It’s here! The official lineup for Summer Community Days, Vol. 1

Unless you're completely new to Census (in which case hi! 👋), you’ve probably heard about Summer Community Days, the two-day, practitioner-first community event we’re throwing July 28 and 29. ☀️ If you’re like most data nerds we know, you’re burnt out on a chain of corporate product conferences. We get it. Which is why Summer Community Days is all about giving you, the data community, the mic so you can learn from each other and share your hard-won expertise (no sales pitches or product demos).

Our call for proposals closed June 30 and we had an amazing number of sessions to choose from (seriously, y’all turned out to submit some great topics). So many that we couldn’t actually fit them in two days (stay tuned for ad hoc events featuring the rest of the submissions we couldn’t schedule this year). 

Safe to say: We’re amped on the lineup. 😍 The conference features virtual keynotes, community expert sessions, and workshops, as well as live happy hours in some of our major US city hubs after day one of the conference (details below). 🕺

Here’s the breakdown. 👇

Keynotes you don’t want to miss 🎤

Each morning, we’re starting with a keynote featuring some of our favorite voices in data sharing second-hand gold about their careers, insights on how we can all make the data industry a more inclusion space, and tips for finding your place in the data industry. Check out our keynote speakers and topics below. 👀

July 28 🗓️ Tipping points: How individual decisions make big impacts in data careers & data teams w/ Emily Hawkins, data engineering manager @ Drizly

All of our careers (and the collective careers of our data teams) are the sum of critical decisions made at the right or wrong time, and Emily Hawkins, data engineering manager at Drizly, is no stranger to navigating these inflection points. In her own career, she’s navigated between junior to senior IC and from IC to manager. 

Within her team, Emily has experienced all the data growing pains and success stories that a data team faces in a rapidly scaling company. In this keynote (which doubles as a live episode of The Sequel Show), Emily and Census CEO Boris Jabes sit down to discuss:

• How Emily has navigated tipping points in her career (and how they’ve helped her scale-up)
• How she’s navigating the growing pains of a successful data team
• How her role within her team has changed since Drizly acquisition by Uber
• How data processes and data sharing have shifted as the team has grown
• Lessons learned in making decisions that will impact your career, your company, and your customers

No matter where you are in your data career, or what sized data team you’re a part of, you’ll leave this keynote session feeling inspired. 

July 29 🗓️ Diversity in data: Modeling a better future for data teams w/ Julia King (Carta), Julie Beynon (Clearbit), Christine Ndedge (contract data engineer), David Jayatillake (Metaplane) & Jessica Cherny (Ironclad & Data Angels)

Whether you’re a hiring manager building a data team, an individual contributor on a data team, or just wandering the conference floor of most industry trade shows, you’ve probably realized how homogeneous the data industry feels. 

For day two, we’re gathering some inspiring data professionals who have an insider’s perspective on the diversity challenges within the industry to talk about the diversity problem in data, including high notes such as: 

• What modern data companies can do to foster diversity on their teams 
• Why diversity in data is something data teams (and companies) of all sizes should care about 
• How a lack of diversity can negatively impact individual practitioner’s careers (and the teams they’re a part of) 
• The role of community in opening up doors for more diverse voices in our industry 

We’re formatting this panel as a fireside chat and hope that this sparks a fruitful conversation between not just our panelists, but our community as well. 

Expert sessions to keep you inspired for the rest of the year 🤓

While our keynotes are starting each day off strong, things are slowing down after they wrap up. Each day, experts in the community are taking the stage to share their insights, actionable advice, and technical tips from 10 am PT to 130 pm PT.  

Whether you’re taking a technical deep dive or learning to expand the reach of data in your company, you can learn from expert sessions like:

• Every analyst is a financial analyst presented by Bobby Pinero, co-founder & CEO @ Equals
• Transforming Your Data Career presented by Brittany Allen, data strategist @ Calbright College
• Operational analytics in B2B startups presented by Danny Chepenko, head of growth & data @ SpatialChat
• No lead left behind presented by Dylan Hughes, senior software engineer, data & internal tools @ Prefect
• Tell me what you want, what you really really want: How to identify the real business question presented by Irina Kukuyeva, PhD, fractional chief data officer @ Kukuyeva Consulting
• The collaborative data pipeline: How we operationalize analytics applying software development lifecycle best practices presented by Matthew Mullins, chief technology officer @ Cogniti
• Supercharging GTM, operations & analytics teams with a scalable data architecture presented by Richard Makara, co-founder & CEO @ reconfigured
• Delivering value as a data engineer presented by Sarah Krasnik, advisor @ Superconductive
• End-to-end data flow visibility presented by Suela Isaj, data engineer @ Issuu
• Tackling apathy with agile analytics presented by Taylor Brownlow, head of product @ Count
• Make events a first-class citizen with activity schema presented by Timo Dechau, founder & data engineer @ Deepskydata
• What's the future of testing in data? presented by Will Sweet, head of product experience @ Datafold

… Plus many more sessions from other data rockstars! Check out our full speaker agenda 👉 here 👈

Workshops to put those skills to use 🔨

Ready to dive deep? Each day we’re hosting an in-depth afternoon workshop to help you build new data skills you can implement after the conference wraps up. Check out our topics and details below 👇

July 28 🗓️ Fundamentals of data engineering for non-data engineers w/ Pete Fein, principal @ Snakedev

In this fast-paced survey course provided by, you’ll get a high-level introduction to all of data engineering in three hours. You’ll learn how to take a data project from prototype to production-quality data platform, exploring techniques to scale up to big data sets and scale out to more features and larger teams. In addition to discussing data architecture and design principles, this course will explore up-and-coming data tools, including:

• A complete overview of today’s data engineering tools
• Best practices for data architecture and design 
• Essential tools for the modern data stack
• How matching storage format to query type improves performance
• Strategies for data observability and quality

If you’re new to the space or just looking for a quick but informative refresher, Pete’s session is sure to fill any data engineering knowledge gaps you might have.

July 29 🗓️ Building account scoring models w/ Donny Flynn, customer data architect @ Census

Alignment between marketing and sales teams in the B2B world is a constant struggle. Marketing thinks that sales is not prospecting enough to find viable leads, while sales thinks that marketing is not spending their money effectively and is, as a result, finding low-quality leads.

So, how do we quell this squabble and bridge the trust gap between business units? There’s only one solution: Increase transparency and communication using an account scoring engine. This workshop will cover how to build account scoring models, including:

• How they can usurp the capabilities of lead scoring
• How they provide transparency to your marketing and sales teams and increase collaboration
• How to properly set them up
• How you can use account scoring (without any other tools) to end the marketing-sales battle once and for all

Whether you support marketing and sales regularly or not, Donny’s session will teach you the basics of account scoring so you can set your company up for success across the board.

Network IRL at our happy hours 🍾

Last, but definitely not least, if you’re located in one of our major hubs, come out and network with fellow practitioners IRL from 6:30 pm to 9:30 pm PDT on July 28! 🥂 There’s sure to be good drinks, good conversations, and good vibes all night. ✌️ Our venue locations (and partners) are:

• San Francisco Happy Hour w/ Hex & BigEye at 620 Jones St, San Francisco, CA 94102
• Los Angeles Happy Hour w/ Deepnote & Airbyte at 900 Wilshire Blvd fl 73, Los Angeles, CA 90017
• Denver Happy Hour w/ BigEye at 1920 Blake St, Denver, CO 80202
• Chicago Happy Hour w/ BigEye at 3640 N Clark St, Chicago, IL 60613
• Brooklyn Happy Hour w/ Snowplow Analytics, Metaplane, Brooklyn Data Co. & Airbyte at 210 Smith St, Brooklyn, NY 11201. 

🤩 Ready to grab your seat? Want to see the full agenda? Grab your seat today.