DiscoverEI Turns 1 🎉!!
What a year it has been! On DiscoverEI’s first birthday (officially celebrated on 16 April), we’re taking a bit of time to reflect on what we have accomplished over the past 12 months, and most importantly, say a big THANK YOU to everyone who has supported us along the way!
For those who know us well, you’ll know that we love a good video compilation - and we’ve had a bit of fun with this one reliving the highlights of creating DiscoverEI over the past year! And yes I couldn’t wait to eat that cake - it was delicious!
Every milestone has a story to tell - and below we’ve shared some of our tips and lessons learnt along the way. We hope you enjoy - and can’t wait to see what the next year will bring!
🎦 Take a look at the 3 minute snapshot highlights reel, and read on for our tips 🎦
Tip #1: Create your own goals and milestones
We learnt pretty early on that creating milestones is one of the best ways to keep growing and pushing your boundaries! For us, we find that saying ‘yes’ to new opportunities provides a great driver and helps us set those precious deadlines to keep us moving in the right direction. Having had the opportunity to present at 17 events, including conferences, interviews, meetup sessions and virtual webinars, has been one of our key motivators to learn new material and share our story with the data analytics and environmental communities’.
One of our first presentations last year was at the Melbourne SQL Saturday event in June. At the time, neither Alice or I had worked on many projects in this space, but with the drivers and milestones set in the months leading up to the conference, we worked hard watching endless tutorials and creating loads of fun demo’s, and ended up delivering a presentation that really resonated with the audience. With every presentation we are always learning something new, and grow as a result!
“Whatever you set out to achieve, forget all that may be holding you back and just go for it!”
Tip #2: Build your network
Surround yourself with great people! We are very fortunate to have the opportunity to be involved with three great committees, which connect and inspire people across the water and data industries. We’ve found this experience to be really valuable, and are constantly energised from being surrounded by such passionate people, all working together to connect and inspire the communities we care about. As a result, we have had the chance to build our network, brainstorm innovative ideas and challenge the norm by thinking differently - and then apply this way of thinking at DiscoverEI.
You never know how these amazing connections will develop in the future, so maintaining strong relationships is a key to building your network, and working towards success.
Tip #3: Share your knowledge
It’s a great feeling when you can teach and empower others. We’ve learnt so much from the endless supply of blogs, videos, community forums and conferences and we wanted to share a bit of what we’ve picked up along the way. The DiscoverEI Blog was born! Since the start of this year we’ve been working hard behind the scenes to create lots of helpful content that focuses on what we love - Power BI, Graphic Design and the Environment!
This process of teaching others has actually taught us a lot along the way, and really helps consolidate our ideas. Everyone is an expert in their own field and has something unique they can add. Even if you feel that a topic has been exhausted, there is always a new perspective you can give, and provide your own spin on it to help inspire others! Reza Rad has a powerful blog post on this, where he encourages others to share their stories.
Tip #4: Tell the story YOUR way
The beauty of start-up life is that you get the chance to share your stories, your way! For us, we love sharing our story in videos, and find it is a really powerful medium for training, blogs, story telling and visually communicating complex problems. We’re proud to have built up a network of subscribers on our YouTube and Vimeo channels.
And we know what you’re thinking because we also initially felt this: “How do I start creating my own videos and who’s going to watch them?” Well the awesome thing is that there are so many tools out there to help you get started, with our favourites being:
Wondershare Filmora for screen recording.
Much to the disgust of Rinat our graphic designer, we enjoy using Microsoft PowerPoint for simple video design (check out our How To Create Videos in PowerPoint blog).
Motion Array, Pexels, Flaticons and Unsplash for all different forms of media.
The Adobe Creative Cloud suite (although it comes with a price), but it really does give you so many tools for image, video and audio editing, and the ability to package all this together!!
And if videos aren’t your cup of tea, then work out what the favorite way of telling your story is, whether it’s through photos on Instagram, live streaming on Mixer (like the Dashboard Dr!), or writing a blog, we encourage you to share your story with the world!
Using the Power Platform to tackle Environmental Challenges
DiscoverEI Animations and Infographics for Australian Water Catchments
Tip #5: Think outside the box
We learnt pretty quickly that things don’t always go to plan. When this happens, our advice is to be agile and think outside the box. For us, this happened when we had grand dreams to make drone flying a large part of our business… we got very excited about the thought of weekends away camping and hiking adventures collecting awesome drone footage for our clients. Unfortunately drone flying is one element of the business that hasn’t “taken off” (zing!!). We have still had a lot of fun with it, and I earned my official Drone Remote Pilot Licence, so I’ll be ready to fly when the drone projects start flying in the door… (double zing!)
And for anyone who knows a bit about drone technology, we fly the sub 2kg DJI Spark (who we call Bertie), and the picture quality and control is incredible!! While we haven’t actually had a paid drone job on the books yet, it’s been great to build up our marketing material and get some awesome video footage of our catchments to tell our water story. We encourage you to always think outside the box when things don’t go initially as planned.
Tip #6: Celebrate the wins
We’re a big believer in celebrating the wins! One of our stranger accomplishments of the past year is being crowned Data God’s by Christopher Wagner (an authority on all things Power BI, as well as now being a great friend!). At first, both Alice and I felt a little bit of the “Imposter syndrome” creeping in at being named the Data God of Poetry and Data Goddess of Nature and Beauty; being up there with some of the world leaders in Power BI. We’ve learnt along our journey that imposter syndrome is something that we all feel at one point or another, and the best way to face it, is to embrace it, and be proud of what others see in you.
We had the chance to meet the amazing Dona Sarkar in Sydney earlier this year, and her talk on the imposter syndrome (check it out here TEDx Talk) really resonated with us and helped put in perspective what we were feeling at the time. If you’ve ever felt like you are an imposter in any area of your life, I would highly recommend watching it!!
Tip #7: Give back to the community
We were really excited to be able to celebrate Alice and Daniel receiving the Microsoft MVP for Data Platform last week! This represents a huge accomplishment for both their careers and a big recognition of all the ways they are giving back to the community. For Alice, it’s her passion for Power BI and the environment, where she is constantly sharing new and interesting examples of how we can bring environmental data to life, inspiring the community through the DiscoverEI blog, YouTube channel, Data Stories Gallery, PowerBI.Tips contributions and as many conference and community events she can attend!!! She’s also incredibly passionate about #WomenInTech and is a community leader for the Women in BizApps Melbourne Meetup.
For Daniel, it’s sharing his intimate knowledge of the Microsoft stack, consistently posting helpful content and answering the Power BI community questions across all forums, which has also earned him the esteemed title of Datanaut! Daniel is also pushing the boundaries of open source custom visual development (check out his AWESOME Violin Plot and Small Multiple Line Chart) and regularly shares his learnings and experiences through many conference presentations, community events and his Coacervo blog!
If you want to find out more about being a Microsoft MVP, then click on the photo below. We encourage you to give back to the community where you can.
Tip #8: Build your team for support
Alice and I have the privilege of working with Daniel and Rinat, who are both masters of their craft. It is great to have experts that you can rely on and work with in those areas of the business that you may not have as much experience in. We’ve realised just how important it is to surround yourself with people that can help you. Our team mates and good friends, Daniel and Rinat, have been fantastic mentors in teaching us about visual design, motion graphics and data analytics.
When starting a business, you may need to rely on a good accountant, lawyer, website designer or marketer, to help with kick-starting your business - by all means learn about these other areas of the business, but by building a supportive network that you can rely on you don’t have to do it all yourself. We always work stronger as a team!
“Be strong enough to stand alone, smart enough to know when you need help, and brave enough to ask for it”
Tip #9: Ride that rollercoaster
Both Alice and myself have worked as consultants for over 10 years. We know what a rollercoaster ride it can be - but when you’re a really small company, get ready for a wild ride!
We’re extremely proud to have delivered 18 projects over the past year for our clients. There were times when it was incredibly busy, and other times when we had quite a bit of spare time on our hands. We’ve learnt that it’s important to be patient, persistent and stay positive. In July-August 2019 when we found ourselves in a quieter period, we kept talking to people across our network, and took the opportunity to invest in learning and building up our brand. In addition to the projects, we’re also very proud of the 67 opportunities that we pursued, where we had the chance to introduce DiscoverEI to lots of new people! You have to remember that things will take time, but all the new opportunities that you create will connect up in the future.
“You can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards!”
Tip #10: Be true to your brand
It’s also important to be authentic! Don’t try to be something that you’re not, you’ll just end up sending out mixed messages. We are really proud of the brand we have built at DiscoverEI, which reflects our values.
Know what you do, why you do it, and reflect this in your business. And let’s be honest, a little bit of merchandise and marketing around the place is a lot of fun!! Alice and I don’t own a car, so instead we decided to splash out and buy some branded DiscoverEI bikes. So if you see these bikes cruising the streets of Melbourne, with their riders wearing the DiscoverEI shirts then please come and say hi!
Tip #11: Have fun 🎈
This is probably the most important thing to remember - make sure to have fun along the way!! Lots of the faces below are new friends and mentors we have had the privilege of meeting and working alongside over the past year. We have really enjoyed the journey, so thank you for supporting us and making it a lot of fun.
A big thank you to everyone that has made our first year one to remember!!
We hope you have enjoyed learning a little more about our journey, and can take some inspiration in setting out to achieve your own goals!
If you have any stories or comments that you would like to share, we’d love to hear from you, so please post in the comments below!
Power BI Training Courses
We’re really excited to announce the DiscoverEI teams virtual 2-day Power BI training courses, to fast-track your Power BI journey. Click on the links below to learn more, or get in touch today!
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