Who are you?

28, Dutch, living in Malmö, Sweden. Gained over 5 years of experience working as a Data Visualization Consultant and Data Analyst.

What's your educational background?

I hold multiple European Master's degrees in Statistical Data Analysis, Information Management and Economics & Business Administration. Between September 2014 and July 2016 I was enrolled for the IMMIT triple Master's degree program. While still employed, in 2018 I decided to enroll for an advanced Master's program at Ghent Univeristy to further specialize in data analysis. I completed this program in July 2020.

Why did you choose Business Intelligence / Data Analysis?

It started out around 2013/2014 where the topic of business intelligence was given as an elective course. To me, the process of wrangling with data, analyzing it to gain insights and visualizing those into something compact yet beautiful is an enjoyable one. The feeling of helping business users by creating and sharing these insights motivates me to continue working within the field of business intelligence.

What are the challenges you see in BI today?

Data literacy and accessibility. With the tools currently out there (some of them are even free!) it becomes easy for business users to transform a simple spreadsheet into something more visual. On the flipside, making data understandable for everyone reimains a challenge. A quick example: think about people with vision impairments (color blindness, forced to use a screen reader, etc.).

Do you consider yourself to be an expert and if so, have you published books or courses to back up that claim?

No, I don't like to call myself an expert. I don't teach courses and I haven't published any official guides. I am simply one of many people who are in a job position where data analysis and visualization have become daily standard tasks, and I just like to share the experiences I have gained over time.

What skills are you currently learning or improving?

Microsoft's DP-900 (Azure Data Fundamentals) and AZ-900 (Microsoft Azure Fundamentals) certifications look interesting as I am working more with the Azure Stack.

Ideally I'd like to create some small helper tools using R or Python. Getting certified in Python via Python Institute's PCEP & PCAP exams might help.

I really should learn Photoshop to make beautiful, custom designs. And learn about responsive webdesign.