The Past, Present, and Future of The Outlier
It has been 726 days since The Outlier’s last article at the beginning of 2019. Oh boy, the world has changed… In this online-focused world, it’s an ideal time to start up an online publication again. So, here we are! I’m glad you’re reading the first new story of The Outlier by Pattern. I’ll tell you all about how it started back in 2017, how it’s going now, some highlights of published stories so far, and what the future will hold.
But first, a bit about the image with the green leaf. I took this picture for a photo contest organised by Pattern’s Photography Committee with the fitting theme: patterns. The pattern here is made by the leaves on the ground with the green leaf being the outlier amongst all the other leaves (before editing, they looked orange). Because of this, I thought it would be a perfect fit for this article. So, let’s get on with that.
Two thousand seventeen, the year two amazing things started: Data Science Association Pattern and of course, The Outlier! Although D.S.A. Pattern started by Bachelor students, The Outlier was set up by Master students at JADS. From the very beginnings, The Outlier was closely connected to Pattern. The students back then had some meetings with Pattern’s first board and they worked together on, for example, promotion. At the time, the “Data Science blog” still had to figure out a name. DStory and StoryMiners were two of the names considered before The Outlier was eventually selected as the winner. A funny thing to note is that during one of the first meetings, it was discussed that the name D.S.A. Pattern is not “sexy”. I guess everyone has their own opinion.
Fast forward to 2020, The Outlier has been integrated into Pattern and has become a standalone committee. At first, we only discussed how we would start this up again, what our goal would be, and we had some first article ideas. Now, that a few meetings have passed, we have revamped the logo, re-initialized the social media channels, and gathered a list with (too) many article ideas, so feel free to join us! And with a little help from Roy and Rick (former Outliers), we’re 100% ready to kickstart The Outlier!
Before I tell you what the future holds, I’d like to highlight some of our previous articles. Firstly, let me get this recommendation out of the way: this super interesting story about Board 2 of Pattern (fun fact: I’m part of it) written by Emma. I still remember feeling like a VIP because I was getting interviewed myself. It was honestly a very nice and friendly chat and the article is a pleasure to read as well!
Secondly, this interview about Dirk Fahland and Process Mining, written by Roy. As one of the most requested interviewees among our readers, we took this article extremely seriously with an entire team of interviewers, photographers, and videographers (myself included, hehe). Check out the promo video below!
Thirdly, an interview with the founders of Pipple written by Eva-Maria. Another fun fact, I edited the top picture of this story so only the socks would be shaded in purple and everything else remained black-and-white. A true outlier!
Last but not least, another article by our beloved Roy about Data Visualisation with the fitting title The Beauty of Data Visualisation. You could call it a ‘best-seller’ with more than 10k views, more than 600 claps, and our most-read article (so far)!
These are all good reads (and so are all the other articles!) but a very interesting interview is on its way… So, for my recommendation in the future: an interview with professor Edwin van den Heuvel by Eva-Maria and Isabel!
Talking about the future, let’s discuss that. It’s quite simple, we’ll (at least trying to) be publishing stories regularly with more colourful pictures. Content-wise, our focus will still be mainly on Data Science in the broadest sense with a sprinkle of Pattern in-between.
We have a lot of cool and interesting ideas we’d like to work on with our small but dedicated team. If you want to join Eva-Maria, Fabian, Isabel, Merle, and myself (Michael) by writing for The Outlier, feel free to fill in this form, contact us personally, via theoutlier@dsapattern.nl, Instagram, or Twitter. Also, if you have any topic or interviewee requests, don’t hesitate to reach out!
For now, thanks so much for making it till the end of this article, you’re awesome! More to come! 💭
