Reflecting Back on 2020 and Looking Forward to 2021
Every year, we at CompassRed reflect back, take account of where we are, and endeavor to predict out where we might be at the end of next year. As I sat down to work on this year’s reflection - I found my January 2020 letter not so inspiring given what’s happened in our society over the last 12 months. Our end of year wrap up and predictions are partly inspired by letters from leaders in industry such as Warren Buffet’s annual letter to shareholders , Larry Fink of Black Rock , Azeem Azhar’s predictions for 2030, and so many more.
I have to imagine that every letter that has been written to date - begins with some mention of how Covid has changed the world and particularly their little corner of the world. Some will mention how they have been negatively affected - and others will discuss how they benefited. We will discuss both.
What happened Last year
If we look back at our predictions for 2020 - we couldn’t have been more wrong. Maybe not wrong - but unfocussed on what really mattered. Covid has seemed to refocus our daily habits to what really matters: humans pulling for each other in great ways. Behind the pandemic and loss of life, the social unrest and violence, and the frustration in our political divisions lies the common thread of care for all, desire for good, and belief in innovation. All of our past goals seem to now be trivial and have caused us to reflect on what’s core to our mission: saving or improving lives.
With this in mind, looking through the growth of CompassRed (and now the Data Lab), we are super excited to look towards the future with the birth of the Delaware Data Innovation Lab made possible by the efforts of our innovative county leader Matt Meyer. He was able to take a stand and help us push forward to recruit 22 new employees and use our skills for the public good. If you’re interested - take a look at www.ddil.ai.
Other great things that happened this year seemed large at once - but pale in comparison: We made the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing companies in America (#899), we moved offices to the new CSC Station, we brought on some great new clients, and grew heavily with some of our existing ones. We said goodbye to a few of our CompassRed members but hope that our Alumni learned as much as we learned from them while they were here. Tragically, we also lost a few of our colleagues, but their wisdom and words will forever be sewn into our fabric that we wear on our backs each and every day.
As the industry changed beneath us (we never Zoomed so much, interacted with a Covid Dashboard as much, predicted transmissions on a global scale, or figured out a way to keep the culture - all online), we learned new skills, built new tools, and brought on new friends all with the unwavering purpose of trying to save a life or make our society better.
Where are we now
Today - our teams (CompassRed and the Data Lab) continue to grow as we begin to see the end of the first tunnel and prepare ourselves for the next. We believe that the only consistency is that nothing is constant. Covid has expedited the use of new technologies and data practices and highlighted the importance of our profession.
In practice, the Data Lab is completely a separate entity (501(c)(6). It is headed up by Anne Clauss, an extremely passionate brilliant individual who has the capacity to take the Data Lab global and introduce us to many. She will be the shepherd of the diverse talented fellows who are passionate about changing their own part of the world. Our partnerships with organizations such as IDEO, USAFacts.org, and many others, will help to shape this to be a 500 year organization - centered right in the first state of Delaware. The Lab will be a place where we hope many successes will occur - and even more failures brought about by the courage to ask “what if?”.
At CompassRed, our Data Warehousing team has started to find a love for faster and more efficient ways of building data warehouses with DBT, Snowflake, and many other advances in data transformation. This, for sure, will help in easier adoption by those organizations that have still yet to become data centric (or informed). Our Data Science team has pivoted from simply building models, to deploying those models in environments we never thought could be developed. And our Data Analytics team has become proficient with deeper customer analytics, visualized data that are works of art, and in some cases, changed the approach of a billion dollar company through a simple datastory. We feel confident that our ability to deliver has grown enormously over the past year as we elevated ourselves in 2020.
What do we look forward to next year?
Though we hope for the riddance of Covid and the return of an embrace or in person meeting, we hope not to return to the complacency and desire for growth for growth's sake. We believe that the challenges of this year have only emboldened us more and shown the need for decisions supported with data. Here are a few things we are looking forward to this year:
Industry Wide
Reactive to Proactive. A shift from reactive efforts in technology to pro-active development based on the lessons we learned from the pandemic. For sure, Covid will still be talked about until the end of the year, but perhaps we will prepare our technology and change based on what worked, and a lot of what did not.
A greater focus on the environment and social causes. We believe the new administration in DC will begin to put eyes on the environment and look for new innovations to help change the trajectory of climate change.
The continued growth of the analytics field as more and more University programs mature and grow. We cannot run into a university that has not invested in this field of study. Data is (or should be) on the tongue of every graduating student at any level. This is great for our industry.
AI to Mature. It’s been talked about for the past 10 years, and it seems like the term is starting to mature. This is a good thing - as the Hype has changed from counting cats through deep learning to real life practical applications. We believe that as companies come out of a successful “Digital Transformation” phase, they will begin to reap the benefits of true data analysis and activation through AI.
Internal to CompassRed
Growth in Team and Talent. We have seen already in 2021, that it will be a time to grow our team. Additions to our Data Science, Data Analytics, and Data Engineering teams are in the works. More importantly, the investment in our team will become front and center as we look for ways to constantly grow our minds.
Growth in our Platform, Orbis. Over the past few years we have learned the needs of our clients and what makes them successful. We have brought on a team of software engineers and developers to build out “Orbis”. We hope to continue to invest in this platform and expand it for our existing clients.
The continued advancement of our Data Warehousing team with a greater focus on analytics ready environments at reduced investments. With the costs of Datawarehouses coming down, and the tools to transform the data readily available, we see several opportunities to address our clients’ problems and help them to get to insight faster.
Tighter relationships with some of the partners we have embraced throughout the year. We have made many great friends this year (Segment.io, IDEO, and many others). We hope to learn from them, help them in their missions, and change the industry together.
More education and involvement in our community (the Philly Data Jawn returns). Through our relationship with the Data Lab, we will continue to educate the community like we have before. Already, we have seen the industry.
Most of all, we look forward to continuing our mission: improving lives with data. We look forward to sharing our journey, growing our team, and building on the successes and failures of the past year.
CompassRed is a full-service data agency that specializes in providing data strategy for clients across multiple industries.