in recent sprints.
We have a Job Board. You can post jobs (for free)
Our Data Umbrella YouTube is growing! Subscribe to our channel to receive notifications of when our event videos are posted.

Accessibility Corner

Accessibility Update: Closed Captioning

Our webinars have closed captioning available! This feature makes our live events more accessible to those with hearing needs and for folks in general who like to see the transcript live during presentation to fully process information.