This past week, I published the 20th edition of Bamboo Weekly. That’s right; for 20 weeks, I’ve found a topic in the news, a data set related to it, and some features of Pandas that I thought would be fun to explore.
Can I tell you? Writing BW has been hugely fun for me.
First, because I’m a news junkie, constantly reading newspapers, magazines, and books. And I listen to a ton of podcasts. Every time I read or hear a story that I think might have a good data angle, I write a note to myself. It has forced me to think about the news I consume in a new way.
Second, Pandas is an absolutely enormous library. There’s no way for any one person to really know it all. Which means that I’ve been discovering all sorts of Pandas functionality and techniques in writing Bamboo Weekly. It’s making me a better Pandas user, and also a better Pandas instructor.
And thirdly, I’m enjoying getting feedback from subscribers, including corrections to my Pandas, my data analysis, or even my understanding of economics and statistics. We’re all learning here, folks, and I love the fact that I’ve already managed to find a community of people who are as interested in these things as I am.
So, where do we go from here?
First, I plan to keep writing Bamboo Weekly. I knew that it would take some time to become a profitable business, paying me back for the hours that I spend researching and writing it. The number of paying subscribers has been rising, and for that I’m hugely grateful.
I’d like to think that the current price of $10/month, or $100/year, is already a worthwhile investment in your Pandas education, giving you back far more than that amount in value. But I’d like to make Bamboo Weekly an even better value, to encourage even more people to sign up for the paid version:
- First, paid subscribers will now have access to the Jupyter notebooks that I prepare each week. At the bottom of each issue will be a link to Google Drive, from which you can download that week’s notebook. I’ve already gone back and added those links to earlier issues, which paid subscribers can access. I hope that this makes it easier to understand, run, evaluate, and learn from the weekly challenges.
- Second, I’m going to run monthly office hours, at which you can ask questions about the exercises, or about Python/Pandas in general. If you can make the office hours, then that’s fantastic — and if not, then you can always e-mail me with your questions, which I’ll read and answer to the best of my ability. The Jupyter notebook from the office hours, as well as the video, will be made available shortly after we finish.
The first session of office hours will be later this week; I’ll send a message to paid subscribers with the full information. I plan and expect to have them about once per month, and am looking forward to hearing from as many of you as possible.
I feel like Bamboo Weekly is one of the best learning products I’ve launched in a few years. I hope that it’s helping you to improve your Pandas skills, and is also interesting and fun.
I’m very open to suggestions and ideas for how I can make it even better and more worthwhile for you. So please don’t be silent! Let me know what you think, and I’ll do what I can to make it even better.
Meanwhile, I hope to see you at office hours this week!
All the best,
Reuven