Meet Marc Rosenfeld’s – Data Science and AI online alumni

Hello Marc, can you tell me a bit about yourself and your background?

I am the typical “IT consultant” type of person: having worked on projects around the world I had the opportunity to perform a wide range of roles during my career –such as web dev, functional analyst, business analyst or quality assurance. Finally, during the last years, I moved toward more managerial kind of roles (such as team lead or project management) but was missing the “hands-on” experience I had at the beginning of my career. I thus decided it was time to change my career path to become more specialized and then I enrolled at Le Wagon.

Can you tell us why you decided to study on an online bootcamp?

At the time I enrolled at Le Wagon, I was moving countries, making it difficult to follow classes in one physical location. As such, the online bootcamp was the natural option to do the training “on the move”.

That said, during the bootcamp, I realized that this format allowed me to relate with people all over Europe (from Italy, Germany, the UK, Switzerland etc.) with several years of work experience and very different backgrounds (from mid-school teachers to C-Level decision-makers) creating an enriching learning experience I would unlikely have if I was attempting to an on-site format.

How was the online learning experience – did you feel alone?

After finishing it, yes 😉 Joking apart, not at all: the online learning experience allowed me to have conversations as if we were in the same room, with the added advantage of being able to share screens easily to solve problems together. And even after the bootcamp, the community around Le Wagon enables us to stay connected with our peers: we are always one Slack away from one another.

What was the thing that you liked the most about this format?

The format allows us to stay focussed on our studies. Indeed, it might require a bit more self-discipline to not be distracted by our “local environment” but on the other hand, it enables us to become more organized with our schedules and study heavy topics for more than 8 hours a day in order to get the support and guidance of top teachers and their assistants.
This alone enabled me to obtain new skills in a relatively short amount of time, while still advancing on other things in my life -like moving countries.

And what was your main goal in studying Data Science and AI?

As said before, I am an experienced professional and my main goal was to direct my career into a more specialist and technical path in IT. In this context, I was looking to get introduced to ML and AI -topics that I am highly interested in and are in high demand by the industry – but I needed a course to get me i) up-to-date with the latest trends in this industry with ii) the right amount of theory and iii) hands-on coding experience. As such, the “Data Science and AI” program was just the right answer for my learning needs.

Do you have any final advice for someone who’s looking into joining the Le Wagon community?

Get ready to go for a roller coaster: sometimes you don´t know where you are, sometimes your head is upside-down and you still need to continue forward because there is no way out. But rest assured: Le Wagon is safe enough to get you to your destination.