Alexander Loth featured in BNN regarding his career boost at CERN
The world’s largest particle accelerator not only unleashed hidden particles but also unlocked my career growth. As a young data scientist, my journey at CERN was a career boost that laid the foundation for my future endeavors. Read about my first day at Microsoft here.
Der Daten-Verarbeiter: Der weltgrößte Teilchenbeschleuniger war für Alexander Loth ein Karriere-Turbo
BNN, 14.07.2021
Today in the news:
A Career Turbocharged at CERN: CERN offered more than just research opportunities. Working at CERN was a defining moment for me. The cutting-edge technology, incredible talent, and the massive amount of data were the catalysts that propelled my career to new heights.
Data as the Common Thread: My time at CERN reinforced my belief in the transformative power of data. „Data is the common thread that runs through my professional life.“ From CERN to Tableau, and now at Microsoft, my passion for data continues to drive my career forward.
Decisively Digital – A New Publication: My new book, 📖 Decisively Digital (Amazon), published by Wiley, reflects my thoughts on digital transformation. It’s a culmination of my experiences and insights from various stages of my career.
I am grateful for my journey from CERN, via Tableau, to Microsoft. The opportunities, learning, and growth have been truly enriching, and I look forward to what the future holds. Stay connected and follow my journey on Twitter and LinkedIn.
My TC18 sessions in New Orleans: „Rock your Social Media Data with Tableau“
Anyone can analyze basic social media data in a few steps. But once you’ve started diving into social analytics, how do you bring it to the next level? This session will cover strategies for scaling a social data program. You’ll learn skills such as how to directly connect to your social media data with a Web Data Connector, considerations for building scalable data sources, and tips for using metadata and calculations for more sophisticated analysis.
Here are some key takeaways and links (i.e. additional resources) featured during my TC18 sessions to help you formulate your social media data program in order to build a stronger presence and retrieve powerful insights:
Step 1: Understand How to Succeed with Social Media
Apple has officially joined Instagram on 7th August 2017. This isn’t your average corporate account as the company doesn’t want to showcase its own products. Instead, Apple is going to share photos shot with an iPhone:
And there are plenty takeaways for every business:
Wrap your data around your customers, in order to create business value
Interact with your customer in a natural way
Understand your customer and customer behaviour better by analyzing social media data
Step 2: Define Your Social Objectives and KPIs
A previous record-holding tweet: In 2014, actor and talk show host Ellen DeGeneres took a selfie with a gaggle of celebrities while hosting the Oscars. That photo has 3.44 million retweets at the time of writing:
Social listening means that you look beyond your own content. E.g. Talkwalker offers AI for image recognition and ggregation for online/offline media: http://bit.ly/tc17_talkwalker
Do you analyze your social media marketing mix? | Photo Credit: via Richard Goodwin
With over 3 billion active social media users, establishing an active presence on social media networks is becoming increasingly essential in getting your business front of your ideal audience. These days, more and more consumers are looking to engage, connect and communicate with their favorite brands on social media.
Adding social media to your customer-centric data strategy will help boost brand awareness, increase followership, drive traffic to your website and generate leads for your sales funnel. In 2017, no organization should be without a plan that actively places their brand on social media, and analyzes their social media data.
Once you’ve started diving into social media analytics, how do you bring it to the next level? This session covers a customer-centric data strategy for scaling a social media data program.
Here are the links (i.e. additional resources) featured during the session to help you formulate your social media data program in order to build a stronger presence and retrieve powerful insights:
10-year blogging anniversary: 2007 Hampi, a temple town in South India recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Site (Flickr)
A Milestone Blogging Anniversary
It’s hard to believe, but I’m celebrating my 10-year blogging anniversary! I’m filled with gratitude for those who have read, encouraged, and inspired me throughout this adventure. Without you, blogging would be only half the fun. Now, let’s take a moment to reflect on this incredible decade…
The Early Years: SAP and India (2007-2009)
It all started in 2007 when I decided to explore an internship abroad in India. I was studying Computer Science and decided to go for an internship abroad. China and India were on my shortlist. I decided for India, applied for a scholarship, and asked some companies for interesting project work. Before starting the adventure, I published my very first blog post to keep family and friends in the loop.
For the next seven months, I lived in Bangalore and worked for SAP Labs India to develop prototypes for mobile BI apps. I spent plenty of weekends exploring India and surrounding countries. After returning from India, I continued to work for SAP at their headquarters while finishing my degree in Karlsruhe.
CERN: Data and Discovery (2009-2012)
Surrounded by snow-capped mountains and Lake Geneva, CERN grabbed my attention at the end of my studies. CERN has tons of data: some petabytes! Challenge accepted. CERN is known for its particle accelerator Large Hadron Collider (LHC). We applied machine learning to identify new correlations between variables (LHC data and external data) that were not previously connected. This chapter was all about embracing the challenges of big data.
Capgemini and MBA: Expanding Horizons (2012-2015)
Back in Germany, my focus shifted to bringing Big Data Analytics to companies. To one company? No, to many companies! So instead of getting hired as Head of BI for an SME, I started to work for Capgemini. I had fantastic projects, designed data-driven use cases for the financial sector, and gave advice for digital transformation initiatives.
In order to keep in balance with all the project work, I dedicated many of my weekends to studies and got enrolled in Frankfurt School’s Executive MBA program. During my studies, I focused on Emerging Markets and visited a module at CEIBS in Shanghai.
Tableau and Futura: Innovation and Entrepreneurship (2015-201?)
I knew Tableau from my time as a consultant. It is an awesome company with a great product and a mission: help people see and understand their data. That’s me! Joining Tableau allowed me to assist organizations in transitioning from classic BI to modern self-service analytics by developing data strategies so that data can be treated as a corporate asset. This includes education, evangelism, and establishing a data-driven culture.
In the evenings I’m working for Futura Analytics, a fintech startup, which I co-founded in 2017. Futura Analytics offers real-time information discovery and transforms data from social media and other public sources into actionable signals.
What’s Next? A Glimpse into the Future
Currently, I’m excited to present my Data Strategy talk on TC17, accompanied by a TensorFlow demo scenario. I’m also learning Mandarin, the predominant language of business, politics, and media in China and Taiwan, for quite a while. Let’s see if that is going to influence my next steps… 🙂
Follow my ongoing journey in data analytics and more on Twitter and LinkedIn.
Servers record a copy of LHC data and distribute it around the world for Analytics
My Data Science journey starts at CERN where I finished my master thesis in 2009. CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, is the home of the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and has some questions to answer: like how the universe works and what is it made of. CERN collects nearly unbelievable amounts of data – 35 petabytes of data per year that needs analysis. After submitted my thesis, I continued my Data Science research at CERN.
Today companies have realized that Business Analytics needs to be an essential part of their competitive strategy. The demand on Data Scientists grows exponentially. To me, Data Science is more about the right questions being asked than the actual data. The MBA enabled me to understand that data does not provide insights unless appropriately questioned. Delivering excellent Big Data projects requires a full understanding of the business, developing the questions, distilling the adequate amount of data to answer those questions and communicating the proposed solution to the target audience.
„The task of leaders is to simplify. You should be able to explain where you have to go in two minutes.“ – Jeroen van der Veer, former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell
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