E is For Eskwelabs Issue 016 - Season of Thanksgiving ✨🤗

In our sixteenth issue, we celebrate the change in seasons by answering the question, "What are you grateful for?" This Thanksgiving issue is dedicated to our learners, partners, community, and team.

Nov 29, 2020

Hi, Francine here! 👋 What are you most grateful for today? If you asked us, we're thankful for the programs we've had the privilege of creating in order to redesign data skills education, the fellowship we've developed with our learners across all these programs, the organizations and partners we've collaborated with along the way, and our team working behind the scenes. Maybe it's the change of seasons, maybe because it's December in a few days, but we're feeling sentimental—and so we officially dub this edition of our newsletter as our Thanksgiving issue. 💖

What's in this newsletter:

Thankful for the joy of learning

🎉 Our Aral-Aral community is about to reach a new milestone
💻 The remaining Aral-Aral+ Notebooks have been released—there's 1 more coming soon!

Blessed by our fellowship with our learners

🎓 Cohort V Fellows graduate after their Virtual Demo Day Showcase
🌟 Our Business Intelligence SkillsCamp gets a revamp!

Grateful for having room to grow

📋 Join the Eskwelabs team: Tech team positions open!

Excited for a future full of possibilities

💭 Share your input on the future of education and work

✨ Thankful for the joy of learning

📌 Our Aral-Aral community is about to reach a new milestone

When we started Aral-Aral as a free prep-course for data science back in October 2019 to democratize data skills, we had a much smaller community of data science enthusiasts. Over time, we've revamped Aral-Aral about 5x in order to stay true to our value of putting learners first. The feedback we continuously receive means that the Aral-Aral learning initiative is truly a team effort—a close collaboration with Eskwelabs and our community members. And speaking of community, we're set to reach over 2,000 members before the year ends!

If you aren't part of this learning community yet but you'd like to explore data science, then we'd like to invite you to join our Facebook learning group here.

Aside from this community, there are 2 courses under the Aral-Aral learning initiative:

Aral-Aral Python - A free course for data science enthusiasts wanting to begin their journey with basics in Python.
Aral-Aral Digital Careers - A free Career Development course—originally designed to help virtual assistants stand out in the ever-growing remote work market—that leads you to learn more about who you are as a person and who you can be as a sought-after professional.

👉 When you register for either of the free courses, don't forget to activate your account—check your email inboxes!—which takes you to the course and all the materials we've prepared for you. Sign up here.

📌 The remaining Aral-Aral+ Notebooks have been released—there's 1 more coming soon!

We’ve also created Aral-Aral+ to give aspirating data scientists the robust practice they need to study Python and Statistics concepts with:

😮 One-time purchase, life-time access to 14 code-along Jupyter Notebooks and 70+ walkthrough videos
😍 On-demand and at your own pace, get all materials on your web browser—yes, no need to download anything!
🤩 Exclusive access to our Book-a-Mentor feature (Currently in development)
🤗 Fun fact: Aral-Aral+ learners get a tuition rebate when they sign up for our Data Science Bootcamp!

As of today, Notebooks 1 to 13 are live! The last one, the Review notebook, is on its way really soon. 🎉

👉 Get early access and learn about what makes Aral-Aral+ different from Aral-Aral here.

🛒 Here's an E is for Eskwelabs promo code for newsletter subscribers for 25% OFF: aOA50l

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✨ Blessed by our fellowship with our learners

📌 Cohort V Fellows graduate after their Virtual Demo Day Showcase

The COVID-19 pandemic, and the political, economic, and social disruptions it has caused, has fundamentally changed our lives. The crisis has uncovered inconsistencies and inadequacies across all of our systems—from health to energy to job markets. As we enter this unique window of opportunity to shape the future, we can look to our Data Science Fellows who have taken the lead by offering insights of how—on different dimensions of recovery—data can play a game-changing role.

On November 28, 2020 (Saturday), we had 16 Fellows from Data Science Bootcamp Cohort V present their capstone projects on a variety of topics, such as: mental health, power & electricity generation, research in the Philippines, the job market post-COVID across Southeast Asia, access to healthcare amidst the pandemic, and more. You can read the summaries of all the projects here.

During our virtual demo day, which was inspired by the trending Netflix show “Start-Up," we asked our audience to be active participants. The votes came in real-time and the winners of our Audience Favorites awards are:

🥇 Top 1 - Forecasting the Power Demand of the Luzon Electrical Grid using Clustering and Predictive Modeling (William Revilla, Joleil Villena, Jonas Beltran)
🥈 Top 2 - Building an E-commerce Gift Recommender System based on User-Generated Wishlists (Rai Ferrer, Emer Chua, Dan Gubaton, Rob Bañadera, Jr., Rhey Magcalas)

We're also thankful that we got to present the results of a global Malaria prediction project we participated in with Omdena. Omdena is a bottom-up, collaborative platform to build innovative, ethical, and efficient artificial intelligence solutions to real-world problems. Since its founding in May 2019, over 1,500 AI/ML enthusiasts and experts from more than 84 countries have come together for eight-week AI challenges to address significant issues related to hunger, sexual harassment, land conflicts, gang violence, wildfire prevention, and energy poverty.

Speaking of significant issues, our hearts go out to all who were affected by the recent series of typhoons. This demo day in particular also served as a fundraising event—proceeds will be going to organizations like Waves for Water Philippines and Computer Professionals' Union—with artist Mikee Misalucha who gave a benefit musical performance.

👉 Learn more about our Data Science Bootcamp here and watch the full replay of Cohort V's virtual demo day over here.

📌 Our Business Intelligence SkillsCamp gets a revamp!

As our family of Fellows under our Data Science Bootcamp continues to grow, the same goes for our BizKids under our Business Intelligence program. We've equipped about 40 learners from 2 cohorts with the ability to use analytics tools (PowerBI, Excel, and SQL) and skills in data analytics, data visualization, and data storytelling.

The beauty of having such a close relationship with our learners is the fact that we get to learn from them as well. So in 2021, after studying the feedback of our BizKids, we're coming into the new year with a lot of exciting announcements about our data analytics program.

👉 If you'd like to be one of the first to know, then sign up here to get the news firsthand!

✨ Grateful for having room to grow

📌 Join the Eskwelabs team: Tech team positions open!

UX Designer (Remote / Makati, Manila)
React Developer (Remote / Makati, Manila)

✨ Excited for a future full of possibilities

📌 Share your input on the future of education and work

We want to give members of our community an opportunity to co-design future learning formats with us. Answering this 3-minute survey gives us a chance to interview you to get your feedback and let you influence our future design. We will compensate your time by raffling off a P1,000 gift card for Grab.

Q: What are you grateful for today?

We'd love to hear about it!

E is for Eskwelabs