Side Effects of a Year of Blogging - posit::conf(2023)
Presented by Millie Symns A big part of being in the R community is sharing your knowledge in different forums, no matter how big or small. So what better way to do that than a blog? And what better way than using R and Posit products to build and maintain that blog and website? This was the route I took to challenge myself in putting myself out there more in the community to find my voice, share my knowledge and learn new things. In this talk, I will reflect on lessons learned and gains I have spent the past year blogging and sharing my website for all to see. The side effects include professional and personal benefits - from a clear profile of my skills to the progression of the development of my art. You may leave inspired to try the challenge for yourself. Presented at Posit Conference, between Sept 19-20 2023, Learn more at posit.co/conference. -------------------------- Talk Track: It takes a village: building and sustaining communities. Session Code: TALK-1130
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Transcript#
This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors.
Hello, everyone. Thanks for being here today. My name is Millie Sense, and I will be talking about a challenge that I created for myself last year, which was to create a website and a blog once a month for an entire year. So I'll be going over what I learned about myself and a lot of things just like in the process.
Before I get there, I want to bring you back to a point earlier in this year where a group of my friends, we all went to Puerto Rico for a bachelor party, and one of the activities was to go on a hike. It was not like any hike that I've been on before, where there were clear trails to walk on. We were climbing over rocks, crossing streams and rivers, and it was a lot, but nevertheless, we persisted with our guide who brought us to this beautiful waterfall, the most gorgeous thing I've ever seen. At some point, he says, oh, well, you could get closer to that waterfall. You just got to kind of climb a cliff, and there will be a pool area, you could swim and be under the waterfall.
So at first, I was just like, nah, I'm not going to do that. That's a lot. That's scary. I don't want to do that. So watching my friends start climbing, I was like, okay, I guess I could do that, too. And to my own surprise, I actually did climb, and I got up there. I got up at this beautiful pool area, and it was a good example of that I could do hard things, too, if I just go ahead and do it.
So I guess you're wondering, okay, waterfall, blogs, what is this connection? These two things were my own stretch points. There were times in which I decided to go ahead and do something, even though I didn't really think it was possible.
Background and journey to the R community
So before blogging, I was in the education space. I worked at the City University of New York, and at IBM, I was doing education research and program evaluation. And now I'm currently a senior data analyst at Thinks. I'm moving to the analytics engineering space, for the most part. And towards the end of my time in education, I became a very big fan of the open source community. And now I feel like I can say I'm an R community contributor. Like, I have a blog now, and I am presenting to you all at the conference. This is crazy.
But I didn't really know about this whole community until I got to attend the conference in 2020. I was introduced to R at the City University of New York, because we spent some time transitioning our projects from Stata to R. So I learned just enough to do my job well, but I didn't know that there were so many other things that you could do until I was able to come to this conference.
And just like how I feel like I would say that you all are experiencing this week of like really beautiful talks that are informative and inspiring about how we are all using the same tools in very different ways, I had that experience, too, in 2020. I got introduced to the cross between data and art and education. I got to learn more about how to not repeat yourself in reports and be more efficient. And also learning all the millions of ways that you can use R Markdown that I had no idea you could do before.
So at this point in my journey, I would say I was heavily into the observer role. I was happily taking in all of this information and really excited about it. At the same time, I really wanted to be a contributor. I wanted to be like the cool big kids that were like doing all the cool stuff. Like I wanted to be a part of it, and I felt really inspired. But there were so many options. I didn't know where to start, what to do, how to go about it. So similar to my panic at this waterfall at the cliff, I kind of took a step back and was just like, no, I'm not going to do that.
But an idea never really dies, at least in my opinion. So after the conference, you know, we go through a global pandemic, and I changed jobs and changed sectors. I started doing lots of, like, webinars and doing some of my own professional development online and attending meetups, a lot of virtual meetups online. And the idea and the thought of building this website just kind of kept popping up. And so at some point, I was like, all right, I guess I'll just do it. Because the hardest part of anything, I think, is really just to start.
Because the hardest part of anything, I think, is really just to start.
The blogging challenge
So with all things are really big. I like to catch them in structure as much as I can. So I created this challenge for myself where I was going to, you know, just create and publish a website. I was going to write a blog post once a month for an entire year. And I chose this format because it was long enough for me to be able to jump in and have time to learn and try new things, but also short enough so that it's not, like, overwhelming. And it was just 12 blog posts that felt achievable. And then lastly, I wanted to make sure that I shared that blog publicly on LinkedIn and Twitter because I also wanted this to be an opportunity for me to talk about myself more and put myself out there. Because this is also, like, my first time kind of just, like, putting myself out there on the Internet. Because I didn't really have to before. But now that I've, like, switched sectors, it's kind of hard to talk about what it is that my expertise is without having a platform.
Building a brand
So thinking about the side effects of all of this, I think there were a lot of things that I learned and experienced. But the ones that I'm going to focus on today is related more to, like, professional development. So three things that I learned was how to build my brand. Figure out my niche in this big data space. And how to build and maintain this website.
So when it came to my brand, or just, like, putting the website together and all, I was, like, okay, well, how am I going to introduce myself here? Like, what is Millie? So I had, like, a guiding question for myself, like, what do I want to be known for? And I broke that down to, like, what is it that I do? Who am I? And who would I like to become, like, as a professional? And these were the questions that I was, like, asking myself and the answers that I would use in order to, like, build that, like, home, like, land page and bio.
So I knew that I wanted to showcase my expertise in education and higher education especially. But I also wanted to show that I'm a multifaceted human. I like a lot of things. And I also wanted to showcase that I do care about societal issues. I want all of these things to kind of be incorporated all in one. So when it came to my home page, I basically took three sentences for those three questions and just, like, wrote an answer to each one. And that became kind of, like, my elevator pitch for my site. And then into, like, the about me section, same concept, but now I just have that broken out bigger in little paragraphs. So you get to know who I am and what I care about, details on what I do professionally, and a little bit about me personally. I like watching turtles sunbathe. It's one of my favorite things.
Finding a niche and blog content
So after figuring out, okay, this is how I'm going to showcase myself on this site, now, how am I showing up once a month for a year? I didn't know really what it is that I wanted to, like, write about. So I decided to have this, like, guiding question to think through, well, how do I want people to experience me?
So I did lots of I spent lots of time looking at different websites from all over across the community. So there were students that were showcasing what they were learning in classes and a little bit of, like, small projects on their site, to professors showing their whole curriculum portfolio online, or even folks in the community giving, like, really detailed guided tutorials on how to do anything that you can think of or any problem that you're having. And with looking at all of that inspiration, I also wanted to think about what my strengths are and what I could, like, showcase. But also what I wanted to learn, because this whole thing was a learning experience for me.
So with that, I got these, like, kind of, like, keywords of how it is that I want to show up. And so I knew that I want information to be in small bites. I want it to be, like, short and sweet. People can, like, read it within five minutes or so. It was really important for me to have it be friendly and approachable. And I also wanted to showcase, like, my big picture thinking. And so that's where I landed on this title for my blog, called deviations outside of the norm. Because, you know, who doesn't like a cute play on words with stats? And I wanted to showcase it that way to say, like, this will be a data blog of some sort, but it might not be like the ones that you've come across, because I'm going to capture it in a lot of different things. And I also feel like I'm a little bit of a deviation outside of the norm.
So my opening blogs, I started off with something I felt really confident about and I could talk about for hours. And it is logic models. Which I think is very important for anyone who's working in any sort of programming to have a logic model so that you know what it is that your outcomes are and how you're going to go about it. And then for my second post, I did do, like, a little tutorial, but I couched it in, like, a bigger story and a bigger lesson. So it was more than just, you know, how to make a Gantt chart. And as time progressed, I, like, really, like, gave some time into showing up with my art. Because I also thought this would be, like, a cool opportunity for me to just dig a little bit more. Because in that 2020 conference, I got introduced to Allison Horst, who I love her art so much. And she was doing all the things that I, like, envisioned or, like, wanted to do for myself. So this was, like, my way to, like, challenge myself to also bring in art into my cute little data space.
Building and maintaining the website
So lastly, with building and maintaining a website. So definitely big thanks to Allison Hill. She spent some time with me as we crossed paths in IBM for a second to just, like, sit down and help me walk through connecting my project through GitHub and connecting it to Netlify. And then I had the fun part of figuring out everything else.
And that meant a lot of, like, not understanding how to do things, lots of breaking things. Deep appreciation and also pain with Git. This was also my first opportunity to really dig into Git as well. In my previous jobs, I haven't had to use it. I mean, I'm still struggling. But it at least is helpful while you have a project that you care about to couch it in that.
So I got introduced to other packages as well. As I was, like, trying to learn things and also write blog posts. So this bigger project became smaller projects within smaller projects. And just kind of built up on all these things that I got to learn that I feel like will be transferable wherever it is that I go.
So when it comes to resources for making websites, blogs, for a site like mine that uses Hugo, Allison Hill has really great posts on this. She, like, details exactly what it is that you need to do. But if you are looking to do something a little bit more simpler, there is Distill and Andreas Handel and Thomas Malk has some sites that have a guided tutorial. But better yet, of course, try Quarto. And I highly recommend Isabella Velasquez's site, because she has a whole site that is about helping you get to the point of having Quarto be the base for your own website and blog.
From observer to contributor
So thinking about this journey of going from observer to contributor, I chose a website for my own specific reasons, for my own professional development, and wanted to pivot out of the education space. But I think there are so many ways that anyone can contribute. And these are just a small few out of the many ways in which you could do it. But generative art, doing lunch and learns at work, package development, or doing virtual or in-person meetups are all the ways and more to really move from that transition of being an observer and start going into the contributor realm.
So I leave you with this question of, like, what is your waterfall? What is that stretch point that you have for yourself? What have you been thinking about doing for a while for yourself and the community? And really dig into that thought. Because one of the things I think that I have learned in this whole experience of building this website is that at any point in my art journey, I could have inputted my voice in there. And it would have been of value. And someone else would have also wanted to hear it. So take this as your sign to get creative and do that thing that you've been thinking about for a long time. Because there is someone else that needs to hear your voice, too.
So take this as your sign to get creative and do that thing that you've been thinking about for a long time. Because there is someone else that needs to hear your voice, too.
Q&A
Thank you, Millie. So a couple of questions from the audience. Number one, what was the turning point for you that made you just start the process to finally create your website? Any significant motivation or single event that fueled it?
It was... Well, I think... I think Allison Hill also telling me that it would be helpful. Because she was talking about how she was in the process of trying to hire some data scientists. And she said, like, it just makes a difference for someone to just have, like, an online platform for people to browse through. And after hearing it so many times. And then when your idol, you know, really comes up and she's like, yeah, you should do it. And it's like, well, I guess I'll have to do it then. Like, geez. So that was the moment for me.
Question number two. How do you maintain a blog and personal morale, even if nobody seems to read your posts? This is one of my biggest anxieties.
So for me, I basically pretended like I was in my own part of the internet where no one read it. And I was okay with that. Because, like, I'm learning something and I'm putting posts out there. So I just really couched it. I'm like, this is something that I'm doing for me. And then it was a happy bonus when folks would be like, oh, my gosh, I really love this post. Or a friend of mine told me that he was literally sending posts to his supervisee for reference. Oh, yeah, Millie has a thing. You should go ahead and do that. And I'm just like, why are you doing this? I was like, oh, you really like this. People would be, like, looking forward to the next post. So people are out here on the internet looking at the site. That's crazy.
But, yeah, no, I did it for me. And I think that helped with my anxiety. Because otherwise, if I put my value into how many views there are, and I don't check how many people get into the site or anything like that, then it would feel a little bit different for me. And I would have a different kind of anxiety. But when you do it for yourself, I feel like it should be okay.