Dear readers,

Before I start to describe my Bootcamp, let me briefly introduce myself.

My name is João. I’m 25 and I’m from Portugal. My background is in business administration and economics, and I’ve been working in innovation and investment consultancy. 

My passion for data analytics started when I took subjects such as Business Analytics and Quantitative Methods in my master’s. That passion grew even more when I joined KPMG and started to cooperate in several projects in business intelligence, AI, digital transformation and Industry 4.0, with companies of all sizes and from different industries.

While there, I think I realized that data analytics and AI are the future, and the reason why all companies are investing a lot in these fields is because the gains from being data-driven are enormous. For that reason, I’ve decided to join this Bootcamp; to gain knowledge on coding and machine learning. This is because, despite the fact that I’ve been in touch with these matters, it has only been in a strategic and theoretical way—I lacked technical knowledge.

I’m not going to lie. Before the course started I was really anxious and a bit nervous, because I’ve never coded in my entire life. But guess what? I’ve never written a diary either, and here I am, writing my Bootcamp diary (or at least trying to).

And that can truly describe this journey—challenging, even though I’m only at the end of the fourth week. Between Math & Stats, coding, exams, study, daily meetings with my teammates and the Capstone Project, the journey on this data science Bootcamp has been one of daily challenges.

But it has also been a journey of really nice experiences, even in difficult and strange times. Yes, I couldn’t forget to mention this “Corona” fellow who has ruined everyone’s life. In fact, I have learned a lot since the course began, and I’m just finishing my fourth week.

The learning curve is exponential! But that’s easy to explain: we have really good teachers, always open to answer all of our doubts, and it’s a very well-built course indeed. 

Furthermore, it has been a pleasure working with my teammates in the Capstone Project group, because at the beginning I thought that working at distance would be difficult. But the truth is that, despite the kilometers between us all, we’ve done really good work keeping each other close. 

And to wrap up, I would like to say that I’m very excited for what’s still to come, and I wish I could fly to Madrid in November to meet all my classmates and professors. Because if this journey has been excellent at a distance, I cannot imagine what it would be like in person.