Summer of Data Science 2017

Since Memorial Day in the U.S. is the unofficial start of the summer season, I figured today would be a good time to launch the SUMMER OF DATA SCIENCE 2017!!!

The Summer of Data Science is a commitment to learn something this summer to enhance your data science skills, and to share what you learned. (Those of you in the Southern Hemisphere will have to pick up the excitement when we’re winding down during our fall/your spring and keep it going! Or, join us during your Winter of Data Science!)

For those of you who haven’t been following me for years, a hashtag I started back in 2015, #SoDS, is actually one of the things that started growing my twitter following. Here’s the history:

Coming up with the hashtag

1st month of tweets, May 2015 Storified

June 2015 #SoDS Storify

Unfortunately, I didn’t keep up the ‘Storification’ after that, but you get the idea. It brought a bunch of us together to share our learning progress. We learned from each other, encouraged each other, and most of all geeked out about data science together!

I didn’t launch one last year, because I was starting a new job and taking a break from recording the podcast, and just didn’t want to take on too much. But I missed it, so I didn’t want to let another year pass without a Summer of Data Science, so we’re going to do it together again this year!

So, here are the only “rules”:

How to participate in the Summer of Data Science:

  1. Pick a thing or a short list of things related to data science that you want to learn more about this summer.
  2. Make a plan to learn it (like an online course, a practice project, etc.).
  3. Share that plan on social media, then post updates as you make progress, with the hashtag #SoDS17.

That’s it! (And yes, there’s a chef competition that used the same hashtag. No worries! Enjoy the food pics.)

If you’re looking for ideas for learning projects or topics, check out the Data Science Learning Club! Please write about your learning experiences and share in the Data Science Learning Club #SoDS forum, and/or on your own blog, and share on social media. I’ll check out the hashtag on twitter regularly and RT others. I’ll be participating myself, too!

Here’s a link to the hashtag on twitter: #SoDS17. See you there!

P.S. Did you know that there is a “Summer of Data Sci” song? :D

P.P.S. There are now Summer of Data Science 2017 t-shirts and tanks in the Becoming a Data Scientist teespring shop!

UPDATE: Here is a twitter Moment with a selection of tweets from the #SoDS17 participants this year! (It starts out with a bunch of intro tweets from me, but click through to twitter and keep scrolling!)

1 Comment

  1. Chaitanya Bapat
    Jun 3, 2017

    Amazing! Keen to join the bandwagon! Hopefully it helps me improve!