Data Community of Practice Conference

Data Community of Practice Conference

April 20-21

What's This Event All About?

Over the last few years, data users from across CU have come together to learn, network and connect. This spring, we are bringing this Data Community of Practice together In Real Life (IRL) for a two-day mini-conference in Boulder. Data experts, data consumers, data users, data newbies or just the data curious are welcome to attend.

We will have tech training, lightning talks from around CU, topical breakout sessions and a keynote from associate research scientist, W. Carson Byrd, on the role of data and analytics in advancing campus diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.

We will also have plenty of time to meet fellow data friends and learn from one another. Please join us!

Register for the Data Community of Practice Conference
Registration for day one training has been closed. Please join us on day two!

Participants can register for one or both days. Parking details and instructions will be emailed to registrants closer to the conference date. Scheduled breakfasts, coffee breaks and lunches will be provided. Click here for Village Center Multipurpose Room details and directions.

Interested in presenting at this conference? Check out the "Sko & Tell" Lightning Talks details below.

Time	Event
8:30-9 a.m.	Breakfast (provided) & Conference Welcome
9 a.m.-Noon	Training Morning Session Short break around 10 a.m.
Noon-1:30 p.m.	Lunch (provided)
1:30-4:30 p.m.	Training (continued) Afternoon Session Short break around 2:30 p.m.

Time	Event
8:30-9 a.m.	Breakfast (provided)
9-10:30 a.m.	Keynote Speaker
10:30-11 a.m.	Coffee Break (provided)
11 a.m.-Noon	"Sko & Tell" Lightning Talks
Noon-1:30 p.m.	Lunch (provided)
1:30-3:30 p.m.	Breakout Sessions

"Sko & Tell" Lightning Talks

An opportunity to surface interesting business problems, learn from one another and hear solutions.

We know you have data questions and data challenges. Use this time to share your particular business problem in an open, receptive "Sko and Tell" setting with your data-using peers. To submit a proposal, please fill out the link below. Please note that space is limited and each talk will be 8-9 minutes.

Submit a Proposal

person speaking at podium to an audience

W. Carson Byrd headshot

Keynote Speaker - W. Carson Byrd

Associate Research Scientist | Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education | University of Michigan

Data About Equity, Data For Equity: Exploring How Campus Data and Analytics Can Better Support Institutional Equity Efforts

Universities collect and utilize a wide range of data each day that can inform policies and decision-making. Simultaneously, institutional equity efforts span many areas of campus and need additional support to promote the success of students, faculty, and staff. What would more equity-centered approaches to data collection, analytics, and interpretation look like to support these institutional endeavors? W. Carson Byrd will discuss how campus data can be an integral part of the diversity, equity, and inclusion approaches on college campuses, share strategies to aid data analytics and decision-making informed by these analyses, and describe caveats and cautionary tales to keep in mind when incorporating campus data into institutional equity efforts.

Visit W. Carson Byrd's Website

April 20 Training Options

Tableau

Would you like to start building your own Tableau dashboards? Join Senior Institutional Researchers Mari Dark and Blake Redabaugh for a day-long introduction to Tableau.

More information

This hands-on workshop will cover:

Best practices for data visualization and information design
Types of charts and visualizations available in Tableau, and when to use them
An introduction to calculations and parameters
Fundamentals of building a dashboard

Each participant will get a limited-time license for installation on their machine and will leave the workshop with the skills to build their own dashboards. The training is free, but space is limited.

R + Tidyverse

The R Statistical Language is one of the most popular free, open-source tools for data analysis. Among R’s superpowers is the Tidyverse, an ecosystem that lets you ingest, manipulate, explore, visualize, and model data.

More information

Have you ever wanted to learn R, but didn’t have the time or resources? Are you someone who uses a different statistical language and want to move into a free, open-source tool? Are you familiar with {base} R and want to get better at utilizing the more modern Tidyverse dialect? If so, this session is a great way to start, refresh, or boost your skills.

In this session, join members of the CU Boulder Data Science team for a day-long introduction to R and the Tidyverse. This hands-on workshop will cover:

What is R? How does free, open-source software work?
Ingesting data from common file types
Data cleaning, munging, and exploration
Joining two data sets with common IDs
Basic exploration and visualization techniques using ggplot

Each participant will receive instructions to download R and RStudio, both of which are free. The training is free, but space is limited.

Participants can register for one training option on day one. Each training consists of two parts; a morning and an afternoon session. Space is limited. Some registrations may be waitlisted. Registrants will receive details regarding licensing, application download, and other logistical details at least one week before the conference.

April 21 Breakout Sessions

1:30-2:25 p.m.

Data Viz for Everyone: Live Accessibility Demos

Creating interactive data visualizations that are easy for all users, especially those who use assistive technology, is a daunting task. In this talk, we’ll go beyond colorblind palettes and dive deep into the issues. Join us for live demos where we'll navigate dashboards using assistive technology, so you can experience the challenges firsthand. You’ll leave with a better understanding of why this is such a hard problem and ideas to help make your dashboards more inclusive.

Speakers:

Emilie Young, User Experience, ODA
Michael Williamson, Assistant Director, Assessment and Usability, DAO
Marisha Lamont-Manfre, Accessibility and Usability Assessment Manager, DAO
Addison Hugen, Senior Accessibility Tester, DAO

Data Security: How to Ruin a Hacker’s Day

How do you ruin a hacker’s day? By being your best data information security self. In this session, we will show you how by reviewing:

Who the OIT security team is and what we do
Where you fit into the university’s information security defenses. You can ruin a hacker’s day - every day!
How the university identifies, labels and treats data risk – the heart of efficient security
Best practices you can apply quickly and directly to your work – your armor and shield

Speaker:

Scott Maize, Associate Director of Information Security, OIT

2:30-3:25 p.m.

Data Engineering: Building for the Future

The group will share how the University of Colorado Boulder is modernizing the data infrastructure to support student success.

Speakers:

Ben Croft, Director of Analytics Engineering, ODA
Todd Schaefer, Director of IT Service Engineering, OIT
James Ashby, Lead Data Engineer/Architect, OIT

Data Literacy: How Do We Move From Access to Understanding to Action?

CU has data—lots of it. As we improve access to these key assets, we must also support the knowledge to correctly and appropriately inform decision-making. In this session, we talk through some simple analytical speed followed by a discussion around ways to collectively improve our data literacy to expedite the path from data to action.

Speaker:

Brad Weiner, Chief Data Officer, ODA

Main menu

Agenda

"Sko & Tell" Lightning Talks

Keynote Speaker - W. Carson Byrd

April 20 Training Options

Tableau

R + Tidyverse

April 21 Breakout Sessions

1:30-2:25 p.m.

2:30-3:25 p.m.

Data Community of Practice Conference

Accessibility Notice

Main menu

Search

Agenda

"Sko & Tell" Lightning Talks

Keynote Speaker - W. Carson Byrd

April 20 Training Options

Tableau

R + Tidyverse

April 21 Breakout Sessions

1:30-2:25 p.m.

2:30-3:25 p.m.

Data Community of Practice Conference

Accessibility Notice