Celebrating our fourth anniversary of Data Science at Microsoft
So much can happen in a single year, but over four years… truly amazing things can happen! Here at DS@M, exactly four years to the day from when we started, we’ve surpassed 4,600 followers and published nearly 200 articles by scores of our data scientists and related professionals dedicated to telling the ongoing, always evolving story of how data science is done at Microsoft, from nuts-and-bolts foundational topics to the very latest LLM developments — and everything in between!
Those of you who have been reading us for a while may have seen me write before that when we were discussing getting started, it wasn’t even clear that we could do what we have spent these last four years doing on DS@M. After all, how could we write about our work while still keeping proprietary what must be kept proprietary? Who would be interested in hearing from us? How would we even have enough topics to write about data science every week while keeping things fresh?
One of my biggest learnings during this time in running DS@M is that point of view matters a lot. It is because of point of view — having multiple points of view, that is — that we don’t have to worry about exhausting a given topic. As long as each contributor comes ready to express a point of view — informed by training, tempered by experience — we can address a given topic in multiple ways and over multiple periods of time.
This is not to say that we set out to repeat ourselves on DS@M. My point is that with so many highly trained data scientists of such deep experience, naturally different points of view abound, coupled with our collective desire to not try to proclaim something as the “last word” on a given topic, which I doubt is even possible in the fast-evolving, ever-changing world of data science. Capturing this richness is a big part of what DS@M is all about, bringing it to you, the reader, in the hope that it informs your work while it fosters and contributes to an ongoing discussion that helps to continuously advance the state of the art in our discipline.
Of course, without our many contributors bringing these multiple points of view, none of this would be possible. I’ve had the privilege to work with some of the most brilliant minds in our profession, and I’ve learned so much along the way. From some of our data scientists, I’ve learned new ways to think about things long familiar, and from others, new things altogether new.
Who among these contributors helps to evolve our ongoing data science dialog the most? The truth is, it’s everyone, whether at either end of the spectrum of familiar to new or somewhere in between. We operate in a truly multi-disciplinary field, after all, and we are at our strongest when we seek, recognize, and learn from data scientists at every career stage and representing every education, background, specialty, and experience. It is for this reason that data science is one of the most dynamic and engaging fields of modern knowledge work, with so much to offer both practitioners and clients — because it’s all about the uncountable ways that a diverse body of data scientists can challenge, contribute to, and hopefully improve the world.
So it is with great pride and deep humility that I offer my sincerest of thanks to our many contributors both recent and past as well as to you, dear reader, for devoting one of your most valuable commodities to us and what we talk about here — your precious attention. As we embark on our fifth year, our luminous contributors and I will do our best to continue to bring you something worthy in exchange.
Casey Doyle leads Data Science at Microsoft and is on LinkedIn.
