A note from Nicole

I can't believe it's February already! A lot happened in my life in January that I wasn't expecting. I got laid off from Cart.com on January 5th, throwing a wrench into all of my plans for the month, but I started a new role as a Senior Quality and Regulatory Business Data Analyst at Covetrus North America, where I get to use my pharmacy and data skills to improve the lives of companion animals. (A lot of y'all know I have four dogs, I'm vegan, and that animal welfare is a cause that's very important to me.) Having worked at startups for the past six years, joining a large, established company has been surreal but good! This and some other unexpected plot twists have had me reflecting on the Buddhist idea of impermanence, and how important it is for us to not get too attached to our ideas of how things "should" be, because often, that's not what's going to happen. I picked When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron off of my bookshelf a few days ago and found this quote I underlined long ago:

How was January for you? Did it go as expected? Better? Different? Post your experiences in #realtalk on Slack.

Did you know you can Ask Me Anything? Submit your questions publicly via my Ask Me Anything page, or privately on Slack.

Conversations with Women in Dataviz: Lightning Talks!

Thanks to everyone who participated in this poll around what types of events and topics you'd like Women in Dataviz to host and chat about this year. We're going to start with Lightning Talks, short presentations devoted to a very specific topic with a defined time limit. There are lots of approaches to these kinds of talks, including Ignite, PechaKucha, and others. We may experiment with approaches in the future, but for the first round, we'll keep it simple with these ground rules:

1. The maximum length of the talk should be 10 minutes.

2. There should be one slide for each key point you make.

3. The topic should be related to data, technology, or work culture. (Although I could be convinced to include other interesting topics.)

Our first round of lightning talks will be on Wednesday, March 8, at 7 p.m. EST. If you'd like to propose a topic to present on this date, please complete this short form.

Virtual Coffee Breaks

Held every sixth Thursday morning in the EST time zone. Feel free to drop in and out as you need to between 8 and 9 a.m., and stay for as little time or as long as you want! Our next meeting is on March 2, 2023. I'll post the details in Slack and send a meeting invitation, but to make it as easy as possible, you can join by clicking the button below.

All of the Virtual Coffee Break dates are posted to the Community Calendar, too. Also, watch this space for an additional time in the PST time zone starting soon, hosted by Sharon Resheff.

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If you're enjoying the community and have the means and inclination, support us on Ko-fi to help us cover monthly operational expenses such as videoconferencing, web hosting, and our Adobe Creative Cloud subscription. You can make a one-time contribution or choose from two monthly subscription tiers:

Raise the Bar (Chart) $5 per month

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