Hackathons for education, not competition | Allissa Dillman | Data Science Hangout

Hey there, welcome to the Paws at Data Science Hangout. I'm Libby Herron, and this is a recording of our weekly community call that happens every Thursday at 12 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time. If you are not joining us live, you miss out on the amazing chat that's going on. So find the link in the description where you can add our call to your calendar and come hang out with the most supportive, friendly, and funny data community you'll ever experience.

Can't wait to see you there. I am so excited to introduce our guest today, Allissa Dillman, founder and CEO slash everything at BioDataSage LLC. Allissa, I would love it if you could introduce yourself. Tell us a little bit about what you do and something you like to do for fun.

Sure. So hello, everybody. I'm not going to lie, I was like slightly nervous about doing this, mostly because it's recorded forever. And that means I have to remember what I say. But yeah, so my original background is I have a PhD in computational neuroscience. And I have actually been working in training and community engagement for a long time. I actually worked at NIH in the Office of Data Science Strategy up until a little shy of four years ago, when my job sort of became more and more about talking about doing the thing instead of doing the thing, or writing about the thing instead of doing the thing, and decided that that was not quite where I was at in my career path.

So I looked around for other jobs in kind of like what I was hoping to do, which is around like community and training, but also like using my technical expertise in computing and coding. And I really didn't find anything that kind of combined all those things. So I decided, okay, then I'll just make up my job. And I quit NIH and I started my own company back in like, I want to say like April of 2022. And that's what I've been doing ever since. And I just want to say that I'm no longer all on my own doing all the things. I actually just hired my first full time employee this year. So I feel like I can more officially be like, I am an entrepreneur now because I have employees and it's a real business.

From NIH to entrepreneurship

Amazing. So excited for you. And also, Alyssa gave one of my favorite talks at PositConf in 2025. It's called From Solo to Social, Making Coding a Collaborative Adventure. And as a person who also loves to teach people coding and social environments, it made my heart sing. I love everything about it. But Alyssa, I would love it if you could first tell us a little something you like to do for fun.

Yes. So the two things eating up most of my time right now is I'm in a band. I'm the singer. And we have another gig coming up in a bar in DC. So definitely spending a lot of time doing that. And the other big thing is I am attempting to finish Hollow Knight. I actually put it down for a while and had life things. I have a seven-year-old. And recently kind of sat back down and was like, I don't remember where I was. And because Hollow Knight is one of those games where basically like you kind of revisit places as you build. Like, I was like, I don't remember where I went before. But like, that's been eating up a lot of my time.

Social learning and the PositConf talk

Yeah. So I am somebody who originally learned coding sort of on my own. It was not necessarily like the original plan. And a lot of how I sort of ended up learning was I would sort of read some things or look up some code. But at the end of the day, I just like accost other humans until I could like actually like talk with them and work through something because it just, it didn't stick for me unless I could kind of like work through the problem with somebody else. Even if it was verbalizing, even if it was just like whiteboard coding, like I'm a very extremely extroverted person. But there was also something about like that, that wasn't just about I felt like I learned more, but it also felt more like I belonged.

Like I am somebody who is often in environments that I feel like maybe I don't belong. Like I come from somewhere really, really rural. I'm the first person in my family to get a college degree, let alone a PhD. So at NIH, I often was like, oh man, like they're going to find out I don't belong here. So I like often had this feeling of like imposter syndrome. And what's really great about like finding people to like work with or chat through, like, and even when they're like, nah, you did this completely wrong. Like here's how you need to do it. Like I still felt like, okay, I belong here though, because I'm going to like learn this thing and I'm doing this thing with somebody. And it just like, it made me feel a lot more confident, even when people were just telling me off for doing something wrong. I really enjoyed that.

And I will say like the other thing that really has just been really a lot of fun is seeing other people have the same kind of aha moment. Like when I ran my first women's code code-a-thon, hack-a-thon, it was just really cool to hear how many women echoed kind of the sentiments that I echoed of like, I wasn't sure I fit. I wasn't sure I belonged. And now that I'm working with all these other great people, you know, I'm more confident in what I'm doing. So like for me, like it was really about saying that I feel like we learn and grow and become more confident when we do things with others, not kind of just by ourselves.

I feel like we learn and grow and become more confident when we do things with others, not kind of just by ourselves.

Well, it's my take too. And watching your talk, I kept sitting there going, yes, yes, yes, this is it. This is the power of community. I don't think that you can exist in a community without learning from other people. It's just going to happen. They're going to mention something and you're going to be like, what? That function does that? And you're going to talk about it. And then someone's going to learn from you. It is an inevitability. And it's one of the things that just makes my heart glow.

Entrepreneurship challenges and advice

Hi, my name is Noor. I also live in the DMV area. I actually come from a computational biology background. And I've been debating this a lot, but what would you say are the largest challenges of setting out on your own as an entrepreneur? What are some things you would have done differently starting out? Being an entrepreneur is scary, and evidently you're doing it successfully. So please tell me everything you know.

I have to admit, I sort of hit the ground running, I think a little more than most people, potentially at least, because a lot of what I did at NIH was around community building and training. And so I already had a ton of connections in universities, in non-profits, in other government agencies. So I had this huge network. So when I sort of decided, all right, I'm going to go solo, a lot of people had already interacted with me, had worked with me, had knew what I was bringing to the table.

And the other thing I will say is I do kind of, I like to think I bring something slightly unique to the table. As somebody who originally started out as a bench biologist, like somebody who does RNA biology, and then sort of doing the software and the coding and the cloud computing things, like all aimed towards biological goals and questions. I think that that has been a kind of a boon for me as well.

The other thing was, even though in my mind, when I set out to do this, I was sort of like, oh, I'm just going to be like a freelance and just kind of go solo. Even back then, I sort of set up all of the pieces I would need for a company if I wanted to grow. Like I did all of the things like very formally, like I started my LLC, like immediately, even before I got any clients, I like set up a business bank account. I did like all of those, those bits and bobs sort of like right at the get go. And I have to say it's really saved my butt a couple of times because when I needed to like move quickly, like everything's already been there.

So that's been super helpful. But I will say like feeding your network, growing your network as much as you can, as often as you can. Because at the end of the day, like people didn't fall onto my website. I mean, they are starting to now, but like that's certainly not how I got most of my clients in the beginning. But also then, like I said, finding something that is really unique to your skillset and what you bring to the table, whatever that might be.

Working in government and modernizing tools

Yeah, hi. Long time worker. First time question asker. So my ears perked up when I heard NIH. I work in state government as a data scientist at DPH in Connecticut. It's a scary time to be in public health. And since the pandemic, I've just constantly been trying to get the agency to modernize and adopt R, Python, heck, just get like anything, anything within the last like two decades, you know, get us away from SAS and just manual everything. And I just, I wanted to hear about, you know, maybe some of your wins at NIH and maybe, you know, what your biggest ones were and how did you achieve those? I just hit wall after wall after wall. It's so hard.

Yeah, that's fair. I will say I think that NIH is definitely in a little bit of a unique place because, you know, NIH also has like researchers like that are doing research that are internal to NIH. So we do have a lot more kind of push to be like where we need to be to have our systems where they need to be, right, because they are government employees, but they are trying to do scientific research. And so like it's, it was not easy, but it definitely, I had a lot of voices behind me when I'd be like, hey, we really should have enterprise GitHub, or we really should have, you know, Posit Connect, or we really need to have this, that, or the other.

It helps that I also was in like the office, like, so I was in the Office for Data Science Strategy. And the second office I was in was like Center for Information Technology. So like I was kind of like at the hub of where these decisions are made. And as somebody who was also a trainer, I would constantly be like, look, if we want to have people have these skill sets, then they need the tools too. Like I can't teach them these skills unless we have the tools to do this work. And the other thing I think really helped was, you know, so a big push in the office was all around FAIR. So Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Usable. And, you know, the reproducibility crisis, and sort of being like, if we want to tackle these things, it's not just about, you know, I mean, it's very much about changing mindset and behavior, but we also need the tools to help us get there.

Allissa's work at NIH and hackathons

So I actually started at NCBI, which is part of the National Library of Medicine. So anybody who's sort of like in the bio field may know a little bit about NCBI because it is specifically where like we house basically all of like the publication, but also like data repositories for a bunch of the stuff that NIH makes. And that's kind of where I started. And my job there was training and engagement. So a lot of it was around like helping people to use all of those resources. So building up those technical skill sets, but also tons of hackathons, right? Because we had all this data and we really wanted to learn more about like how people can reuse it. What kinds of ways do they want to reuse it? What kind of tools do we need for that reuse? What about our tools? When do they fit? When do they not fit? And honestly, hackathons can be one of the most fun ways to like learn a lot of that, like in rapid fashion.

Like I think a lot of people think of hackathons as just like you build some software. Yay. But hackathons can be really great for like user information too, right? Like how are people actually using my stuff? So got to do a lot of that and it was a ton of fun.

Networking advice for introverts

So I am what you would call an extreme extrovert. I require novel human interaction on the regular. So I definitely, I know that I often give the advice, like I talk to students a lot because I have a very odd career path, you know, and I very much bang on about like network, network, network. And I am very well aware that like, that's obviously a lot harder if you're an introvert versus an extrovert. So one thing I like to say, which I sound like I'm joking, but like, I'm kind of not, is find your friendly neighborhood extrovert. Like, we are always happy to hang out with you at a conference, at like a workshop, at whatever. And like, you will be dragged along with us as we chat with other people. And like, you will get to kind of like meet other people, but don't need to necessarily like insert yourself unless you want to. So we are definitely very helpful to help you network and honestly love to do it.

But the other thing is there's certainly other ways to, you know, grow your network. I highly recommend like Discord channels. You know, I know lots of colleagues that have found jobs that way. Things like R-Ladies, you know, Py-Ladies, a lot of meetups have like Slack channels or discussion boards as well. So those can be ways where you don't necessarily have to be like super extroverted, but you can like chat with other people, see what's going on, kind of stay in touch.

And I will say like the one power that introverts have that I struggle with is I'm really good at face-to-face. Like, I will engage a ton. I will be very excited. But sometimes I forget to kind of follow up, not in real life, like an email or a Slack ping or whatever. So sometimes it's harder for me to feed networks because my preference is like that in-face interaction versus I think at least the feeding of networks might be a little easier if you're introverted because you're like, well, I don't have to like go physically talk to somebody. I just shoot them an email with a cool article or whatever.

Social learning vs. instructor-led training

So a couple of things, like first and foremost, like instructor led training is great for like a good foundation, right? Like getting everybody kind of like that good solid foundation, kind of building those foundational skill sets. Um, but it's actually a lot of work, right? Because it means like you as the instructor are building that entire bolus of content. And like, you have to have the hands-on exercises and you're doing the life coding and it's like a ton of time. Whereas like, I would actually argue that some of these social ways of learning are actually less time on the individual.

You can kind of think of it as like an unconference. I don't know if any of you all have ever like run a conference versus an unconference, but like running a conference is a ton of work, right? You have to formally set up like who's all going to speak and how do I pick who speaks and like structure the entire, like, you know, conference and like what's going to happen at what time. And unconference is like, we do it as a community. Like it's now not just up to me to plan everything. Like you all get to help me decide what we're learning and how we're learning it, when we're learning it. Right. And, and social learning can be a lot more like that. You can say, okay guys, like, you know, every week somebody else is going to pitch a different data set we play with.

This is also why I love hackathons. Hackathons are, they are like a little more work than some of these other social kinds of learning, because it does require a little more structure. But at the end of the day, like, you know, building teams, you sort of like have a, some sort of form where people kind of like fill out like the things that they're interested in, they're good at, and that at least helps you kind of build teams that are, that are going to be cohesive. And then, you know, again, for projects, like they, they kind of get to decide like what they're going to do with it, where they're going with it.

I will say the other really nice thing about things like hackathon and social learning is it's much more experiential learning, right? Like if you're thinking about kind of Bloom's taxonomy and like, you know, you like, you learn, remember, learn, apply. Oftentimes in like very structured instructional workshops, like you get to that, like, maybe like remember and learn, but you don't get to apply. Even if they're doing a hands-on exercise, it's very canned, right? Like there is like a, you know, starting point, there's an endpoint, like it's very structured, it's got a lot of guardrails on it. For something like a hackathon or even like, you know, you know, bring your own data or anything like that, it's open-ended, right? So now you actually take the skills you've learned and you're applying them to a completely different setting. So that's where you actually cement in learning. So in my opinion, you actually need a little bit of all of these things for like a full program and to really kind of hit all those points in how we learn.

I will say the other really nice thing about things like hackathon and social learning is it's much more experiential learning. So in my opinion, you actually need a little bit of all of these things for like a full program and to really kind of hit all those points in how we learn.

Community success stories

I think one that there's a couple, one that I really like is a librarian program. So we were really interested in trying to get this particular NIH resource out there and getting people the skills to actually use it. And we ended up sort of, you know, it was kind of landed on that, like, librarians are like this hub of information, right? Like, they are the touch point for a lot of universities, especially like medical librarians. So the idea of the program was to actually like upskill the medical librarians across these universities. And so that way, like, you know, not only would they like know of the resource, but they at least kind of had the, you know, like the foundations of like how to navigate it, what the tools were, where to get like more skills and things like that. And I just, it was really cool because it was definitely not a group I'd necessarily worked with a ton before that. So like teaching medical librarians, like coding skills and things like that was really fun.

Another one that we actually just wrapped up, which was really cool, was we got a small amount of money from ORCA, which is about open science research. And so we built this whole program from the ground up to focus really on BIPOC students and getting them more open science, data science, and just like kind of around an authentic research kind of experience. And I feel like that not only did we get a ton of students really excited, but like a thing I think that is really a proud point for me is 70% of the people that participate were women. And a lot of what I do in a lot of the spaces I work in, it's definitely more male dominant, especially around hackathons. You know, it sits around like 20% of hackathon participants are women. So it was just really, really cool to have like that complete switch in balance because we were really focused on like community driven projects when we did that program.

Hiring your first employee

So here's the thing. Last year I worked my butt off. I worked so hard to pull in the amount of clients, the amount of money to feel confident in saying I had enough to cover them. And first of all, it sucked. I worked way too much. I stressed myself out. It was not worth the amount of money I pulled in, but it did prove to me like, okay, I can get this much work. I can support another person. So from the financial standpoint, last year was my practice year was like, can I pull in enough to actually pay for somebody else's salary benefits, all that stuff?

Did I do all of that work completely on my own? No. I did pull in. I had a couple of people subcontract with me last year as well. That was my other test was can I build a team of people? Can we work on a project together and finish it? How does that look like? So this last year was really a test of a lot of those things, right? Can I pull in enough money, but can I also manage some folks and do this work? And I felt like that test went really successfully.

But the other thing it really hit home for me is, as I've said, I'm an extreme extrovert, but also as I've said, we work, or at least a lot of people, human beings tend to be social animals. And it was so nice to build stuff with people again. The thing about consulting is oftentimes you're dropped into a situation and you're like, here's my two cents. Fantastic. And then you're like, goodbye. So it was really nice to be like, well, what do you think? And what should we do about this? And how could we go about doing this? And the amount of joy that that brought me last year was worth so much compared to the headaches of it.

And yes, it is complicated. I don't know how many times I have been arguing with my accountant in the past two months. That has been absolute misery. I don't know how much back and forth I had to do to figure out health insurance in this lovely country. And what's really frustrating is adding your first employee is actually harder than adding more because a lot of these benefits have a base flat fee. And then it's like $5 more per head. So yes, adding your first employee is in a lot of ways, a lot more expensive than adding employee two, three, four.

Marketing and finding clients

So I definitely been putting a lot more effort into doing the whole marketing thing, posting more on LinkedIn, going to conferences specifically as BioData Sage to be like, look at what we do instead of just going to support client work. I will say that I've also found some clients on LinkedIn who have posted and been like, we really need somebody who does this for a short period of time. Or I've also found even on Slack channels where they're like, we have part-time gig work on this data thing for a short period of time. So I've found some things here and there that way, and then they've built. But yes, this year, I'm trying to be intentionally more marketing.

I have to say Padma has been great for that because she'll be like, oh, you could do this. And then that's like really selling it. I'm like, oh yeah, I forgot about the selling it part. Because I think at the end of the day, I approach a lot of this as a scientist. Even when I do training and things like that, I'm very much like, this is cool because we'll learn this thing and we'll iterate and stuff like that. And I don't always think about the business side of things. And so she's been very good at being like, wait, don't forget about this.

And whenever I've hit something I don't want to do, my tactic, which has really kind of only failed me once, is just ask for an exorbitant amount of money to do the thing I don't want to do. And typically they're like, we'll think about it. And then they don't come back. Although once or twice they've been like, cool, done. And I was like, oh no.

Hackathons for education, not competition

Sure. That is a great question. So there are definitely times when we do like those all-nighter pizza-fueled kind of hackathons where it's really focused on building a thing. But I have to say most of the time, the kinds of hackathons that I'm building are very much with the intent to learn and network in mind. So like we kind of treat them as like more of a learning experience, right? Like we come here, we have a bounded amount of time that we want to learn from each other. It helps that most of the hackathons I run are not competitive. Like there's not an award associated. So they really are all there because they just are really excited to do something different and learn something new. But I sort of like very much set the stages like, you know, we are here to learn something together. Like we're going to happen to build something together, and that's great. But like our main focus here is like networking, learning, bringing different field expertise, and just like exploring and seeing where that goes.

Like the other thing is like, you know, we're here to like rapidly try stuff, and a lot of stuff is not going to work. And that's kind of what we're expecting. Like if we knew it was going to work, like we'd just go do that thing, and that would be our job.

Career advice

I think just keep trying new things. I think we often have this fear of like, but what if it doesn't work? What if it's a failure? Or what if I look stupid? Or, you know, and I think it's just try the thing. Try something new. Pick something outside of your comfort zone. So much of my career path has been so far outside of my comfort zone. My PhD was in Karolinska Institute in Sweden. I didn't know anybody from Sweden. I had never been to Sweden. I decided that that would be something really different and very much outside my comfort zone. So that's where I picked to do my PhD. As I mentioned, when I started my company, I up and quit my job and was like, let's do this thing. Granted, like it's not always going to work out, but as I told my seven-year-old, you cannot learn if you do not make mistakes. You learn from your mistakes. If you do something well and you do it all the time and there's never a problem, then you're also not learning and you're also not growing.

You cannot learn if you do not make mistakes. If you do something well and you do it all the time and there's never a problem, then you're also not learning and you're also not growing.

Comfort zones are fantastic and they feel wonderful, but nothing grows exponentially inside of them. Okay, everybody, thank you so much for hanging out with us. This was so fun. Next week, we're joined by Alexander Schott, Senior Director at SciTel. Join us for that. Cannot wait to see you on the Discord. I just tagged Alyssa in the Discord. So if you head to the Data Science Hangout channel, you will see Alyssa there. We love you so much. I'll see you on Tuesday at the Data Science Lab, pos.it slash dslab, if you would like to join me there.