I’ve spent the last couple weeks seriously flying through prerequisites, mostly focusing on Python and statistics (including statistics using Python), then last night I got this message: Crap. Berkeley was really my top choice and most of my focus was on preparing for their program. This response, plus a few other discussions I’ve had, really confirmed something that I was…
Online Course Platforms: My impressions
As I work my way through the prerequisites for a Data Science program, I am taking several different courses on different platforms, including edX, Udacity, and Coursera. I have to say up front that I didn’t go through every course to see every option, this is what I found on the Python, math, algorithm, and Data Science basics courses I…
Prerequisites
Data science is a pretty intense field to get into. Most degree programs really prefer you to have an undergraduate degree in computer science, statistics, or some other related field. Some schools required college credit in certain topics, but most were ok with professional experience, passing a proficiency exam, or a certificate from an online course. Some of them are…
Selection criteria
Now that I was (mostly) sure I wanted to take data science as major, it was time to start shopping programs.I tried to be thorough. I searched a number of schools and types of programs. I started out looking at “boot camps”, since I already had a master’s degree and several years of experience. It seemed unusual to go for…
Picking the major
Getting a degree was not a foregone conclusion. I wanted to make sure I was doing the right thing before I sunk that kind of time and money into it, so I got on a few platforms to check out the offerings. I landed on the IBM Data Science cert on edX. It was 9 classes covering a variety of…
A change of direction
Well, this is probably when I lose any followers I still have. Almost two years since my last post, and I’m about to change everything this blog is about. To pass time during the pandemic, I’d signed up for a certification course in product management, which is kind of what I do now. I thought maybe it would help me…
Market Communications: The Voice of Your Business
Last time, I addressed the first support pier of the Business Bridge, Product-to-Market Fit. If you haven’t read it, I would highly recommend reading it before you read this one. One of the big mistakes I see in new entrepreneurs is they worry about their website, their photos, their descriptions, and their branding before they know they have Product-to-Market fit…
Product-to-Market Fit: The Foundation of your Business
This is where successful businesses start. It’s the equivalent of the foundation that goes under a building or the roots under a tree. Everything else your business ever does is to support this one thing. Without it, you have nothing to communicate to customers and you have no operations that need to run smoothly. Customers won’t even start the journey without…
The Business Bridge: Supporting the Customer Journey
The last several posts have been on the Customer Journey, which is about how the customer sees and interacts with your business on their way from total stranger to loyal customer who tells all their friends about you. Each post had several ways to help move the customer along to the next stage. The reason I talked SO much about…
The Target Market Montage
Before I dig into the next series of posts on the three pillars that “hold up” the Business Bridge, I wanted to touch on Target Market one more time. It’s a major component in Product-to-Market fit that a lot of people struggle with. In this post, I’ll describe a few different ways of looking at target market, and hopefully one…