Side Effects of Blogging for a Year

Millie O Symns

posit::conf(2023) - Hyatt Regency Chicago

Hello everyone! Thank you for joining me today. My name is Millie Symns and I will be talking what a learned from a challenge of blogging consistently for a year.

Before that, I want to bring you back to a moment in time in which I met myself in a stretch point. Earlier this year I went on a trip with a group of friends to Puerto Rico, and one of the activities was a hike. (click2) But it was not like the hikes I have been on before with clear trails. We climbing over rocks and crossing streams. Nevertheless, we persisted with the guide…

And he lead us to a beautiful and grand waterfall.

Then our guide says, “We can get closer to the waterfall, but it will take a little more climbing to reach the upper level with an area to swim and be in the waterfall. At first I stood back, not sure if I should risk climbing up this thing, but seeing others in my group for it, I thought well I can do this too. (click2) To my own surprise, I did it, and felt forever changed. It showed me that I can do hard things too.

Waterfalls? …and blogs?

These were my stretch points

(click2)So how do waterfalls and blogs connect? Both of these events were stretch points for myself. (click1)Times in which I decide to go beyond what I felt was possible for me and doing it anyway.

Before blogging, I was in the education space working at the City University of New York and then at IBM doing research and program evaluation. Now I am currently a senior data analyst at Thinx. Towards the end of my time in education, I became a big fan of the open source community.

and…R Community Contributor!

But now I can say that I am a contributor to the open source community, because now I have a blog, I’m here talking to you all at the posit conference.

Artwork by Allison Horst

It was not until the rstudio conf in 2020 where I was truly exposed to the open source community. I didn’t really know or understand that it existed because at the time I learned and used R enough just to get my work done.

Mind blowing talks

Just like many of the talks we have witnessed this week, it has been so informative and inspiring to see all the ways people use the same tools. At 2020 conference seeing the cross between data and art, learning how to be efficient in reporting, or seeing all the ways you can use RMarkdown.

Check out all the talks referenced and more.

The journey

At this point I am sitting happily in the role of the observer taking in information (click1), but watching all of these talks, I too felt inspired to be a contributor.(click1)

So many options! Where do I start?

But there were so many options! And I didn’t know where to start or have a foundational why.

The idea never dies

With my panic, similar to me standing at the waterfall, I decided to pause and step back. But ideas never die. Time went by with the pandemic, changing jobs, looking to expand my knowledge online, but the message and the idea to build a website kept popping up. Whether from peers or perspective employers.

The hardest part is to start

The challenge

Create and publish a website

Write a blog post once a month for an entire year

Share the blog post publicly on Linkedin and Twitter

Since I strive on structure when it comes to big changes, I decided to create a challenge for myself. I kept it simple with 3 things to achieve being the create and launch a website, write a blog post once a month, and share my blog post publicly on Twitter and Linkedin.

What were the side effects of this challenge?

• Learned how to build my brand
• Figured out my niche in the data space
• How to build and maintain a website

The challenge taught me a lot, and I still continue learning today, but the main side effects that I will share today what I learned related to my professional development. I learned how to build my brand, what my niche is in the data space, and the practical how to build and maintain a website.

What do I want to be known for?

The first thing I learned was how to develop my brand. I needed to figure out how to introduce myself not just to folks in the field of my work, by anyone who happens upon the site. So, my guiding questions was, “What do I want to be known for?”

How to build my brand

Questions I asked myself:

• What do I do? (for work)
• Who am I? (in general)
• Who would I like to become? (as a professional)

I broke that down further with thing about what I do, who I am, and what I’d like to become. - data analytics and research in education - multifaceted human who loves art, movement, activism, data; care about societal issues - an expert in my field

Homepage

These questions helped me with figuring out how I want to display my homepage and what are the first couple sentence I want the audience to read about me.

About me

In my about me section, using my answers to the questions, I organized my bio to include all parts of me because it was important for me to show my whole personality. From past expertise and current work to personal facts.

How do I want people to experience me?

Now that I know my personal brand, I needed to figure out what am I going to say once a month on this site.

My niche in the data space

• What kind of blogs are out there?
• What are my strengths?
• What do I want to learn?

There are so many kinds of blogs out there that have guided tutorials or a library of curated resources. I thought a bit about what I wished was out there for my learning style, so I went with ideas like info in small bites, friendly and approachable, and big-picture thinking. Which led me to this cute play on stats terms calling my blog “Deviations Outside the Norm”

Opening blogs

My first couple of posts started with things that I enjoy doing and can talk about for days. And a small tutorial wrapped up in a bigger story or lesson.

Showing up with art

And towards about halfway through the challenge to the end of the year I really progresses in my digital art.

Building and maintaing a website

Tools of this website version uses RProjects, Blogdown, Github, Hugo, and Netlify

Lastly of course, I learned deeply on how to build and maintain a website. Big thanks for Alison Hill for helping me get started in this. Lots of problem solving, breaking things, and figuring out git commands to make things work.

Resources for making websites/blogs

• For a site like mine, check out Alison Hill’s post
• If you want to check out distill, look at Andreas Handel’s post or Thomas Mock’s site for more details
• Better yet - to try out Quarto, check out Isabella Velásquez’s site for a guided tutorial.

Going from observer to contributor

There are many ways you can go from being just an observer to contributor in the community. There are meetups, lunch and learns at work, websites like this, generative art, package development and much more.

What is your waterfall?

Think about what is your waterfall? That stretch point you have been thinking about doing for a while for yourself and the community. One of the core things I learned in this is that at any point in my R learning journey I could have plugged my voice into the community.

Take this talk a sign to jump right in!

Thanks for coming!

Find me on:

• My website - milliesymns.com
• Linkedin - linkedin.com/in/millie-symns/
• Twitter(X) - @millieosymns