Locally Optimistic hosts periodic events focused on data leadership, data tools, and making your team more effective. All Locally Optimistic meetups and events are remote and open to all community members.
Add all Locally Optimistic events to your calendar here, or check out upcoming and past events below. Community member Emilie Schario also created a Zap to add any new Locally Optimistic videos to Todoist.
Upcoming Data Leadership Events
- April 22, 2021
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🧩 LO Meetup: Data as a Product
April 22, 2021 2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
https://trove.zoom.us/j/97359119089?pwd=Z3dZcGFzTkxOdHNiVm4rL2FlSUhTUT09Emilie Schario and Taylor Murphy will talk about how and why to lead your data team like a product team. They'll walk through the basics with lots of time to answer all your questions about how to get started, how to manage the stakeholder transition, and what you can look forward to at the end of the rainbow.
Hope to see you there!
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- May 7, 2021
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👋 LO Meet and Greet 👋
May 7, 2021 3:00 pm - 4:00 pm
https://trove.zoom.us/j/97359119089?pwd=Z3dZcGFzTkxOdHNiVm4rL2FlSUhTUT09This event will be an opportunity to network and getting to know folks within the Locally Optimistic community. We are doing our best to create a structure that will make this event enjoyable for both introverts and extroverts, so if it helps you to think a bit more ahead of time, here are some of the questions we'll encourage you to chat about in small (2-3 person) groups, for short (8-10 minute) conversation rounds:
- Who are you and what's your current role?
- What is your favorite—and least favorite—part of your current role?
- What's a professional challenge you're looking forward to tackling this year?
- What's a topic you wish you knew more about?
- What's a topic you know a lot about and could teach others?Per popular request last time, we'll switch these up a bit between rounds, but we will continue to give you prompts to help guide conversations.
Hope to see you there!
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Past Locally Optimistic Events
Data Leadership Meetups
LO’s meetups are an opportunity for community members to lead conversations about data leadership topics important to them. If you are interested in leading a meetup or suggesting a topic, please join the conversation in #virtual-events in our Slack community – this is a great opportunity to start speaking about data topics in a low-risk way with an amazing community supporting you!
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Locally Optimistic Meetup - Data Consulting
What does it take to transition from a traditional corporate data role into freelancing or consulting? Scott Breitenother, Irina Kukuyeva, Michael Kaminsky, and Gabi Steele talk about their own transitions and how, when, and whether to make the leap. Hot takes on whether consulting is actually enjoyable, whether you should hire employees to grow your practice, and how much clients really want to know your opinions. -
Locally Optimistic Meetup - Negotiation
Molly Vorwerck leads a panel and conversation on negotiation tactics, particularly as it relates to salary and asking for what you want in the workplace. The panel participants include: Trupti Natu, Head of Strategy & Analytics, Risk at Uber; Nika Duan, Investor at Emerson Collective; & Joe Abbott, Group Manager, Product Marketing at Zendesk. -
Locally Optimistic Meetup - Data Product Managers
In this meetup, we dig into Data product managers - what makes a data PM successful, what kinds of teams can benefit from having one, and what are the challenges of adapting a traditional PM role to a data team? -
Locally Optimistic Meetup - Governance and Compliance
Sanjana Sen of Fishtown Analytics and Stephen Bailey of Immuta lead a conversation about compliance and data governance. How do various organizations handle data access control, data tagging, anonymization, and other key compliance activities? What are some frameworks to help think through key compliance and governance solutions? -
Locally Optimistic Meetup - Lean Data Science
Michael Kaminsky leads a conversation about Lean Data Science. How can you take an iterative, business metrics-driven approach to data science that delivers more value, more quickly?
Blog post: https://locallyoptimistic.com/post/lean-data-science/ -
Locally Optimistic Meetup - Linear v. Circular Projects
Alexis Johnson-Gresham and Caitlin Moorman lead a conversation about breaking down data projects into circular and linear tasks, and how to use that framework to improve stakeholder communication and project planning.
Blog post part 1: https://locallyoptimistic.com/post/linear-and-circular-projects-part-1/
Blog post part 2: https://locallyoptimistic.com/post/linear-and-circular-projects-part-2/
Tool Talks
LO’s Tool Talks are an opportunity for community members to learn about emerging data tools. They consist of a product demo and lots of time for community questions about the tool and uses cases, with both the tool’s team and actual users available to answer questions. If you are interested in leading a tool talk or suggesting a tool for us to feature, please join the conversation in #virtual-events in our Slack community!
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Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Census
Sean Lynch from Census talks about moving data back out of your data warehouse and into the tools your teams use every day. Includes Q&A from the community about why you might use Census, the new dbt integration, and upcoming improvements. -
Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Great Expectations
Sam Bail of Superconductive, the team behind https://greatexpectations.io, discusses how Great Expectations helps data teams eliminate pipeline debt through data testing, documentation, and profiling. We begin with a walk through of the tool, with lots of community-led Q&A and some sneak peeks of what is coming up for Great Expectations.
Slides from Sam's talk: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1_i4rQc-Z7fHGGnOfV2bufhkAeyJfY0RS/view?usp=sharing -
Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Iteratively
A conversation with Patrick Thompson and Ondrej Hrebicek of Iteratively (https://iterative.ly/about/) walk us through how to capture clean, consistent events data and answer questions from the Locally Optimistic community about Iteratively. -
Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Spectacles
Dylan Baker, Josh Temple, and Tom Miller talk about continuous integration and Looker, with their open source tool, Spectacles (https://www.spectacles.dev). -
Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Castor
A conversation with Tristan Mayer of Castor (https://en.castordoc.com/) about democratizing data, automating data dictionaries, and what's next for Castor. -
Locally Optimistic Tool Talk - Airflow for Beginners with Astronomer.io
A conversation with Viraj Parekh of Astronomer (https://www.astronomer.io) creates a basic Airflow job from scratch in 20 minutes and answers questions from the Locally Optimistic community about getting started with Airflow.
AMAs
LO’s AMAs are casual interviews with some of our amazing community members, who tell their stories about building and leading data teams, career progression, and their own data journeys. This series is on hold, but if you are interested in helping us revive AMAs, please speak up in #virtual-events in our Slack community!
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Locally Optimistic AMA: Matt Mazur
WordPress.com's Simon Ouderkirk sits down with Matt Mazur, Locally Optimistic community member, freelance data analyst, and serial entrepreneur, to discuss career journeys, analytics knowhow, and communication - also some laughs.
Sharp viewers will also catch Simon mixing up Trotsky and Tolstoy, classic!
You can find all of our content at https://www.locallyoptimistic.com/ -
Locally Optimistic AMA: Claire Carroll
WordPress.com's Simon Ouderkirk sits down with Claire Carroll, Locally Optimistic community member, dbt Community Manager and Analyst at Philadelphia based Fishtown Analytics to discuss career progression, learning from other teams, green flags and red flags, and of course, the infamous LEFT JOIN OR DIE t-shirt!
You can find all of our content at https://www.locallyoptimistic.com/ -
Locally Optimistic AMA: Taylor Murphy
Simon Ouderkirk of WordPress.com sits down with Taylor Murphy of Gitlab to discuss Analytics journeys, a data organization translation of DevOps, hiring for data roles, and moving from a leadership spot into an individual contributor role.
Ingest more great data and analytics content, and join our Slack community at https://www.locallyoptimistic.com/ ! -
Locally Optimistic AMA: Sam Swift
Simon Ouderkirk, Director of Data and Analysis at WordPress.com, sits down with Sam Swift of Bowery Farming to discuss working in data and analysis, the trouble with job titles, and the nature of negotiation within organizations. -
Locally Optimistic AMA: Caitlin Moorman
Caitlin Moorman joins Simon to discuss building a data team, thinking about how to help folks climb their own ladder, and the mysteries of measurement!
