Why To Be A Volunteer And How To Become One Within The Effective Statistician Community

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Why To Be A Volunteer And How To Become One Within The Effective Statistician Community

[00:00:00] Alexander: Welcome to another episode of the Effective Statistician. This is again Alexander for a Friday episode and I don’t know [00:00:10] whether this will be a very very short one or a little bit longer one. I guess it will be a little bit longer. In this episode, we will talk [00:00:20] about how you can benefit from volunteering in an association.

[00:00:26] Alexander: There are many different associations around the [00:00:30] ASA, the different EFSPI organizations, the PSI, and many more of these academic or professional [00:00:40] organizations. And you can also volunteer in an association. In the effective statistician community and work in this [00:00:50] area and help with driving the vision of the effective statistician forward.

[00:00:56] Alexander: But we will get to this a little bit [00:01:00] later. So some companies actually support that quite a lot and you can do that within your work time, which is great, but still, [00:01:10] why should you do any kind of activity beyond your job description? Well, there are [00:01:20] lots of benefits from that. And I wanna tell a little bit about my story. And how that helped me. [00:01:30] So a couple of years into my into my career, I noticed that I had a pretty good network within [00:01:40] the company, but not outside the company.

[00:01:44] Alexander: And I saw people like my supervisor were also quite [00:01:50] active outside in doing all kinds of different stuff. And of course, I was, you know, going to conferences, going to events, [00:02:00] and these were also largely organized by volunteers. And I was thinking, hmm.. Interesting. [00:02:10] Probably I should do something similar. And so I started working in a special interest group that I was specifically interested in.[00:02:20] 

[00:02:21] Alexander: And that was the start of a game changer. So a couple of benefits from [00:02:30] working in these things. So first, I got access to very, very educated, Very [00:02:40] experienced people with skills that I had no idea about. Yeah, so I learned a lot about data visualization. I [00:02:50] learned a lot about benefit risk, about patient preferences, lots of different things.

[00:02:56] Alexander: Just by Working alongside these [00:03:00] different people and organizing events together. So you don’t even need to be an expert in topic XYZ to [00:03:10] help with this. That topic. Yeah, just working with experts and with other people that are interested there You will learn [00:03:20] a lot along the way. The other point is you get access to people across the industry [00:03:30] both from companies, CROs But also on the regulatory side and you can build connections there.

[00:03:39] Alexander: [00:03:40] These connections are are super valuable. In this network, everybody gives and takes. And as you [00:03:50] provide help to people, they in turn will provide help to you. Why is it so easy for me to get so many [00:04:00] people on the podcast as guests? Well, because I have worked with them a lot before. We have built connections. We have built [00:04:10] trust. We have even built friendships with each other. And so it is very easy for me to approach them and say, Hey, there’s this topic [00:04:20] X, Y, Z, where I think you would be a great guest on the show and to share your insights. And I hardly get a no. [00:04:30] Usually when I get a no, that is because of the super bureaucratic things within some big companies.

[00:04:39] Alexander: Yeah. And [00:04:40] where people say, actually, I would love to be on your show, but it’s such a nightmare to get any approval here that I can’t which I completely understand. [00:04:50] Anyway, there is a lot of benefits around this. Also, they have benefits of getting additional chops. At [00:05:00] least two jobs in my career I got because of my network and because of my network that resulted [00:05:10] from being a volunteer in these different associations.

[00:05:13] Alexander: So this is where, you know, You will learn [00:05:20] about, ah, there are new job opportunities and job opportunities that are not posted online, that are [00:05:30] not given away by our recruiters, but that are filled through the networks of the different people. [00:05:40] And if you are in these networks, and people like you, trust you, see that you’re competent, that you, you know, [00:05:50] have a specific skill that they are looking for, well, of course, they will reach out to you and say, Hey, we have this job opportunity.

[00:05:59] Alexander: Are you [00:06:00] interested? Yeah. And of course, then you also know that. Ah, this guy, this girl, I like, and I would love to [00:06:10] work with them. So you also start into new jobs, not kind of feeling out of nowhere and not knowing everybody, anybody’s there, [00:06:20] but very often you will already know a couple of different people.

[00:06:26] Alexander: Of course, depends on the company size, but you know, bigger companies, you will [00:06:30] surely know some people who will work with them. And so also, if you are looking for a new job, you [00:06:40] can proactively contact all kinds of different people for that. So, there’s definitely a lot in terms of getting from [00:06:50] that.

[00:06:51] Alexander: There’s also this personal growth. beyond just the knowledge. You learn a lot about [00:07:00] networking, reaching out to people, connecting with people. You learn a lot about these [00:07:10] people skills through working in these communities. And so these are transferable skills, you will benefit [00:07:20] from that within your job and actually also beyond, yeah all these communication skills.

[00:07:28] Alexander: You can [00:07:30] also use them within your family, with, with friends, with all kinds of different other activities that you have, yeah. If you [00:07:40] want to organize something for you, don’t know. Your church, your sports club, your whatsoever. If you have [00:07:50] organized these things for an association, that will help you there as well.

[00:07:55] Alexander: So, there are a lot of benefits [00:08:00] from volunteering. Now, why would you volunteer for any organization? I think one of the key things is, [00:08:10] you want to You not only get something out of it, you also probably want to connect with something that is important for you, [00:08:20] with a community of like minded individuals.

[00:08:24] Alexander: Because of course, if you work there, you want to have fun [00:08:30] there. You want to have people that think alike, that have the same goals like you overall for their career and [00:08:40] potentially in life. And so it is really important for you to understand what is the vision and the mission of [00:08:50] these different organizations.

[00:08:53] Alexander: And you very often can find them on the different homepages. So check out where these [00:09:00] are appealing for you. Now the vision for the effective statistician is pretty simple. The vision [00:09:10] of this community Is to make sure that. Everybody in healthcare has the right evidence at the right [00:09:20] time in the right format to make the right decisions for patients.

[00:09:24] Alexander: And when I talk about stakeholders, that starts in early [00:09:30] research, yeah? Could be the biologists, the chemists, or the people that make the resource decisions. It [00:09:40] goes through the clinical development program so that everybody knows, okay, Do we move forward with the next dose? What is the best design [00:09:50] that we should use?

[00:09:51] Alexander: Do we go into phase 2, phase 3? The regulators. Do we have good data to make a sound decision [00:10:00] for getting this vaccine? This drug, this therapy, this device, whatsoever, approved and make it available to patients. The payers, [00:10:10] the people that that is national or subnational, or the insurance agency.

[00:10:16] Alexander: Insurance companies boards, do [00:10:20] they have the right data to make good decisions? And of course, ultimately also the physicians, the other health care [00:10:30] providers, and of course the patients, their families. Do they have evidence that makes it easy for them [00:10:40] to make the right decisions for patients? And this is what this community is all about.

[00:10:49] Alexander: And [00:10:50] there are a couple of things within this community that I want to push forward. Or that we as a community want to push forward and one [00:11:00] of the main things is that we want to enable all the quantitative people, especially statisticians, data [00:11:10] scientists, programmers, but also, you know, there’s, there’s a lot of people that are very close to us, like epidemiologists, yeah, [00:11:20] let’s make sure that they have a good knowledge, a good understanding are really effective, are leaders.[00:11:30] 

[00:11:30] Alexander: These are the things why we, how we make this community really impactful, because I think this vision [00:11:40] resonates with pretty much everybody in this community. And The more we make these people effective, the [00:11:50] better we can reach this community for, the better we can reach this vision for our community, for our [00:12:00] society.

[00:12:02] Alexander: Now, there’s a couple of specific benefits that you get as a volunteer within [00:12:10] the Effective Statistician community. The first is, You get a behind the scenes view. Yeah. You will learn exactly how everything works. [00:12:20] What are the new projects that are, will be coming out? You will get a access to the inner inner circle of the effective.[00:12:30] 

[00:12:30] Alexander: You will definitely learn about becoming more influential because that is what this community is about. You will. Connect with [00:12:40] lots of different experts that are already in the community. And of course, I will show you how you can [00:12:50] increase your personal visibility. How you can become a better statistician, programmer, data [00:13:00] scientist yourself.

[00:13:02] Alexander: So, I’m pretty sure there’s This will give you all the benefits that I mentioned earlier. [00:13:10] Yeah, it’s a better job opportunities, a bigger network, all these kind of different things. Now, So, what could you do [00:13:20] within the statistics, the effective statistician community? The first job that I have is the community manager.[00:13:30] 

[00:13:30] Alexander: So, the community manager, think about it like the, The People Connector, yeah, that gets new people into the [00:13:40] community, that talks to the people within the community that is active on social media, that answers any [00:13:50] questions that are coming up, that maybe organizes some, also some fun events and things like that.

[00:13:56] Alexander: It is, you know, the, I’m thinking [00:14:00] of this job, the community manager, as kind of the social glue that holds everybody together and that makes [00:14:10] sure everybody is heard, everybody has the access to all the different tools, content, whatsoever that they need. If [00:14:20] you want to be a community manager, I think, You only need one thing.

[00:14:26] Alexander: You need to just love to work with other people in the [00:14:30] community and love to reach out to people. That is really the only requirement. For that position, and if you fulfill [00:14:40] this requirement, then you probably will love this job. The second position is a course manager. So [00:14:50] the course manager will work basically together with my full time team and experts in the [00:15:00] community.

[00:15:01] Alexander: To create new courses these will not be the people that do kind of all the legwork, so to say, [00:15:10] this is done by my permanent staff who will do kind of branding on slides and all these kind of things. What is really important here [00:15:20] is. To have someone that knows about the audience of these courses that can [00:15:30] help with creating the content for those courses, the promotional content for these courses, all these different things with a background [00:15:40] in statistics, programming, data science.

[00:15:43] Alexander: That is the job here. The third is, the third opportunity is [00:15:50] become a podcast manager. And here we actually don’t have so many job openings as actually as this comes out, there’s just one opening. [00:16:00] And that person will work very closely together with me on creating a job. Podcast episodes, so reaching out to [00:16:10] potential podcast guests researching on topics that we could have following up on the podcast.

[00:16:17] Alexander: All these kind of different things. [00:16:20] So the requirement for this is that you’re really interested in the community from a content perspective. [00:16:30] That you’re really interested in working with top experts, reaching out to them. And basically explaining them how everything works. And [00:16:40] once the recording is, is done, also work with the effective statistician team to make most of it.

[00:16:47] Alexander: So all the production around [00:16:50] the podcast episode, all this kind of work, yeah, that is done by my Full time team. It’s really just the most, [00:17:00] again, the statistics, data science, programming backgrounds that you need to have The fourth job descriptions that I have is that [00:17:10] often event organizer. And there basically.

[00:17:14] Alexander: I’m going to show you three types or four types of events that we will work on [00:17:20] the first two events are webinars. These can be, let’s say, usual webinars where one or two persons are [00:17:30] talking about a topic, and there’s a little bit of Q& A, things like that. The other webinar is. Format that we will start later this [00:17:40] year as a so called panel discussions.

[00:17:43] Alexander: My working title for that is the statistics talk show where we will get [00:17:50] people together, three, four, five people together that talk about a specific controversial topic or a new [00:18:00] thing. Pros and cons about that, and then we can have a good discussion about these. And so I need help there also from a [00:18:10] statistics point of view, knowing kind of who are the best persons to get onto these webinars.

[00:18:18] Alexander: The third [00:18:20] event that I’m thinking about are workshops. We will create workshops in person and virtually, and so for [00:18:30] that, it would be great if we would have people that are really interested from that point of view and want to create workshops together with me [00:18:40] and other experts in the community. And the last event is, of course, the conference.

[00:18:47] Alexander: So November this year we will run the next [00:18:50] conference and this will be a much, much bigger thing with lots of contributed presentations, all these kinds of different things. And I want to grow this [00:19:00] conference bigger and bigger over time. And there I really need also people that help me. In that regard, I’d [00:19:10] love to organize such conferences.

[00:19:13] Alexander: So, in summary, yeah, there are a lot of benefits for being a volunteer. [00:19:20] Ultimately, you can have a lot of fun create a So you can have a bigger network, learn a lot of different things and have a much better [00:19:30] career. And there’s four positions that are open within the Effective Statistician communities.

[00:19:37] Alexander: The first one is the Community Manager, the [00:19:40] second one is the Course Manager, the third one is the Podcast Manager, and the last one is the Event Organizer. And if you love any of these, yeah, [00:19:50] just go to their homepage. And send an email there or just connect with me on LinkedIn and say, Hey, Alexander, I would love to be a [00:20:00] volunteer.

[00:20:02] Alexander: We have already quite a lot of volunteers coming in and this is a really, really fun thing [00:20:10] to do together. So stay tuned for more about this in the future and have a great time. Just be an [00:20:20] effective statistician.