Welcome to the-data-base
Welcome! As you might have learned already, this is place for data professionals to connect and develop skills through the coordination of projects together.
We exist on slack & github, and are working on making these channel accessible to join. For now, feel free to send a Twitter DM to the admins:
Keep on reading to learn about how the group came into being.
Humble beginnings
Back in 2018, three business students began their careers as data analysts in Vancouver, BC. The first started in the retail industry. The second worked in public health. The third began in the telecom industry.
Eventually, these three would be reunited at Best Buy Canada. It was during this time where the three young data professionals developed into high-performers, driven by a shared love of learning, and memes. Especially dank memes.
This desire for continuous improvement stretched beyond their 9-5’s, and was practiced through various side projects. As their skills sharpened, so did the quality (and complexity) of their projects. From scraping and summarizing data on websites, to deploying data science apps with python and streamlit.
By 2021, the three now-senior data professionals decided it was time to take the next steps in their respective careers. The first and second moved to new organizations in Data Scientist roles, while the third moved began his journey as Data Engineer.
The slack channel
The group would meet regularly outside of work-hours to chat about life, hiking, and data. Upon reflection of their maturity from non-technical business students to highly-technical data profesionals, the three were especially grateful for the learnings made through side projects.
They didn’t want the learning to end.
Sometime in 2021, the first and the third members decided that they wanted to grow the group. The goal was to build a community where like-minded data people could connect and learn together.
That is when the slack channel was born. At the time, it was called Bicks-Bapa-Roob.
The bicks-bapa-roob story
One beautiful summer morning in 2021, our founding members decided to hike Panorama Ridge altogether. At some point on the car-ride, one of the members told a story from his childhood.
He recounted that as a little kid, his mother would always rub this clear-looking cream on his face and upper body. The cream supposedly helped open up the nasal cavities and promoted breathing when he had a stuffy nose. The name of the product was, you guessed it, Bicks-Bapa-Roob.
A few years later, he was developing a stuffy nose while at a friend’s house for a sleepover. Naturally, he asked the friend if he had any of the good stuff to help with his breathing. The friend looked at him as though he was crazy, and said he wasn’t sure and had never heard of such a product. The friend asked his dad if they had any and he was basically like, “wtf”.
A few minutes go by and the friend’s mom comes down saying they didn’t have any Bicks-Bapa-Roob, but that they had this rub that was supposedly good for this sort of thing. VapoRub. By Vicks. Vicks. VapoRub. Bicks Bapa Roob.
It was at THAT moment, that he realized he had been duped by his mother’s Mexican accent. The worst part, however, was that his father - who was born and raised in Vancouver, BC - was intentionally mispronouncing it.
The group chuckled over the story, and a legend was born.