Making Data Meaningful with Bahija Humphrey

Startups get the party Startups get the party started Startups get the party Startups get the party started. You want tech and tacos tacos and tech you know we got tacos and tech is on smash border green guacamole keeper captains counting beans Contador quentan frijoles founders trying to raise some queso la vida San Diego school of rappy rapping fire tortillas round jalapenos in these modern times a crappy my coding yoga posse fold the body origami we be surfing coronado eating tacos el gordo the tacos standing puesto lucha libre and sombrero Got a shout out to cost angels by the ocean watch the sunset La Jolla shores Entrepreneurs trying to get funded When San Diego Startup Week is popping in the summer Oceanside the Tijuana Estee be full of hustlers from couch surfing to penthouses right on the beach Tech leaders believe stars are within reach we interview and founders who be shooting for the Moon SD TechOS with your host Neil Bloom. Startups get the party Startups get the.

Welcome to the Tacos and Tech podcast where we discover cutting edge San Diego technologies and the builders making it happen. I'm your host Neal Bloom, San Diego's Tech Ambassador and together we're going to put a face to the name of today's tech leaders with our own blend of local lifestyle. I want to take a moment to thank our friends at Cochrane Business who have enabled us to tell these amazing stories of local leaders, technologists, founders and funders. Cox is actually a 121 year old family run private company that thinks in terms of decades in connecting communities a lot like we do in building a tech ecosystem. For years now, the local Cox business team has helped us grow through partnering at San Diego Startup Week, South Dakota. Quick pitch and in celebrating our technical leaders at the Top Tech Awards this October, we're very excited to kick off an entire month of virtual networking and learning at San Diego Startup Month with talks on sales, marketing, data, people, design, development and more. There's something for everyone in the startup and tech community. Drop in on the pitch competitions, get your LinkedIn reviewed, meet new colleagues and listen in on investor panels on the future of deep tech. Check out the schedule and more@sandagostartupweek.com and thanks again to Cox Business for your partnership.

And welcome back to the Tacos and Tech Podcast. I'm your host Neal Bloom and I am joined by Bahija Humphrey, CEO of the Data Science Alliance. Welcome to the Show Bahija.

Thanks for having me, Neil.

This is really fun to have you on. We go back a few years.

We do.

I've known you in a few different roles, so I'm really excited to one help tell the story of your path. Hear. Do you want to give us a quick overview what the Data Science alliance is?

Oh, I'd love to, yeah. So we are what I'm calling a startup nonprofit. We just launched in 2020, officially pre pandemic, and we are basically committed to advancing San Diego as a leader in data science. And what that looks like is a lot of ecosystem building, something you're very much familiar with as someone who helped launch startup San Diego.

Awesome. I love it. I love that we've. Well, first of all, San Diego has some crazy roots in data analytics, which I think we're going to dive into a little bit. Let's nerd out on that. Let's make sure we don't forget to talk about that part.

Our roots.

But God, there's so much going on from the data science world and San Diego is at the heart of it. So this is going to be a really great conversation. But what took you here? Like when we met, you were at the San Diego Downtown Partnership. Did you grow up in San Diego?

Actually, I was born in Afghanistan. So that's back when no one really knew what Afghanistan was and we immigrated at the time there was another war, Russia was invading our country. So my family, we immigrated. We were in refugee camps in Pakistan. I was an infant at the time. And we first the first country that allowed us refugee status and allowed us asylum was Canada. So I grew up until about middle school. I was Canadian. So very different life, but such a wonderful childhood. A lot of beautiful outdoor activities and just connected with nature and nerding out at the library. Those are my memories of childhood. So Vancouver, Canada is where we. Where we grew up and we got here. I was in middle school, so I went to Marston for those of you who grew up in Claremont. And I went to Claremont High and then found myself going to college, went up to Northern California, went to UC Berkeley, got a degree in economics and then went to New York for a few years just to live in New York and live the the life of a New Yorker and worked for tech company. It was a monopoly and has since been sort of targeted by Google to try to replicate. But they basically had this technology that a lot that any advertising agency was required basically to use to do anything with ads. And it was the only. There was no competitor and so I learned a lot about working for software and tech and things like that and found myself. It's hard to leave San Diego, so I kept coming back. I've lived in a few other cities, but I just found myself. I keep coming back. It's too beautiful. I love Mexican food, I love tacos, I love the sun, the beach. That's my home. So now I'm here. And when I moved back, the last time I moved back, I took a job with the Downtown Cine Partnership. And that. That's around the time we met, a few years into that, that company. And that was my first time, Neal, working for. For a nonprofit. It was sort of a different world and exciting and kind of different and interesting and very purposeful, which I enjoyed that aspect of it.

Yeah, it's a big change from working from a tech company to a community oriented organization. What was the appeal to work for the Downtown Partnership?

To be honest, I moved back to San Diego and because of my degree in economics and having an. Some experience in accounting, my sort of something I tell everybody in life is like, you can. You can go anywhere and land on your feet if you know how to do accounting, because everyone needs an accountant. And so I joined the partnership because I was offered a position in accounting. And I loved the work they were doing with regard to sort of community work and trying to advocate for downtown neighborhoods. I was in love with East Village at the time. It was so. Still so gritty and just like starting to turn into this really cool community. And I wanted to be a part of that. And so I found myself starting there sort of in the back, hiding, just crunching numbers and doing all that kind of work and then figuring out a way to. To position myself out of accounting and into different roles that allowed me to get out and work with community.

That's awesome.

Yeah.

This is for all the accountants out there. You know, here's your path, you know, here's a potential path. I love that. That's great.

Yeah. No offense to accountants. It has helped me quite a bit in my life, but. But it is definitely. I have learned by doing that it's not what I want to do because I'm not the kind of person that likes that sort of same repetitive thing like every month. And it's so formulaic and it's so like, some people love that. One of my really good friends is an accountant and he loves just that, just pattern and routine. And that drives me crazy. And so I was lucky. I got a really dynamic one of sort of San Diego's visionaries that came in and took over running the organization about a year after I started. And I talked to her and said, look, I'm thinking about leaving because I want to do something more than accounting and I want to do something more interesting and I want to work with small business and build community and start like, I didn't know the term ecosystems building at the time, but that was basically what I was craving. I was craving, craving some of that. And she said, no, you're not leaving. I'm going to find the position for you. And we just became sort of partners in our career for many years after that. And she just helped kind of move obstacles out of my way and position me into higher and higher career opportunities that of course I worked hard and earned. But. But kudos thanks to her, Chris Michelle, and give her a shout out. She's a badass. She's running the city of San Diego right now as chief operating officer. But I always want to give a nod out to mentors that kind of paved the way. And especially a female helping another female in business is always. I love that. So I try to pay that forward too.

Yeah, that's awesome. It's great to hear that story about Chris and you kind of partnering and working with her. Tell me what that was like jumping over to the city of San Diego and what was the role that you're in?

Oh, yeah. I never thought I would work in government. It was not something that I had ever contemplated. I know a lot of people that sort of seek that out. There's this connection to stuff, to service. That's beautiful and that I very much respect that. I just didn't have that at the time. And so I never really was driven in that direction. But a few years ago, I had worked at the partnership for several years, worked my way up to pretty high. Basically, number two position, I was running a really large team and trying to incorporate data informed decision making into a very operational organization where we were sort of out in the streets cleaning the streets, running homeless outreach teams and doing all this, like this work that you wouldn't connect with data. And I would find myself continuously pulling data into the work because I just felt like in order to do what we did better, we needed that edge, we needed that advantage. So I did things like I introduced a real time tracking system so we could actually track what exactly the teams were doing when they were out cleaning the streets or connecting with people walking by and sort of in a security role. All the things we were doing, we started capturing Data. And then we learned a lot about the different nuances block by block, sidewalk, from one sidewalk to another of downtown San Diego, and were able to sort of change the way we ran that organization based on the data that we were pulling. And so I sort of like, kind of loved that part of what I was doing. And then Chris actually went and she got. She was offered a position working for our current mayor, Mayor Faulkner, in the operations side of the city of San Diego. And so she started there, and she called me one day and said, hey, I just was. I'm going to become the chief operating officer. I just got promoted. It's a big role, and I'd love for you to come join me in sort of helping to kind of figure out how we can manage the city and take it to a different level. I think she really appreciated the operations background that I. That I had, and then also sort of that data mindset. And so her and the mayor basically recruited me and asked me to come. And the position they created for me was basically to come in and kind of focus on some of the issues that the city was experiencing and come in and start to bring a different lens toward how we can solve those issues. One of the biggest being homelessness. So I came in, and at the time, our homeless numbers were really high. We weren't doing anything very innovative in the space. And I helped to sort of position the operations in a way that we could set up for success. So how do we make sure that the three large bridge shelters, the tents that we had opened, how do we make sure those are running successfully? What other programs that exist elsewhere in other cities and countries can we replicate? And how do we bring data to that conversation? And so that was one of the issues. There were a few others I was going to focus on, but the homeless one was. Was quite enough for my first few months on the job. I really just hyper focused on setting us up for success there. So I worked with Chris hand in hand and directly for the mayor sitting at. I'll never forget and I'll never, just never be more grateful for the opportunity to sit at a table with, you know, with the mayor and run meetings with him there on his behalf, with people to talk about how we can make change and how we can do so through data was an opportunity I'll forever be grateful for. And it was kind of exciting to sort of shake things up and say, like, let's ask why every time someone says, this is what we do and this is how we do it, and then just keep Asking why. And then after a few months, I sort of stabilized. Some of the, some of the stuff we were doing with homeless, we brought in someone internal to kind of take over and run and decided it wasn't necessary to actually have almost like a department for homelessness working with the Housing Commission. And that was when I was transitioned to, to what made more sense for who I am, my background, what I wanted to do. And that's where I took over as director of a very just elite team at the city that almost no one outside the city knows about. It's called the Performance and Analytics department. Panda. Panda. You should see that. Our office was all full of pandas and we went to the zoo when the pandas were leaving to say goodbye. We really embraced the panda. And so after about five months in, that's when I became director of Panda. And again, I was grateful for this opportunity. And I do want people outside of, you know, the sort of behemoth of the city to notes the Panda is a small department of about four. When I was, there were 14 of us. And in that team, just basically what we, what we were tasked with doing, I think this, what we were still tasked with doing is essentially introducing data, informed decision making to government, challenging status quo and pushing the envelope as far as like transparency, sort of culture change and building in accountability into government. It was, I couldn't have asked for a better place to land. And it was what I needed to accomplish the goals that were set for me at that point by, by the mayor and by Chris, which were like, we need to change how the city is, is operating. We need to start operating a little bit more nimble and a little bit more through data. And so how do we use the data that the city collects so well to actually make decisions? And, and that team, someone that worked for me, the, is the Chief Data Officer. So the city of San Diego does have a chief Data officer. You, I think, Neil, you, you had a, one of your podcasts with our first ever City of San Diego's first ever Chief Data Officer, Maxim, who's wonderful, he's fantastic. I can't believe we were lucky enough as a city to have him. If you can imagine, like, for those of you who are thinking like, what is that? Like what is the city of San Diego and Chief Data office? Does that go together? Well, we luckily got like Mr. Robot, but he's like got the hoodie, he's got some piercings, but he comes and he could easily be like a hacker, but instead he's doing it for Good. And he's like, she has coding and doing things at the city that just like people would be, their minds would be blown. And it was all about, I'm your friend, I can actually make your job easier. And this is what I can do. And then we can do it through data. And he did a, a great job during my tenure. He left and I was exceptionally excited to promote Andrelle Bauer, who's currently still the Chief Data Officer. She worked with Maxim, for Maxim for years and just like there is no one more qualified, she's taking things to the even next level. And so that was my time at the city. I just have so many good things to say. Coming from outside the city where we, you know, the downtown partnership, we would, there was a lot of like, oh, the city, they can't do anything and just, you know, there's a lot of hate to them. And I have to admit, before I work there, I tended to sort of just get frustrated as well. Then you get in there and you meet some really smart, talented, passionate people and it's. I just am so grateful that the people like that work there and are representing San Diego and pushing San Diego to be better. And so I think everyone should know that there are a lot of hidden gems at the city of San Diego and they are there and they are killing it. And it's great to have.

That's great. It seems like San Diego is from the outside and semi outside. Right. I've obviously, I've known some of the team members at Panda and otherwise, like including Kirby Brady, who's there in that role now. Right. In the edc. But how does San Diego stack up in terms of using data as, as, you know, like an actual decision making orientation. You said you were benchmarking other cities around the world. Like were we before not stacking up? Well, and we've kind of accelerated or where are we now?

So it's interesting. We, from the work we did, we sort of did a deep dive into how we're running the city and how other cities were running their city. And it was, we actually looked at things not just from a sort of data introducing data lens, but also just how are we, are we measuring our. How are we building an accountability of what do people know what KPIs are? What, like all this, all this other stuff and then. And how productive are we and what, what are cities using to define productivity? And we did all sort of asked all these kinds of questions and we worked with a couple other organizations to try to figure out like, you Know what? Who's doing it best? This was a project I worked on right before I transitioned out was like, you know what? I want to be better than the best. And so who's doing it best? And let's just, let's go after them. Let's like copy what's being done well, but change it and make it San Diego. And let's aim high, let's see how we can take San Diego and provide the best level of service, like Amazon level. Right. Which is crazy and scary, but let's shoot for the stars. And we found that depending on what you looked at, different cities were doing really well. And some cities were, it's not even on their radar and there was no city that was just acing it. Like it's just killing it on all fronts. I think LA and New York are a couple leaders in that they've got data sort of integrated into operations at a level that I think most cities strive for but haven't achieved yet. Right. Chicago in some areas as well, Boston and then even Austin has done a really good job of starting to just pull in data into the different services they provide. But what we found was San Diego has a real shot at just taking the lead. It's ours to take. And so we started to put together essentially like how do you manage through data? But also there's more than just, you know this, Neil, better than most. You can't just take some data points and say we're doing great or we're failing. You need, you know, the subject matter experts, you need the people who have all the experience to translate it. And you need to, you need to get the staff, the employees, the teams of people doing the real work out there, like literally actually fixing a pothole or coming and like, and addressing any issues you have, putting up the lights or fixing. They need to believe in the work they're doing. And so we started to put together a plan for how you can better run a city. Integrating data but also integrating better rewards for employees and more like just things that in the, in the for profit world, like non governmental, it's just basic, it's like rewards and recognition, you know, taking, taking someone that has been doing something for years and actually like shadowing them for a day and realize what really isn't working and not just necessarily continuing to operate business as usual. And so we, we did a huge analysis and just, just as I left, we launched it and sort of pitched it to the city. This, we're going to shift the way we run the city and all of operations. And it was great. People, people are excited when you tell them, look, we think we can actually help you do things simpler. And you probably know how to do this better, but maybe no one has heard you or it's just been exactly, exactly. So they're underway on that. And a lot of that is like raising the level of data literacy at the city of San Diego so that we can't just hit the ground running. We need people to know what a data set is. We need people to know why, if, why it's important for the city to know how long it takes them to do a task and what hurdles stop them. And all that stuff that we want to start to track. All of that people can be very afraid of taking on because there's a tendency in government to start tracking things so that you can then hit someone over the head with a hammer. And what we were trying to do is introduce these as a new sort of philosophy, a change in culture. And for us to make it easier for you, instead of that spreadsheet you're doing, we can code something that'll do that for you automatically. You don't need a spreadsheet. Right. Like these types of conversations and these types of trust building, all of that's necessary to sort of shift government toward data informed decision making. It's going to take a while. No city's doing it amazingly well. As I said, some are doing better than others. But I will say San Diego's doing is up there and if they keep on this trajectory, can. Can start to take the lead in some areas for sure.

That's great to hear.

Yeah.

And obviously your, your passion for it speaks to in volumes. It's not a surprise to see kind of your leap to next kind of being a founding CEO of a new nonprofit, which is a whole new, whole new challenge, but also brings together a lot of the passions of yours. Ecosystem building, San Diego and data and data science. So tell us kind of like how, tell us what that was like. What was it like to start Data Science alliance? And why did you start it with the team?

I'd love to. So I was sort of loving my job, like having a good time at the city, starting to roll up this really big project, having, having just connecting with such a great team, exposed to, you know, meetings and at a level that I hadn't been all this really cool stuff. And in my head, my, what I wanted to do, what I promised Chris was I would try to work there through Mayor Faulkner's term, just kind of get, get him through his term and help as much as I can for him so that he could achieve his goals, she could achieve her goals and sort of shift the city. And so I sort of had my head down and wasn't really like, I'm not out looking for a job, just living kind of really in the mix. And then about a year ago, I was asked to attend. Neil, you were there. There was, there was this workshop that was being hosted and it was a sort of a select group of people that were invited that were sort of known to be data minded or working as a data scientist or something in data. And basically through a colleague of ours, there's a group that sort of hosted this workshop that were just trying to figure out what does the data science scene look like in San Diego, what's going on here, Is there an ecosystem, is there a community or not? And I was invited because of my role. Obviously it just made sense running the data team for city of San Diego. And I think they really wanted to make sure that the mayor knew what was going on and the city was on board. And so I was there for one of the first workshops. It was about 25 people and basically it was just 25 data nerds talking about data and data science, what they did in meeting each other. And we were asked to kind of talk about would you be interested if there was an effort to push an advanced data science here in San Diego? Would you be interested in that effort and is there an appetite for that here? And everyone got excited and we did the sort of like very stigmatized tech thing, like all the post IT notes everywhere and the Sharpies, everybody's all excited and running around and we just sort of talked about and mapped out what that would look like. And, and we're very candid about our interest in participating in some sort of a real push to do something. And then fast forward, there were a couple of those workshops, a few of them, but fast forward a few months and I was asked by the people that hosted it, they basically recruited me, they asked me if I would be interested that it sounded like from these, these workshops that there's definitely a data community in San Diego. It's not just, it's not just a community, it's a huge robust community, but nobody really knows each other and that's a shame, right? And the people are excited and they were so delighted about this opportunity to meet other people and talk about what they were working on and that there's in interest to sort of position San Diego as a leader in this space. And so this group, the head of this group is. His name is Taner Hallaju, which is kind of a mouthful. And I bring him up because he's a believer in data science. He's our founder, but he has a vision. He sort of took step one before any of this a few years ago when he helped found the Data Science Institute at ucsd. UCSD has an undergraduate degree that you can get in data science because of him. He helped fund that. His background, I won't go too far into it. You can Google him and he's done a lot for San Diego, but his background is basically he was Facebook's first employee and he sort of, I think he recognized he was lucky enough to be exposed to like, this is coming and I see it. And he did some cool things at Facebook. He landed at several other large companies like Cisco and ebay and Loudcloud at times when those companies were just starting to build out. And he was able to be disturbed a part of building something really cool. And he went to UCSD is why he's, he's sort of connected to San Diego and, and so he achieved what he wanted to with his career in the Bay Area and decided to come to San Diego. He lives now in San Diego. His roots are San Diego, his family's in San Diego. And they, they're basically, he's tying his love for data science with his love for San Diego and he's sort of putting his support and quite frankly finances behind this idea that San Diego has a real shot at being a leader in this field, that we don't need to allow the Bay Area or New York or even Austin to come and take that away. There's a race. Many cities are in that race. It's actually global. There's some cities in Canada that are a bit ahead because Canada as a government funded into the tunes of millions of dollars. Some efforts in data science and AI many years ago, Montreal, for example, who knew? But basically it's kind of a race and we think we have a real shot at it. So he created this undergraduate program and then realized, oh, oh no, what if we educate these students? Which is great and what I wanted to do, but then what if they all just leave And San Diego has, you know, this better than anyone, Neil, that's sort of our rep, right? Like we in back in telecom days, Qualcomm had, like, they had to put in money and time and effort to pull, pull the engineers away from moving to sort of north Northern California and recruit them to Stay back here in San Diego. After they were educated in San Diego, right? And so we don't want to replicate, we don't want that to happen again. We want to change that dynamic. We don't want San Diego to just be like exceptional at educating and getting people ready for success and then watching them succeed from afar. And so we need to hit that hard before it starts hitting that trajectory gets away from us. And so that's why a year ago, him and his venture capitalist sort of firm hosted these meetings and had these events and him and our board, which we have such a. It's a small but very smart, talented, dynamic board. An amazing team with two data scientists other than him on the board that are, I mean, world recognized, right. One worked at Uber and was the data scientist for Uber, period. Helped establish Uber, which I would argue Uber is a data science company. And we have this brilliant.

They'd love to classify themselves that. By the way, with AB5.

AB5.

We are a data science company. We are not a transportation.

No transportation. What are you talking about? Yeah, and we have a woman that runs a supercomputer center, but also helped create this technology that basically helps to predict wildfires and it's helping to change how wildfire, the world of wildfires in California is being changed through her work with fire departments and fire related entities because of her sensor technology. So we've got some, some really just dynamic people on this board and we've got a few others. And my cfo, my CTO are brilliant and basically there, there's this. They just know that we can do this. We can make San Diego number one. We can start to become known not just for tourism, which is getting killed. Right. Not just for military, which is doing great, but at any point could change at this, the whims of federal government. Right. And then bio, of course, we're very proud of that. And I think that's sort of where our innovation sector really does well, is like sort of the bio and the med tech and all that. But, but data science is integrated in all of that, all of that. And, and in, in five, 10 years we'll be a part of everything everyone does, every business. So we. So like I'm telling you all this because I can see that and that's sort of the vision we have. And when they recruited me and we talked through what that looked like and I sort of was questioning whether I wanted to transition before the mayor's term was up, I realized I was facing an opportunity that doesn't come every day. As you said, it's got some ecosystem building which I love, I love sort of helping people connect and building a community. It has, I mean inherent, it's data. I'm a data evangelist so that's. Check that box. Right. But it also has this like uncertainty and fear. There's a fear aspect which I always try to face and not run from. And the fact that that scared me a little was okay, I'm leaving this job. It's a government job. It's running this amazing team. It's working directly with a mayor of one of the big, you know, biggest cities in the country to a in startup that could not make it right. That we, we have to be scrappy and we have to raise money and we have to like show value and it's. While it's, it's the sort of the founder and the idea comes from these people, it's not, they're not going to just sit and fund this thing. It's, it's a community led organization. And the fear and uncertainty around building something from scratch was what actually tipped the scale for me was I want, I now I've done a non profit, I've done government, I've done tech, but I haven't created that. I haven't sort of been the one to kind of make it all work and work with such a great team to have it come to fruition. And so I decided yeah, let's do this. Let's, let's. I'll take a chance, you're taking a chance, I'll take a chance and let's kind of hit this hard. The idea of like shifting, shifting San Diego in a meaningful way is so audacious that I had to say yes, let's try to change San Diego, why not?

That's awesome. I love that. So many great webs there coming together, such great vision, the academic side and the talent kind of stimulus with the professional and tech community coming together too. From data piece you also talk about the biotech scene which the late great economy journalist Bruce Bigelow termed as Big Bio meets Big data is what's going to put San Diego on the map, right? And he started the, he started a few years ago a kind of a data, a biotech data symposium around that. And look where we've got to. Now we have an entire organization who's shepherding San Diego as a data hub regardless of industry which is really cool to see that forward momentum, the progress on that. You have a great team you mentioned. Let's give Alex Bates a shout out around this too, who had some vision here. We, Alex and I have been working kind of side by side to the workshops that you talked about. He, in his mind, said we're an AI hub. You know, he really loved that. Sano is an artificial intelligence hub, but data science, is that right? It is the collection of data and the application of it. So it's great to see kind of everyone come together and say, this is what it is, it's data science first. And we can build even mini ecosystems around that too. What is that? So, great team, an amazing vision, some great financing behind it. And one thing you didn't mention about Tenera is he's standing as one of the largest angel investors. He's probably seeded over 100 or 150 of our company, including one of mine, previously Portfolium. What is that? So that all comes together into a crucible with you as the leader. It's a lot, right? What does that, like, practically come out to play? Like, what do you do first? What has been going on to bring together the ecosystem?

That's a great question. So we. The first thing, first order of business for me, we launched early in the year and immediately we sort of put together this strategy, like, this is what we're going to do for the year. I met in a short order in December, so I left the city in early December. The next day I started at the Data Science alliance and I spent all of December and part of early January meeting with over 100 people, individuals, organizations that are somehow connected in data science to get a better understanding of what does San Diego's data science ecosystem look like. And really just meeting people and hearing what's working, what's not working. And I took all that. We also did Alex, the brilliant Alex Bates, he did some sort of data mining to get a better understanding of what our data from a economics perspective, what does San Diego's data science field look like? And we put all that together. We had a board retreat in January and said, look, this is what the ecosystem has, this is what it's missing. And here we should focus on what, whatever challenges exist and figure out how to address those challenges and then take the next challenge and just keep going. And that to me is the root of ecosystem building is at the heart of it, is you have the community, you do events, you do all kinds of things to connect people constantly. That's sort of. And you get that going and then. But around that you figure out. And through that you figure out what's frustrating, what's challenge, what should take one step, that's taking two, what's missing? And then you as an organization, as a nonprofit, you just go after that with everything you've got and try to help fill that void or fill that gap. And it doesn't have to be you, but you at least help like find the right organization, the right people to help bridge that. Whether it's lack of capital or perception of lack of capital or you know, like there's so many things I heard over those, that time period. So we had sort of like, this is what we're going to do. We're going to build this community, create connections, start throwing events, doing all these different things to build a community. But then what we keep hearing is this, this and this and we should create these programs to address them. And then, and then Covid happened. And so like I am what I call a doer. I love creating lists and getting them done. And I like right when we started to get onto the process of okay, now let's execute, let's start getting real work done and getting some stuff accomplished, Covid happened and we more than half of the things we wanted to do were just not possible in the environment of COVID including like this, you know, event, huge event and this like teaching in person and this sort of idea of in person community that we had been philosophizing about. So then we had to just shift gears and we had to start to try to figure out how can we get at what's needed. But also we now need to figure out what's needed now that every company is being faced by this pandemic. And so maybe the needs that we assessed have changed as well. And so what we're working on, what we've isolated is basically, it's sort of at a very high level. We want to focus on three things. One is problem solving. That's her number one. And that is because that is what data science is. It's literally like give us a problem, we're going to try to solve it, we're going to give you insights, we're going to use data, we're going to do our best. And so we think we need to do more of that in San Diego and at a very like base, at the very bare bones basics, we got to show what we got, we got to show everyone else that San Diego's got the data science chops, that we can take a problem and apply data science and get it, get some insights out of it. So we are working on like, can we do data competitions, can we Partner with nonprofits, humanitarian organizations with real civic problems and can we actually solve them through data science? Stuff that I was doing at the city is a good example. Can you apply data science to homelessness? And if so, how? And what can we do? And so we are looking at how to start to chew on those types of problems. And we, the idea being I'm not going to do all that work, Alex is not going to do it. We're a small team, but we want to tie that back to community. We're going to tap into the community of data scientists and data analysts and data people in San Diego and together I think we can start to chew on some real problems and start to show what San Diego can do and then pump that out and start using that to help sort of showcase that San Diego is not just educating people, but they're actually solving problems with data. And then the second thing is high level is business investment. It's, I think what every ecosystem building organization does is like, how do we get more startups, how do we get more data science startups? But also how do we get more state startups that don't have data science integrated? How do we help them integrate data science into their business? Because most likely they have data, but they're not, they're not actually maybe using it to create innovation and maybe don't know how or don't have the capital because you're a startup and you're busy and you're doing other things. And then also how do we integrate data science into existing businesses from not just startups, but small business to medium sized to large. Until, until people start to see data science like they see it like we've got a lot, a lot of work ahead of us and I think that's where we're going is like, you can't imagine running a medium sized company without a couple IT people on your team, right? Like, you can't, you just can't do it. The bigger you are, the bigger your IT department. And but in the past no one, no one like that wasn't a thing. There was no it. Well, that's what's going to happen with data science. There's going to be like, oh, you've got your accounting department, you have your IT department, you have your data science department. And small ones will probably outsource like they do now with it. We want to like the Runway between. Here we are with no data science, no understanding of data science to, oh, that's, you have to, that's part of your business. We Want to shorten that Runway. And then the last is talent development. And while we have been doing as a region some great work there, especially UCSD with the Halajo Lu Data Science Institute that I mentioned and shout out to USD that they're doing some work towards creating some stuff around data science, which is awesome. We want to make sure that there's a pipeline from talent to actual career and that that pipeline doesn't go up to Northern California. So how do we keep those, those smart, educated people here in San Diego? And if we can be the conduit between that talent and industry and figure out what's missing and help the two connect in any way, we will do that. And so at high level those are our three sort of priorities that we're going to be working on. The types of things we do to achieve success in each of them is going to constantly change around what the ecosystem is telling us and what we're hearing and probably layer in Covid and an economic crisis that might be coming down the path, layer all that in together. We're going to be very nimble and sort of adjust to the needs of the local community. But what we've sort of done a good job of is entrenching ourselves into conversations around data science, having a really good connection into the community of data people. So we know firsthand what's working, what's not working and we can kind of pivot and adjust as needed. For now, how can people kind of connect with us is something I hear often. We just launched our membership strategy. We are sort of moving forward as a membership organization. I really encourage you to take a look at our website which is just datasciencealliance.org and there you'll find ways to connect. You can become a member and join our community. And there's also opportunities volunteer because I know that especially during this time there's financial. Not everybody can just take on a new responsibility and, and $100 or 1500 depending on the type of membership you're looking at could be a lot for you right now. We'll take, we'll take your time and expertise and you can join us through being a volunteer we want to build similar to Startup San Diego and the success you've had with that organization, Neil. It's because of volunteers that you were able to get as far as you were able to and all the things that you're able to do. So we're happy to take some volunteers and their exposure they'll get in exchange for the work they do. Is going to be quite dramatic because we are serious about what we're doing here and we're going to start to get some attention from other cities about things that are happening in San Diego. And you want your name attached to that, I think, if you're in the field.

So, yeah, great mentorship sounds like great too. From the board. That's awesome. Initiatives. Love the concrete examples of what you guys are going to do to impact now and continue to grow the community. I've loved your event series that you've been running this summer. Those have been great. So thank you for that. Having some awesome speakers and some virtual events. Startup Month coming up soon in October. Well, depending upon when this goes live, Startup Month may be going on right now. So hope you're enjoying Startup Month right now. But thank you for all of your efforts in building ecosystem for so many people. We're cut from the same cloth there. Absolutely. And we love our community, which means we also love tacos. As you mentioned in the beginning. Do you have one favorite place or does it change on the season or the weather?

I will admit to you that this was the most stressful question that I was anticipating. I lost sleep last night over this because I love tacos, I love San Diego. And it's hard for me to pick a favorite. It's like people that say I can't pick a favorite child or whatever, but I did. I am committing to you because I don't want to be that person that lists every. I am picking one. And the reason I'm picking this one is the food is amazing. But I just love the. That it is a sort of fabric of this community and that it brings people to this part of San Diego that everyone should go to. And I also find when I have visitors to San Diego, I'm always taking them there. And I thought, oh, there's something there. If I'm always taking people to this, it's called Salud. It's. It's an experience. I'm sure you've been there, but for anyone who hasn't been there, please go. It's Saint Barrio Logan, who was just such a fantastic neighborhood in San Diego. And you could sort of spend a half day there where you have your tacos and then please walk over to Chicano park and just check out the art there and the history in that community. And what's happened is you've got Salud that came up and around Salud, that whole block has started. Other small businesses have started to pop up and they seem to be very connected to the roots of that community. I'm hoping that it doesn't get super gentrified. So far it seems like it's a lot of people from that community in that community. I hope it stays that way as much as it can, but I love that. Salud. They've got some really cool art in there that's inspired by tattoos and so it's just, it's a fabric of San Diego. It's our history. You should know. And I think once a month or so. I don't know if they do it all year. I should have looked this up. But they have this sort of like they close down the entire block. They have lowriders and just like it's like a street fair. It's pretty awesome. So you can't go wrong with Salute.

No. Great spot, Great spot. And maybe the lines are actually a little lower now during COVID because it is a happening place all times, that's for sure. Great pick. No judgment there whatsoever. We love that though. Hopefully, you know, you get more sleep tonight because you got. Thanks so much for joining the podcast. We love the story. Let's have you on again so we can talk about, you know, continued show, the growth of the data science community. And thank you so much.

Thank you. I'm so grateful. Thanks for having me.

Thanks for joining us on the Tacos and Tech podcast with Neil Bloom. Thanks again to Cox Business for helping make this possible by expanding the reach of the San Diego tech ecosystem. Big shout out to School of Rap for our rad intro music. And thanks as well to Nest Podcast Network where we are recording live inside their studio at Nest Co working in Bankers Hill. You can find Neil Bloom on Twitter eealbloom as well as fresh brewed tech and tacos and tech Pod on Twitter too.

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