Ben Devries
Ben graduated with a Bachelor of Music Performance (Honours) from the Sydney Conservatorium of Music in 2023. For the last few years, Ben spent his time working as a professional jazz saxophonist which led him all around the world performing in cities such as London, San Fransisco, and of course, Sydney.
But despite his musical background, Ben’s interest in data analytics came from his passion for problem solving and understanding the little details of how and why things work. From there, Ben went on to discover the Data School Down Under, and throughout the interview process became further inspired not only by the logic and flexibility of data, but also the ability for data to provide valuable insights to help solve complex business problems and present meaningful stories.
Ben is excited to join Data School Down Under, and hopes to utilise his creativity, improvisational skills, and ability to draw connections upon diverse areas of information learnt as a musician within his new career in data analytics.
In his spare time, Ben still enjoys playing his saxophone, as well as downhill longboarding, and spending time with his family.
Things That Project Leaders Must Do
For our final client project of our training I had the opportunity to take on the role as Project Lead. I had been excitedly waiting my turn to lead the project, and it was finally time to take all the feedback and experiences from past projects and combine it all to...
Connecting to APIs with Pathway Parameters in Power BI
Last week we were given the task to independently learn how to connect to APIs in Power BI. First this blog will walk through a simple method to connect to a API that requires no authentication, pagination or parameter pathways. Then I will dive in to the M Code I...
Dashboard Week Day 5 – The Oscars
And so we have finally arrived at the last day of Dashboard Week. It has been a huge week for everyone, but looking back, I am really proud of what I produced given the intensity and time restrictions throughout the week. Not only has this week taught me how to...
Dashboard Week Day 4 – NHL Team and Player Statistics
Only one more day left of Dashboard Week after this one! It has been a whirlwind of a week, but as I have always been saying in my past blogs, it really has been a blast. Today's challenge had us using some NHL data from a website (credit to J Tay for...
Dashboard Week Day 3 – NSW Library Statistics
It's now halfway through Dashboard Week and so far I have been really enjoying it! Each day I get the opportunity to creatively solve problems and come up with unique methods to achieve a certain technical outcome. It is really fun not having any restrictions in that...
Dashboard Week Day 2 – Australian Crime Statistics
Day 2 done and dusted of Dashboard Week! So far it has been a really fun week - I have thoroughly enjoyed being able to produce and present a tangible product each day as well as getting to hone and creatively use my skills I've learnt over the past few months. ...
Dashboard Week Day 1: Twitch API
Dashboard Week is final upon us! After hearing many harrowing stories about Dashboard Week, we were all a little hesitant to see what the week held for us, but also eager and excited to get stuck in to it. Our challenge for day 1 was to connect to the Twitch API...
Top Tips for Smashing the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Exam!
Feel like you're ready to take the Tableau Certified Data Analyst Exam? Here are some of my top tips that will hopefully help you get Tableau certified! Practice (tests), practice (tests), practice (tests)! Although this one seems quite obvious, I highly...
The Power of Alteryx: Part 1 – Intro to Data Cleaning & Preparation
One of the major pain points most data analysts or business users come across is 'dirty data'. It is quite rare to come across some data that is perfectly clean, organised, stored and maintained properly, and easily accessible and understandable to be used for...
Learning About Table Calculations: Building Out My First #WOW Dashboard
In our second week at the Data School Down Under we learnt about LOD's (level of detail calculations) and table calculations. As part of our weekly presentations, our task was to find a Workout Wednesday challenge on either LOD's or table Calculations to recreate and...