Future Experiments

Based on our lessons learned from previous events we intend to explore the following experiments with our facilitation approaches.

Hack/Project Pitching

Our current approaches for dividing people into hack/project teams is to have some participants get up in front of the room to pitch their ideas. Despite our efforts to help ease people slowly into this process, for example by inviting people into small group sharing of ideas, this process still requires the individual to get up in front of everyone to talk through what might be an incompletely formed idea in a short amount of time.

Here are some ideas for future experimentation:

• invite people with project ideas to prepare one or two slides in a shared slide repository. The slides should contain brief information on the person's name, their main ideas and goals, and possibly an image to illustrate their ideas. We think this could help people to remember each other's ideas and might minimize anxiety about getting up in front of the room.
• offer to have an organizing committee member help people get clear on their ideas and possibly act as a surrogate presenter for that person, based on notes or a slide that the person prepares

Complexity Theory

Convey early in the event that we are swimming in a complex (not complicated) space as data scientists. There is no one prescribed pathway and no one to lead us through the messiness. So the way we operate in that space is to assess where we are, explore what is possible, and design simple experiments, some of which will succeed and others that are bound to fail. Then we amplify the successes and avoid the failures moving forward, knowing the landscape may change at any time and we'll have to adapt. This helps us embrace the notion that failure is both expected and part of the process of moving forward. See this book

Distributed Mentoring

Explore the concepts in this book