Why spend part of your career in non-clinical statistics?
What are the advantages?
What is the importance of having a variety of tools?
In this episode, Sam and I talk about the advantages of spending time in the non-clinical areas and other important points:
- Work on tremendous amount of variety with you can do with non-clinical statistics.
- Ability to have influence in the organization
- Be able to build a larger network and improve soft skills
- Have the love for engineering and physical sciences
Listen to this episode and share this with your friends and colleagues!
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Transcript
My Learnings From Organising The 2nd Conference Of The Effective Statistician – Part 1
[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of The Effective Statistician. And today I want to talk about a conference. [00:00:10] This conference happened this week, The Effective Statistician Conference. And it was the second conference since we did a similar one [00:00:20] last year in April today. And today I want to share seven learnings that I have from this conference.
[00:00:28] Alexander: Especially, actually, [00:00:30] From the preparation for this conference, as I’m recording this before we get the conference going, so just before the conference going, [00:00:40] first, a lot of communication is needed to get through to people. I don’t know how many LinkedIn posts I did, how many [00:00:50] emails all these kinds of different things we did to make sure that people become aware about the conference.
[00:00:58] Alexander: And of course, [00:01:00] in a great organization, it is very, very similar. It’s probably already similar in a, in a smaller organization. Yeah. [00:01:10] It always takes effort to reach people. And very often you need to have multiple channels, so [00:01:20] just one channel, for example, having it mentioned in just one meeting or something like this is usually not enough.
[00:01:28] Alexander: If you want to, [00:01:30] for example, make sure that everybody learns about the latest updates on the SAP template or certain other [00:01:40] things that happen in your business, just mentioning it once. Will not help to reach everybody [00:01:50] and you need to speak to the different needs of the different people Yeah, speak about what’s in it for them And [00:02:00] here, of course, personal brand matters a lot.
[00:02:04] Alexander: I can see that the different speakers that have a big brand, they, of [00:02:10] course, attract much more people to join the conference. They get a lot more traction in terms of making the conference known, all [00:02:20] these kind of different things. So, invest in your personal brand. That will make a big difference for you over [00:02:30] the careers that you have.
[00:02:33] Alexander: Think learning, always have a plan B. So there was one speaker who couldn’t make it and kind of [00:02:40] last minute. And so you need to have a plan B. And yeah, it was pretty good too. I have a network where I can [00:02:50] pull on and that helped me to quickly fill that spot with another outstanding speaker. Not that this is a kind of a speaker that [00:03:00] was kind of second, second league, for sure not, absolutely top notch speaker.
[00:03:06] Alexander: But if you have a good plan B there, then that helps a [00:03:10] lot. And that leads me to lesson number three. It is awesome to have a great network. So [00:03:20] create your own network. If you have a great network, then whenever these kind of things come up, you can rely on this network. [00:03:30] So to all the different speakers, I reached out personally and that’s how I got the people to say this, and that is how I got the people [00:03:40] to contribute some time from there.
[00:03:43] Alexander: Usually very busy calendars to do a presentation at my conference. I hardly [00:03:50] ever get a no, which is really, really good. And I’ll speak about that in my last lesson. Fourth lesson. [00:04:00] Learn from the past. In the first conference, I’ve done a five hour marathon, and I’ll not do that again. So [00:04:10] we’ll have we will have had, I don’t know how I should say it as we are recording this before the conference, but as the time you are listening to this, the conference is [00:04:20] already over.
[00:04:21] Alexander: So we applied some changes based on the learnings. Instead of having five hours in one go, which is quite a lot of time. I [00:04:30] split it into three, three hour sections and that makes it much easier to handle. I also made sure that the [00:04:40] recording in Zoom is automatically starting. I had that last time where I was completely kind of [00:04:50] overwhelmed with all the different tasks.
[00:04:51] Alexander: So I forgot. To record the first parts of the conference, which was really a shame because there were some outstanding speakers there.[00:05:00] I also built in some buffer before I start the conference. So the days that I’m doing the conference, I [00:05:10] have less meetings and especially I block time just before the conference.
[00:05:15] Alexander: Kicks off the hour, so that I can go really [00:05:20] relaxed into the conference. Lesson number five, delegate and build a team around what you do. For this conference, I [00:05:30] had much more help from my team from VVS. So there’s a people that help with me in the background and it was outstanding. So [00:05:40] that made a lot of things much easier.
[00:05:43] Alexander: We could do much more in terms of promotion much more in terms of visuals, much more in [00:05:50] terms of episodes, all these kinds of different things. And that makes a huge difference.
[00:05:57] Alexander: Lesson number six.[00:06:00] Could have basically more or less just repeated the last year’s conference but instead I look to nearly double it [00:06:10] in size. So instead of having five hours, we have nine hours. Awesome. And don’t be afraid to ask, you know, the big names the [00:06:20] VPs of companies. They volunteered their time, which is outstanding.
[00:06:26] Alexander: So don’t be afraid to ask. Don’t be [00:06:30] afraid to think bigger. Only if you allow yourself to think bigger, to go for these. Bigger targets, [00:06:40] bigger goals, only then you can reach them. If you directly set yourself up for reaching something smaller, you can’t actually reach something [00:06:50] bigger. So think and plan bigger.
[00:06:54] Alexander: And the last lesson is, our statistics community is [00:07:00] just Awesome. I love it how people share their insights, provide time, help others through this [00:07:10] conference. I really, really love our global community of statisticians, data scientists, programmers that all love to [00:07:20] contribute to our shared knowledge, our overall shared goal of making sure that We [00:07:30] have better health care for patients and this just makes me really, really confident for the future in terms of health care.[00:07:40]
[00:07:40] Alexander: It. It makes me humble and it makes me just really, really excited about the future. [00:07:50] And I really want to help this community much more. So for the next conference I [00:08:00] already said that we will have. Contributed sessions, so there you can share your insights, your [00:08:10] experience, your help to the community as well.
[00:08:14] Alexander: And I want to have more trainings. in the effective [00:08:20] statistician academy. I will talk about that a little bit further in the next episodes and also over the next weeks. If you want [00:08:30] to become part of this academy as a trainer, as a As a teacher, as someone that shares knowledge and [00:08:40] provides helpful tips to our community, then please send me an email to alexander at the effective statistician dot com.
[00:08:48] Alexander: And then we can go [00:08:50] from there. If you already have A material that is usually great and then we can start from there and set up a nice course. [00:09:00] So stay tuned for more updates on the academy. Thanks so much if you listen to this on a Friday. [00:09:10] Have an awesome weekend. I will definitely celebrate what happened with the conference.
[00:09:16] Alexander: As I’m recording this, we have already [00:09:20] over 650 registrations. I’m pretty sure it will increase even more beyond that. I’m already so grateful for everything that [00:09:30] happened. I can only believe it will be a great conference unless something really, really terrible happens. And so for that, [00:09:40] enjoy your weekend and be an effective statistician.
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When my mother is sick, I want her to understand the evidence and being able to understand it.
When I get sick, I want to find evidence that I can trust and that helps me to have meaningful discussions with my healthcare professionals.
I want to live in a world, where the media reports correctly about medical evidence and in which society distinguishes between fake evidence and real evidence.
Let’s work together to achieve this.
