A Growth Hacker's Journey Through Data Science

In the late 1990's, I was working at the Astrophysics Data Facility at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. I became very interested in data mining (applications of machine learning to big data sets). So, I created and maintained a comprehensive website "NASA’s Data Mining Resources for Space Science", which you can still find on the Internet Archive Wayback Machine. I was not a data mining expert, but I was learning who the experts were. My website was a big long curated list of cool data mining resources that I found on the Internet: algorithms, methods, software packages, tutorials, research papers, white papers, popular articles, lectures, conferences, expert interviews, and more (plus links to some of my own papers, including some papers in 2000 where I introduced the concept of using data mining to discover "unknown unknowns"). I did not consider myself to be an expert (yet!), but I sure knew how to curate other experts' contributions.

I didn't recognize the reach and influence of my website until October 2001 (one month after the tragic day September 11). On that day in October, my office phone rang -- the unknown voice at the other end of the line asked me "Can you brief the President tomorrow morning on data mining?" My first reaction was "shock and awe." I remember clearly what I said next to the mystery caller: "Do you mean THE President?" Yes, they did! I asked how they ever thought to call me. They said, "We realized that we need some expertise in this area, so we asked folks at NASA HQ, and they said you were NASA's data mining expert." I never thought of myself that way, but I then realized that even the little bit that I was doing was already considered "expert". I also realized after that phone call that what I was doing (now called Big Data Analytics) was going to change the world (not just in science, but in all domains). I was hooked. I was at the right place at the right time.

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You can follow Kirk Borne on Twitter @KirkDBorne