Why Data Science and Why Now?

For the past 25 years, I have worked in marketing and business development, first in advertising and then in the media industry. Throughout that time, the use of technology to do these jobs has been steadily increasing and the responsibilities for using this technology has been spread further and further across organizations. Given that much of my career has been spent doing business-to-business marketing, these trends have affected me at a slower rate. I recently decided that it’s time for me to get with the program.

The goal: gain appropriate knowledge to be productive in the digital age.

Once I determined this goal, I started to look around at the educational opportunities that were available to me. There are a myriad of classes to learn about the tech tools that are available, ranging in time and specificity. As I searched for the right solution, I knew that a quick 5 day certification course was not enough and getting another university degree was too much. So, my quest concentrated longer term programs and eventually on immersive classes, sometimes called bootcamps.

To decide which class was right, I had to determine what I needed to learn. I spoke with several former colleagues to understand the tools that were most important, and I tried to match those up to the available courses. I found 2 varieties of bootcamps teaching some of these tools:

• Data Science Bootcamps
• Data Analytics Bootcamps

After looking at the content from these two options, I decided to go with Data Science. There were several reasons behind my choice, but my decision came down to this — you can always learn some specific later, but it is best to have a broader base from which to build on. I know that I may never build data science code in the real world, but it is important that I understand how it is done so I can work most effectively with the teams who do so.