D3EM creates value for its students via communities. Immediately when you are admitted to the program, you are assigned a cohort and are put into a track to get engaged into community groups, which are overseen by D3EM staff. Below are outlines and reflections from the D3EM communities.
Writing community was very insightful. I found myself bringing a lot of biases into the conversation, ways I've written in the past. I write how I talk, so writing something like this blog post is pretty good and natural for me. However, when it comes to technical writing, the voice is completely different, and I have to adapt and re-read what I write numerous times.
I have found that a good technique for me is to write out what I'd like to say in a natural way, then wait a bit and revisit it. I'll typically find myself reading conference and journal papers in my studies, so I then apply that same voice to my writing. I'll reread what I wrote, and see if it has the same voice as what I've written.
You can even narrow the writing style down per conference. For instance, NIPS, a really prominent algorithmic conference, loves to have mathematical formulation for algorithms. You'll rarely see a paper that doesn't include some reasonable level of mathematical notation for the algorithms being described. My natural tendency is to write out the math in words, not in notation. I know I have to retrain my brain a bit, after I write, once I see the disparity. It's kind of like viewing your writing through a different lens. It's still your writing, just with a different writing "filter" applied.
Writing community helped me see things like this, and really gave me a solid path forward in making sure my work is camera ready.
Learning community was an opportunity to engage in conversations about all sorts of interdisciplinary activities. Some of these conversations are highlighted below: