Day 1:

Exciting journey starts on the 7th June for the solo purpose of not ruin a Bank Holiday. First day involves a general introduction by Crag Bloodworth, whom being CTO at TIL is trying to be the dumbest guy so he can help everyone. The setup of the equipment and account is routine.

Afternoon introduction by Tom Brown is insightful, where he demonstrated the open and sharing structure at TIL, knowing the operation details of TIL on the first day is very honest and transparent approach. And table tennis skill ranking is taken seriously at TIL.

Last session of the day finishes with writing up personal bio, coupled with huge amount of practice on self introduction, someone is having a lot of interesting past work experiences.

Day 2:

Getting to meet members of previous DS cohort (practice self introduction), key takeaway are - take holidays and avoid burnout.

In the afternoon, we had our first training session done by Carl Allchin, introduction to data prep fundamentals. We learned desirable format of data table - same measure should be in the same column. Also we learned along the way, that Carl has strong tendency to lead discussion of the tangent, so we should learn to interrupt.

Day 3:

Meeting the HR, other than the standard health and safety information while working at the company, TIL also offer mental health support, both internally and externally. The company also provide very generous, above average maternity/paternity package. The only bad news from the meeting is that the Christmas Party has been delayed to the following year (again).

We also being introduced to mental and pod at TIL, former being one to one support within the company while the later is more of social group (feeling the Hogwarts vibe anybody?)

Afternoon, we were meeting our lovely instructor Carl again, this time on the session about Alteryx workflow and data cleaning. We learned the Select tool is the jack of all trade and Quokka is really really cute.

Day 4:

Continue with the previous day learning on Alteryx, we attempted a task with much bigger workflow structure.

Afternoon session being lead by Peter Gamble-Beresford (PGB), we had our introduction into the reporting and spatial tools within Alteryx. The later being the strength of Alteryx while the former is a bit lacking currently in graphics production.

Day 5:

Project day - first day of really pressure and panic. Since it were our first week, Andy Kriebel gave us a task - find additional data source to improve our original data school application viz. Presentation at 1pm.

Panic ensued within the group - I don't have my original data?! (Tip: on Tableau public, in download options, choose download data)

We have learned some hard lesson:

1: Be able to find additional data is hard, but valuable skill.

2: The importance of data structure, it makes join data much easier.

3: The ability to clear and join data in Alteryx is immensely more powerful than copy and paste within Excel.

We capped off our 1pm presentation to DS23 group about our original application and our work done today. Then we had opportunity to attend their project presentation to external client, where valuable Tableau skills and tricks are learned. Also it showed us the path ahead, getting into the Data School is the first step, hard work is the second, but we will get there.