Building an IRL Data Community

My Initial In-Person Community Vision

I began hosting a monthly informal Alternative Data Happy Hour event in Midtown Manhattan 17 months ago. I could not be more humbled from & proud of how engaged & supportive everyone who has come out to one of the happy hours has been. So firstly, thank you to everyone for just being you. I decided to start it because:

1. In most previous networking events I'd been to, I found the unstructured time to be the most productive. In my opinion, the "content" portion of events holds diminishing value as you become more of an expert in the topics focused on in the event. Experts can often obtain the intel necessary through more efficient means.
2. I felt that everyone's (including my) in-person relationships had been rapidly decaying post-COVID.
3. I attended Ethan Aaron's Low-Key Data Happy Hour and really enjoyed the laid-back vibe and hearing about the diversity of perspectives across the data industry.
4. My company is bootstrapped, scrappy and well-connected already, so it's hard to achieve an acceptable ROI when spending thousands of dollars to attend an industry event.

My In-Person Community Vision Going Forward

One thing is a given: I will continue running the Alternative Data Happy Hour on a monthly basis forever. Besides that baseline event, I am starting to host more varied types of gatherings, no longer exclusively centered around alcohol and not only informal/public.

I'm leading the community in these directions because I think it's important that we diversify the way that we interact & network & build friendships & professional relationships. Trust through shared experiences are the key to building mutually-beneficial, longer-term relationships.

Therefore, in the coming months, I will be announcing new event types open to the whole community. My second rock climbing get together will be tomorrow (Tues, May 21 in Chelsea, NYC – let me know if you'd like the invite). And since I just bought a house out in Shelter Island, maybe I'll host something out in the Hamptons this summer. These will always be cheap or free and will never include any sales pitches.

And this coming fall, I'll begin hosting private events tailored to certain subsets of the community with shared interests, most notably data buyers looking to more efficiently find valuable data and put it to use & data providers looking to improve their data products and generate revenue from their data. These private events will include a few key elements:

1. Sharing stories & solutions between those with similar problems
2. Learning from key experts about timely topics
3. Refreshments and meals to delight any foodie
4. A focus on education & relationship-building, not sales pitches

I welcome any of the following groups of professionals to join our growing hybrid community:

• asset managers (such as hedge funds or private equity funds)
• data providers
• data buyers
• data industry participants