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July Student Highlight of the Month: Carlos Ernesto Munoz Sanz

Each month, we would like to highlight one particular student in our class. This gives our readers a way to connect more with the students in our class. We are quite a diverse group and we would love to share our stories with you…

July Student Highlight of the Month: Carlos Ernesto Munoz Sanz

https://www.linkedin.com/in/carlosernestoms Twitter @CarlosErnestoMS

Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study? I am from Guadalajara, Spain (not the Mexican Guadalajara everyone knows), although I consider myself a global citizen as I have lived in the UK, Sweden and Austria. People usually say that I am not the typical Spaniard; surviving three winters with temperatures hitting -25ºC and living 2500 km far from my family and closest friends probably has something to do with it. I speak Spanish, English and a bit of German. I have studied Engineering, Business Management and I also hold an MBA.

Do you have any work experience? Indeed! In quite a few places: I have worked for a Swedish startup with a business model centered on Search Engine Optimization, so basically 50% was using Google Analytics to tweak websites and improve performance and 50% praying to SEO’s mysterious and gullible “god”, Google’s Search Engine algorithm. While in Sweden, I have also worked for Oriflame Cosmetics and tasted how tough decision-making in a decentralized multinational can be: devising a global complaint system didn’t look hard until I tried to convince countries that “product: missing” and “package: empty” were the same complaint. “An American CEO, a Spanish CEO and a French CEO walk into a bar…” could be the beginning of a joke, or the kind of complex decision-making I was involved in while working as project manager for an American publishing company. My last job was in British Telecom Spain, as Customer Satisfaction and Operational Performance lead, where the largest part of my tasks revolved around utilizing data to improve processes and performance of a business unit with more than 600 employees.

What drew you to Big Data? In short, the name of this blog: Beyond the Spreadsheet. Excel is still the main working tool and guides decision-making in the companies I have worked for. Don’t get me wrong: Excel is a wonderful tool and one I have mastered, but as the complexity of information to handle increases and the number of data sources grows, it becomes less useful. I love data analysis. All the positions I have held required ingesting and making sense of lots of raw data and extracting business knowledge from it; and I realized I needed to level up, to update my skill set if I wanted to dive into the tons of raw data being generated today and be a useful asset to any organization. Big Data is like a hydra: when you think you have learned a topic in full it expands, or a new one appears to complement or replace it. Taking a career break and getting formal, structured education was a must, which is why I decided to join the Master in Business Analytics and Big Data at IE.

What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters? Short-term I would like to work in a data-driven company within a team that speaks both the languages of business and analytics, so I can put all my expertise and skills acquired to use. I don’t have a company or sector in mind; I value more having a good manager and great teammates and a good working environment where I can keep growing. In the long run, I want to build on my project management formal education and my acquired skills to lead an analytics team.

How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most? One word: intense. There is so much to learn from professors and classmates! Having professors from the “real world” instead of academia helps to better understand how EY, IBM, Ericsson, Telefonica, Banco Santander and tech startups use analytics and big data in their day-to-day operations. The tremendous diversity of the class can be daunting at first, but once you get used to it, the learning experience is enhanced. I have learned a lot from my classmates, working side by side with my them in group projects and helping each other during our struggles in individual assignments. Adding R, SQL, Python, SPSS, Tableau, machine learning and so much more to my skill set and applying them all to real business problems has been invaluable.

What would be your advice for future students? Time flies, so plan ahead to ensure you will make the most of this experience. Talk with your professors to learn from them and keep in mind that they might be your future managers. Spend time with your classmates, every single one of them will teach you something valuable. Network, attend IE events and engage in activities outside your Master program. Bear in mind that grades matter, but learning matters much more. And don’t forget to explore Madrid and Spain in general, a lively city and a lovely country.

Thank you Carlos and congratulations on finishing the Master!

#iembd #bigdata #analytics #interview

June Student Highlight of the Month: Christabelle Santos

https://www.linkedin.com/in/christabellesantos Twitter @ChrystaSantos

Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study? Hola everyone! I hail from the very colorful land of India, but I was born and raised in the oil-rich country of Kuwait. I speak English at home with my family, Hindi in India, a bit of Konkani with my grandma, a little Arabic to get around at home in Kuwait and better Spanish to the wonderful people of Madrid! I spent 4 beautiful years of my life studying Electronics & Communication Engineering at VIT University in India. Had I known back in undergrad that I would be spending possibly the best 10 months of my life in Madrid, I would’ve definitely chosen Spanish as my language elective instead of French! A big fan of A Song of Ice and Fire (Iwan Rheon is so good-looking now that he’s no longer Ramsay Snow!).

Do you have any work experience? Yes, I worked as a Project Engineer at Honeywell Kuwait for a year and a half. It was a great place to be in right out of engineering school, but I soon realized that I couldn't try out many new things or learn more, as the company was so established and set in their conservative working culture. For me, work experience is so much more than just a job; it’s the entire learning experience you go throughout your life. This is why I've enjoyed my Masters and feel like I've grown as a person, and not just academically. Meeting and interacting with people from all walks of life and learning from them has been a very rewarding experience for me, and I strongly recommend it to everyone out there!

What drew you to Big Data? While working as an engineer in Honeywell, I came across huge amounts of sensor data in the form of Excel documents. Tons of Excel documents, really? There has to be a way to automate/manage this kind of data more efficiently. I did some research, and came across mind boggling terms such as Hadoop, Spark, MongoDB and graph databases. I screamed internally, I need to know how to use all of this! That moment defined what I was going to do for the next year of my life.

What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters? My short-term professional goals include making it as the best Data Scientist through my work at EY (I start working at the Analytics Hub in EY in the fall) and master the beautiful language of Spanish. My long terms goals are to save the world with Big Data, still figuring out how to do this right now. If you, or anyone you know, is equally excited about saving the world, one TB at a time, please point them in my direction, thanks!

How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most? My experience at IE was a life-changing one. I've met people from various backgrounds and with various defining characteristics. The wise one: knows a lot about the business before coming to the program, the ambitious one: stops at nothing till they get what they want, the nerdy one: knows all the algorithms and technologies (even the ones that aren’t invented yet!), and the party one: knows all the best parties in Madrid (I don’t know how they manage to know all the coolest parties!). We're all so different and yet we get along like a house on fire :) I learned a lot from how they think and function, and it has made me smarter and more fun (through osmosis), I hope! I was eager to experience everything IE had to offer when I arrived in Madrid, and I think I've been lucky. I joined 2 student clubs – the IE Big Data Club and the IE Net Impact Club, and I also joined the IE Ambassadors for the Big Data program. I also applied and was selected to participate in the IE Venture Lab with one of the best ladies in class. After all, it’s not every day you get into one of the best schools in Europe, gotta make the most of it! I cherish all the friendships I’ve made (Shout out to Class of MBD’2016) and also all the wisdom I’ve gained from our professors who I will remember fondly, for years to come. Another one of my highlights of this year was the many trips I made to Barcelona (Mobile World Congress), London (Big Data Innovation Summit) and Amsterdam (The Next Web Conference) with an amazing bunch of friends (classmates turn into good friends so quickly when you spend so much time studying together). Also not forgetting one of my earliest day trips to the historic town of Toledo, which is where the picture was taken.

What would be your advice for future students? Come ready to be challenged in terms of finding the right way to balance work and play. You will need this skill in the 10 months to come. It will also slip right by you before you can even realize that 10 months are up, so consciously make time for fun too. After all, you won’t remember all the nights you spent studying or finishing assignments, but you will remember all the nights you and your friends had epic moments. And make the most out of every moment, be it a boring afternoon class or one of the many fun birthday parties. Learn Spanish, it will seriously open up many networking opportunities for you, most of the interesting non-IE events are in Spanish (Databeers, Big Data Week Madrid, and many other meetups), or join IE Student Chapters, this will help you network as well as shape up those organizing skills. And most importantly, allow yourself to fall in love with the city, you will make some of your best memories here!

Good luck this year Christabelle!

#iembd #big data #interview #grad school

Data Visualization Expert - Juan Cañada

According to SAS Institute, “Data visualization is the presentation of data in a pictorial or graphical format. It enables decision makers to see analytics presented visually, so they can grasp difficult concepts or identify new patterns.” It is one of the most important parts of Data Science. Every ‘piece to the puzzle’ when it comes to a data story is vital, but many would argue that one of the last steps, data visualization, is the key to a successful story. We had the chance to speak with a data visualization expert this week, Juan Cañada, whom also recently gave a visualization lecture for the MBD. Juan is currently the ‘Head of Maxwell Render at Next Limit Technologies’ where he has worked on projects ‘in the fields of simulation, computer graphics and big data’. He shared with us some interesting notes about Data Visualization…

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juancanadagarcia

Why is data visualization important for data science? Our brains are supercomputers. While current machines are much faster than us in many areas, the opposite is true as well in a large number of fields. A very remarkable part of our brain is devoted to processing quintillions of photons that arrive into our retinas every second and making meaning from what we see. Our visual skills to detect clusters, patterns, outliers are superior to any other device to date. Data visualization is not just about making nice charts as some people believe, but about using the most powerful and the cheapest tool you have at hand to do analytics: your brain.

You have an educational background in Mechanical Engineering. So what got you interested in data visualization? My passion for CAD and 3D visualization started even before going to university; I have always been interested in writing software to simulate the real word. When you simulate things using a computer, many times you have to display what you are simulating. In other words, you have to visualize information, and that typically involves an enormous amount of data. Therefore, the movement to other fields of data visualization such as BI was very natural.

Can you give an example of a real-life scenario in which visualization plays an important role? It is difficult to pick just one given the amount of examples that come to my mind, but perhaps my favorite ones are related to education and learning using our visual thinking system. When kids study the Pythagoras theorem, most of the time they are forced to memorize things like “the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides.” That sentence that kids obviously find weird can be replaced by a simple drawing that anyone understands. The same idea can be applied to much more complex areas, from Fourier transforms to Cantor’s theory of infinite sets, and most of the time difficult concepts are easier to understand through good visualizations. That extends to any other area, from business to politics. When humans have to deal with complex issues, there are few things as powerful as visual thinking, especially when it is combined with state of the art computer-based analytic techniques.

During the MBD lecture you gave, you showed us how the current company you are working at, Next Limit Technologies, uses advanced data analysis and visualization to produce realistic special effects for movies. This was very interesting for us. Explain to us briefly how exactly data plays a role in special effects? People would not believe how much data is generated for making movies that contain computer-generated effects. An average frame of a complex visual effect shot usually requires large clusters that do computations for a long time. High-end movies typically require saving data in the order of some gigabytes per frame, sometimes even more. You need to render 30 frames per second for around 90-120 minutes, so just in terms of data storage this is a serious big data problem (and I am omitting aspects such as stereoscopy and virtual reality which multiplies these numbers at least by a factor of two). Storage is not the only aspect that needs to be addressed here but in simulation software -while we work on the visual effects for movies our core business is in the engineering/design side that is at least equally challenging- computing times are critical. That forced us more than a decade ago to spend a lot of effort on developing techniques to distribute calculations across network environments, doing things very similar to the map-reduce paradigms that were formalized later.

Which visualization tools do you like the most? I think most of the last generation tools (Tableau, Qlik, SAS VA, etc.) are very good and it is possible to create fantastic data visualizations with all of them… and the opposite is true: without enough expertise, any of these tools can generate visualizations that do not map data properly, therefore forcing the audience to focus on encoding rather than on data, and eventually can lead to bad decisions. Rather than the tool, what is critical for any data expert is to understand how people process visual information, and how data should be encoded in each case, depending on the audience, context, variables, etc. The ultimate goal of a good visualization is to help the audience convert data into knowledge with maximum efficiency. That depends much more on the skills and experience than on the tool. Tools evolve quickly, today perhaps there is one slightly better than others, but tomorrow a competitor releases a new version and the situation changes. Or a 3rd player acquires both of them and merges them into a single product. The days when learning one tool meant having a good job for a long time are gone, that is why it is so important to focus on the principles instead. With that said, my favorite data visualization tool is D3, which is more a visualization framework (requires some basic knowledge of standard web development tools such as HTML, CSS and Javascript) than an out-of-the-box tool. I teach D3 and I love to see how students get super excited once they start to get familiar with the framework and understand its power. D3 allows you to create your own visualization systems instead of just using standard charts. This is especially important for exploratory visualization (in contrast with descriptive visualization where standard paradigms are usually enough), where each problem has its own particularities and context; in those cases creating specific visualization paradigms could lead to better insights.

What is your favorite data visualization project that you have been a part of thus far? I have spent -together with a fantastic team- more than a decade at Next Limit creating a visualization technology called Maxwell Render, which is used for visualizing 3D prototypes (houses, vehicles, etc.) before they are actually fabricated. We are reusing part of that technology to bring virtual reality to data visualization, and while there is still a long way to go, things are looking great so far. That is definitely my favorite project, even if I cannot share too much yet.

Thank you Juan!!

#iembd #interview #data visualization #analytics

IE Data Dive!

This past weekend, the IE Big Data Club organized another successful event. Both of us blog writers are Officers of the Club as well, and half of the participants were from the MBD class, so you can see that our class is very involved with IE this year! Over 24 hours, teams went head to head in analyzing data provided by our collaborator, the Inter-American Development Bank. Participants had to solve one of the most pressing problems of MOOCs creators: the consistently high drop-out rate of MOOC learners. The main approach for solving the problem was to analyze users’ demographic data to understand the impact of it on the drop-out rates and then apply an algorithm to get valuable insights. Not only was it important to find insights though, but also to create a proper data story. With a panel of experienced professionals across various arenas, 2 weekend winners were declared: The Datavores and The Money Makers. The Grand Prize trip to Washington, DC to present their findings to the Inter-American Development Bank, will be announced on June 14. Good luck to all the teams! For more on the event, please check out our club blog post: https://medium.com/@IEBigData/ie-data-dive-24h-challenge-into-online-learning-24-hours-35-students-8-mentors-judges-deac049e0cda#.kswm54saq

#iembd #bigdata #datathon #challenge

May Student Highlight of the Month: Javier Lameda

https://es.linkedin.com/in/javierlameda

Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study? My name is Javier Lameda and I am from Mexico. I was raised in Cuernavaca, a beautiful city 80 km away from Mexico City. I speak Spanish and English. I studied Industrial Engineering with a minor in Organizational Systems and then spent about a year living in London. I came to Madrid 12 years ago to study an MBA as a business complement for my technical degree.

Do you have any work experience? Yes, several years ago I worked in the Finance Area for a French manufacturing multinational as a Management Control Analyst. Then I had the opportunity to work as a Resources Planning Manager in the Logistics Area for the same company. During my MBA studies, I joined an entrepreneurial hostelry project with my wife’s family that I managed for the last 10 years. Unfortunately, the Spanish crisis didn’t help much in the growing of the company so, after deep thinking, I decided to move ahead in my professional career. I have learnt a lot from all my working experiences and workmates, not only in the field of knowledge but also about the professional environment and team-based work importance.

What drew you to Big Data? Since the beginning of my professional life, I have noticed the lack of information management for support in the decision-making process. When managing information, the problems were always the same: where to get it, how to get it and what to take out of it. So, when I decided to make a career change and start searching for opportunities and a couple of good friends started talking about Big Data Analytics, I realized that it was the tool I was looking for.

What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters? In the near future, I hope to work for a data-driven company to gain expertise in the field and to be exposed to different analytical challenges. My working experience gave me a good overview of the business as a whole entity and the technical knowledge gave me the thinking structure to develop. In the long term, a future entrepreneurial adventure.

How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most? As I said before, I studied an International MBA, so the multicultural experience is not new for me. What I think are the two most valuable assets of studying a Master degree in a highly recognized school like IE are, first, the opportunity to learn from real hands-on professionals with experience in the companies at the forefront of their industries. And second, the chance to meet and learn from such amazing and talented classmates. I really feel lucky for that.

What would be your advice for future students? Because this Master is really challenging, the time goes by so fast that my main advice for them is to really enjoy it and try to extract the most out of it. Also, I recommend that they don’t see this Master as the end of their ‘student life’, studying this second Master at almost 40, has been such an amazing and enriching experience!

Good luck this year Javier!!

#iembd #students #experience

MBD FAQ Part II

I’ve heard that the program is very demanding; is the program as demanding for students who already have a more analytical background? The program is demanding for everyone, no matter the background really. People with a more technical background might find the business-oriented classes challenging and vice versa.

How big is the whole class? And from which countries are the students? Our current class is 60 people from 29 countries! Every continent is represented, with people from places like Colombia, Singapore, Morocco, Turkey, Taiwan, India, Estonia, Uruguay, the USA, Australia, Russia, etc.

What is the average number of hours of class per day? What time do lectures start and end? Class times and durations vary but we meet daily, usually for a class block of 5 hours. A typical format during our terms have been: Monday, Wednesday, Friday 8:30am-1:30pm; Tuesday, Thursday 2pm-7pm. Individual class sessions are between 1.5 to 3 hours per meeting. In addition to class, we spend a lot of time with our work groups for team projects/challenges and we have additional (optional) sessions where industry professionals come to speak to us about opportunities and developments in their company and/or the world of Big Data. Overall. Our time at school is that of a full-time job, with lots of overtime!

Is it possible to apply for the IE Venture Lab while in this program? All IE students are allowed to apply to the Venture Lab. It is an in-house business accelerator that helps develop start-ups. There is an application process and selections are made for who is allowed to join. Check out a past blog post of ours about the Venture Lab: http://iembd.tumblr.com/post/132659491488/entrepreneurial-spirit- at-ie

How is adapting to life in Madrid/Spain? If you come from a European city, it doesn’t take much adapting. People from other cultures have more adapting to do. You can get by fine without speaking Spanish (half of our class doesn’t) and you’ll naturally pick up some of the language during your time here. People in this city are friendly and willing to help. IE also has a lot of resources to give advice for living here.

What about finding an apartment, setting up a bank account, establishing a Spanish phone, etc.? For apartments, check out: idealista.com and fotocasa.es. There are many agencies here too (IE can recommend a few) that can help. IE can honestly give advice for everything; most of the student body is international so these typical things are always asked. To ask specific questions, feel free to write directly to us blog writers! Christina ([email protected]) and Laura ([email protected]). We will be happy to share our experience in the moving process.

#iembd #questions #faq

IE Big Data Talent Forum: Mission Accomplished!

The third term has arrived, and we are starting to search for jobs that are suitable for our profile. So last week, the IE MBD Ambassadors organised the IE Talent Forum in order to facilitate the networking between different company representatives and students from our Master. Some months before the event, IE Ambassadors posted a survey in collaboration with IE and Career Services to find out the emerging interests of our class, and we are glad that we could have most of these companies (and more!) in the forum. Special thanks to Michele Richner for the photos! The companies that took part in it included: Amazon, Oracle, Ericsson, Neo@Ogilvy, KPMG, SAS, HP, EY, Amadeus, BBVA, Synergic Partners, IBM, TMC, CartoDB, Accenture and Telefonica. The event structure, spread over 5 hours, was based on general presentations about each company, running parallel to meet and greet tracks for more personalised Q&A interactions. It was a great opportunity for us, as potential candidates, to ask for information and do networking for positions both in Spain and worldwide. Thanks to the IE MBD Ambassadors for organising the event!! As the social media managers for the MBD, we decided to run our own social media contest during the event. The most creative/interesting Tweet during the event, with the hashtag #ieMBD, would win a phone charger. It was a fun little addition, and our fellow classmate Carlos won! Special thanks to Begum Irkdas for her contribution to this post.

#iembd #talent #career fair

April Student Highlight of the Month: Andrew Boscence

Tell us a little about yourself. Where are you from, what languages do you speak, and what did you previously study? My name is Andrew Boscence and I was born and raised in Australia. I have spent most of my life in Australia but I feel very much a global citizen. I have lived in Finland and The Netherlands. Madrid is now my home. My mother is a Kiwi, my surname is French, I hold an Irish passport and my wife is Spanish.

Do you have any work experience? I have been working professionally for over 10 years now (excluding jobs at fast-food chains and supermarkets). I have enjoyed a diverse career ranging from policy, strategy, spatial analytics, business analytics and now data science. I have worked in disaster management, social services, oil and gas, utilities and, most recently, environmental management. I feel lucky to have learnt from such a broad range of industries, there is so much to learn from them all.

What drew you to Big Data? No matter the role, I have always loved working with data. Even in a policy role, I found myself diving into a pool of data to frame intelligent debate. In other roles, I wanted to quantify as much as I could, I relied on data to both drive strategy and measure results. I mostly used small datasets, Excel, GIS and simple analytical techniques. So the Masters in Business Analytics and Big Data at IE was the logical next step for me, we have been exposed to so many cutting edge technologies and techniques. However, I am cautious of the term “big data”, there are millions of untold stories in small data too, for which I look forward to unearthing.

What are your short and long-term professional goals after the Masters? My immediate goal is to work with a great team that helps their clients, either internally or externally, get the most from their data. My background in change management and analytics works well in businesses looking to adopt a new approach to problem solving. I am not tied to any industry, I just want to work with good people, adding value to my employer. Over the long term, I want to use my skills to support either environmental or social organisations. I feel that not-for-profits mostly work with highly complex issues, in which data will play an important role in the future.

How would you define IE Master’s experience and what do you value most? For me, the Masters has been invaluable. The focus on learning by doing suits my learning style. Furthermore, the calibre of professor is something no MOOC or website can match. We learn from global experts, both in the classroom and over coffee. Studying at IE is a privilege and I also owe a lot to my fellow classmates. We struggle and succeed together and all have taught me something valuable.

What would be your advice for future students? Be curious and never take the Masters for granted. Millions would love to be in such a privileged position. So, even on a bad day, try to make the most of every opportunity.

Good luck this year Andrew!

#iembd #big data #analytics #grad school