Thanks to everyone who joined us for our May meetup! While virtual events certainly have their downsides, one of the nice things is being able to bring in speakers (and attendees) from all over the place! This month we welcomed Michael Helbling from AJL Analytics in Atlanta to speak about emotional intelligence. Michael is also the co-host of The Digital Analytics Power Hour along with Moe Kiss and our own Tim Wilson.

This meetup was also a fundraiser for the Mid-Ohio Food Collective. With help from our sponsors we’re matching the first $1,000 donated! Thanks so much to those who have already donated, it means a lot to us and even more to the people you’re helping. We’ve still got matching funds available, you can donate here now. We’ll be running the campaign for the rest of the month so it’s not too late! Don’t make Tim have to start breaking into your morning news coverage with tote bags and guilt!

Analysts absolutely need this kind of intelligence in order to have our work truly listened to, and yet like our reports themselves emotional intelligence is frequently ignored or looked down upon. Perhaps it’s because analytical types don’t tend to be as naturally strong in this area, or perhaps it’s because in general this sort of intelligence is typically labelled in a pejorative way as “soft skills”. In any case, this is an important discussion to have!

Another one of the advantages of virtual is that we’ve got a recording of the session, so who cares what I thought of the session, watch it for yourself right here!

Maybe it’s Michael’s high degrees of self-awareness and empathy, or maybe it’s the fact that he is from Ohio originally — but Michael’s featured example of someone who displays strong emotional intelligence is Ohio’s own Dr. Amy Acton. Let’s face it, our jobs are a heckuva lot easier than hers, and if our stakeholders ignore the data we present people’s lives aren’t on the line — so we can learn a lot from her presentation of analysis! Michael also highly recommended this piece on Dr. Acton from the New York Times. Michael’s “Dr. Amy Acton Fan Club” lawn sign is in the mail.

As usual, we had some great questions as well, some of the things that came up in the QA were:

“Dare to Lead” by Brené Brown

The DAA’s COVD-19 jobs resource board

Michael’s own company AJL’s “JOIN” program to help match talent to available projects.

CBUSDAW sponsor InfoTrust’s “No Layoffs” pledge.

Need some support in your job hunt? Lisa Wilms from InfoTrust has opened her calendar to the community to talk resumes, interviewing, etc!

Please join us next time on June 10th when Mai Alowaish will discuss Google Analytics App+Web!