Curiosity to Consultancy; Luck, Opportunity & Cole Skuse

It's been a while since I posted here!
After a busy few weeks, I was invited to speak at Data+Visual, an event run in London by the wonderful Eric Hannell - And below is the talk I gave there.

Eric sort've gave me free reign to talk, and mentioned that I should talk about my foray into sports data - or something similar. Now, given that I imagine most people reading this blow follow me on Twitter - This comes naturally to me. I enjoy speaking about sports analytics, and in particular tweet *_a lot_* about football in general.

The idea came to me (given I was trying to find time to create and think up a presentation) to talk about a) my journey into data and b) the role that sport played in that.
The raw structure I created when planning my presentation was this:

What?

I got into football analytics and it ended up leading me to my current day job - getting paid to do something I was doing for fun

So What?

Doing so & getting involved is simple, rewarding and opens up (fun?) new ways of analysing and consuming sport

Now What?

The potential for sports data is only growing, let's learn from the past and iterate for the future.

Okay, I came up with that line when brainstorming out loud to my colleague Ben Moss and I loved it - It became the 'takeaway message' of my presentation.

This is now the fourth public talk I've done (in an environment which isn't directly through work), and the third time I've spoken alone. Each time I've tried something new and attempted to get out of my comfort zone.

My aim this time was to speak for 35-40 minutes without losing the audience, and keeping them engaged. I do a lot of brutal self-reflection, so felt that I could have cut a couple of pieces out (such as connecting to my fitbit, speaking at length about wearables). The other thing I'm wary of is that I underexplained some things and overexplained others. I think this is something which I will learn as I get more confident at speaking to crowds of varying backgrounds.

I fully recommend you all sign up to Data plus Visual - There have been some fantastic speakers, and it's a great chance to meet other like-minded people if you're interested in the data space sign up here; http://www.meetup.com/data-visual-London/

Thanks again to Eric Hannell for inviting me to speak, and to David Pires & Andy Kriebel for recommending me to Eric.

Below is the video - I hope you enjoy, and please give me any and all feedback!