Over the next upcoming years, the world around us will face more innovations than in the entire History. It’s big data + hardware + software, mind and machines. It’s the convergence of  Industry + Technology creating endless opportunities and increasing productivity  at a higher pace than ever. Disruptive technologies are reshaping how the work is done and it’s giving a competitive advantage to companies that are adopting and embracing them.

My name is Gabriela, I’m from Guatemala City and for the past five years I’ve worked in innovation and technological projects aligning business goals to drive process improvements, competitive advantage and bottom-line gains. Through out this years working as a consultant for different companies I realize the importance of data, as an strategic tool to make decisions. However, companies are still not getting all the advantages of “data” per se.  That’s when I decided that the next professional step was enroll in the Data Science Bootcamp at IE in Madrid.

Without any technical background I was immerse into the world of Data Science and the programing languages of Python and R. The format of the Program is highly intense, 9+ hours a day from Monday to Saturday,  allowing to take you from 0 to 100% in 3 months. I have to say, that it has open my eyes and give a understanding of the new market dynamic and its interactions with this engaging and dynamic data.

My Capstone Project: Measuring future impacts

We are now on week 9 out of 11;  the end is near and the stress is rising. We are preparing our Capstone Project, my group is measuring feature impacts on the likelihood of churn for Iberia  in order to understand why customers choose to leave, which can inform long-term retention initiatives for them. Preparing the final presentation of the Capstone project is though, there will be around 100 people from different companies, recruiters, headhunters, etc. Luckily we were able to have a Communication Story Telling Class with mentors from Boston Consulting Group , they gave us techniques to tackle the final presentation. To calm the stress a little bit we are applying our new inner communication techniques and choosing peace through meditation thought by our mentor in Resilience class.

This week in Machine Learning in Python we had our last exam. It’s amazing to look back to the first couple of weeks and see how well the class is structured, although there was struggle in the beginning, that struggle of understanding functions, numpy, pandas has paid its debt by allowing us to build analytics models turning vast amount of data into insights.

I have to say is worth it; continuous learning and incommodity are keys to continue growing and improving as a professional. Stepping out of comfort zones, facing incommodity, expands possibilities and knock new doors.

Interested in learning more about data science, machine learning in R & Python, and data storytelling? Click here for more information about our bootcamps! Also, don´t forget to discover the experience of other data science bootcampers!