Empowered by Data

Chapter TwoWhat Is an Analytics Community?

You are probably familiar with a number of communities around you—perhaps local sports clubs, a religious institution, or the physical community where you live. Now think about an analytics community; how does it differ from other communities we may know, and what are the similarities?

It's probably easiest to start with the similarities, highlighting those characteristics that can be found in most communities you encounter. In analytics communities, like-minded people come together around the topic of analytics, and they likely form interest groups for various subtopics, such as data engineering, data visualization, and communicating with data.

The most common trait of the many analytics communities I have encountered is that they all started with one or a few people who were passionate about data and analytics and who made it their goal to grow their own skills and those of the people around them while fostering a data culture in their organization.

Analytics communities come in all shapes and sizes, just like the organizations they are part of.

One such community I want to introduce you to has formed around the social data project #MakeoverMonday, which I cohosted with Andy Kriebel from 2017 to 2019 and that I now run with Charlie Hutcheson. How did the #MakeoverMonday community come about? How did it grow? What does it look like today? Along the way, we, the people leading #MakeoverMonday, learned a lot of lessons, lessons we will ...