Study Groups / Study Space

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

Hi everyone, 

Not sure how practical this idea is to implement but I'd love to have a space / area where there's voice channels. It could be something like an "Official Databricks Community" Discord? 😀

Alternatively, it could be something that the website offers i.e. meeting rooms. Basically, it would provide us with a space where we could talk to each other on a call and share our screens ☺️. 

I imagine this would enable us to have study groups and also to provide us with a place to share our screens to help others out with a solution.

PROS
1. It could raise interactivity within the community.
2. Sometimes things are easily resolved on a call ☺️.
3. Motivation with study groups.
4. Could bring some cool Project-based learning into the community. 

CONS
1. If solutions are provided to people in calls, they won't be held in the community thread. This means other people who search for this problem won't find an answer. It'd be important to close the loop by providing the solution in the relevant community thread.
2. People share their screens and show information that they shouldn't. There would need to be a disclaimer, upon sign up / sign in, that you should only share non-private information with others. Whilst this may seem obvious to some, others might think that this initiative is an official extension to something like "official databricks support".

Curious to hear what the community and community staff think? ☺️

All the best,
BS

[Khaja_Zaffer]

I am up for this, I am also preparing for interviews so this will help me alot. 

[yashojha]

this is a great idea!! will surely help a lot of us either in day to day activities or for interviews.
we can also share our experiences here

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

@yashojha @Khaja_Zaffer great to hear your thoughts ☺️. I am not too sure on the practicality of it but perhaps there's an unofficial group we can create so Databricks don't have to manage this themselves. I can also appreciate it being a conflict of interest somehow. There's definitely a wider conversation needing to be had ☺️. Looking forward to hearing from other members as well. 

All the best,
BS

[Khaja_Zaffer]

Hello @BS_THE_ANALYST 
Good day!
As you are ready good at databricks, please guide us doing this process. 

Thank you. 

[szymon_dybczak]

Hi Ben,

Thanks for starting this discussion. First, I want to emphasize that if the idea goes forward, I’ll be happy to help with its implementation. But to be honest, I’m against it (I’ll probably be in the minority here) 😄

First of all, people come here looking for help. To get that help, they need to spend some time formulating their question and attaching screenshots. This way, someone with a similar problem can later find the thread and benefit from the answer. With interactive help, people will abuse it. We’ll end up with lots of threads asking to solve the problem over a call.

Another medium, like Discord or Slack, doesn’t seem like a good idea either. That would just be another place where people would go to seek help - but searching through threads on Discord is far from pleasant.

And we already have plenty of such places - StackOverflow, Reddit, blogs, and communities. Some time ago, I had a conversation with Mandy where our idea was that the Databricks Community should be the one place where people can get help or learn everything related to Databricks.

I also agree with the problem you mentioned about sharing company data. Since I’m fairly active on the forum, a few people have already asked me for “online” help via DM. And it’s exactly as you said - users share screenshots from corporate accounts.

And to be honest I think that currently our community is still too “small.” There are maybe around 15 (probably fewer) users who actively help others. On Reddit, there were similar groups, and these initiatives usually ended the same way. Two or three people stayed active, but after some time they burned out, because there weren’t enough people contributing help.

Regarding learning support -  we already have a dedicated space on the forum where users can ask questions. We could think about giving it more structure, for example, subforums per learning path. But again, there are already many places where someone who wants to start their Databricks journey can learn. We have great free courses on Databricks Academy, plenty of material on YouTube, Udemy, etc. And if someone has a problem with a specific topic, they can always ask here on the forum.

Some time ago, I came across the following thread on Reddit. I don’t agree with such a harsh assessment from one of the users, but they do have a point. We need to build trust through high-quality support. As I mentioned, we don’t have many users who contribute regularly. Plus, there’s already a lot of content generated by LLMs - and in most cases, these answers are unverified or incorrect. We should improve that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/databricks/comments/1mx0lg9/why_the_databricks_community_matters/

I think we’re moving in the right direction. Recently, new faces have appeared  - including yourself - but there are still too few people who actively contribute to tackle bigger ideas.

But of course, that’s just my opinion, and you can absolutely count on me if the idea is accepted.

[TheOC]

I'm somewhat with @szymon_dybczak on this one, in that I'd want the Databricks Community to remain the central repo for conversations and answers. New users especially are going to look at this forum for solutions to their questions and if we take discussion elsewhere it becomes fragmented/harder to find.

With that said, I do also think it's important that the Community remains human. I really enjoyed the BrickTalk session a couple weeks ago Because it allowed for natural discussion and human interaction within the Community, it was genuinely fantastic and I can see from that alone why something like a discord or slack channel would be appealing. I am especially finding it frustrating at the moment that there are clear AI-generated posts/comments/replies within the Community, making it harder find genuine contributions.

What might be a nice middle ground is the push for user groups. I know we (North East UK) are looking to integrate some in-person user group meetings hopefully this calendar year, and I think that might bridge a gap. It could also be cool to have more sessions delivered by Databricks on this one: 'Show and Tell', workshops, or similar BrickTalk sessions to allow us to continue natural conversation without detracting from the Community.

I certainly see the need / appeal for more human interaction on the Community, especially with the large amount of LLM generated content. My opinion would be that we find ways to engage more human conversation on the Community without taking it externally. 

I'd be curious to hear if @MandyR has any thoughts on this one, I'm convinced we can use this energy to do something positive for the Community.

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

@szymon_dybczak I agree, you raise valid points. 
@TheOC I want more human interaction on the forums too, yes. There are a lot of LLM responses. I think using LLMs to inform our responses is good, of course. Copying and pasting the LLM response isn't. It dilutes everyone else's efforts. 

Can't we just use an AI checker that scans the replies? 

@szymon_dybczak perhaps a mentorship scheme and a study-group space is what I'm leaning into based on your response. If I'm studying for an exam, and so is someone else, it'd be nice to be a part of that "cohort" where you can bounce ideas off one another. I love the idea of a Project Group space as well. Somebody proposes a project, we form a group to solve it, and then feedback the results into the community as we're doing it. This type of thing will drive more human-interaction. I've mentioned before about Data Challenges / Databricks Challenges with badges. This will upskill the community & drive more human-interactions. I'd love to see how you tackle a problem, through a notebook, for instance, and be able to download and learn from you and other members. 

All the best,
BS

[MandyR · Accepted solution]

I love love love the idea of community based study groups. We definitely have regional based in person meetups right now, these are organized by customers in the online regional groups that you can monitor on the events page. I also appreciate that you all value having the meat of the discussion (of real humans, not LLMs) available here in the forums. This makes your quality learning & content scale across our community and have an exponential impact. thank you for that!

The very good news is that we are in the process of implementing a new platform called Bevy that will facilitate live virtual meetups. I'm not quite sure on the timing but we will be sure to keep you all posted! This is going to really make connecting with each other much easier. I would love to work with you all to get things set up to meet your needs once we have it in place. 

[BS_THE_ANALYST]

@MandyR this sounds really exciting. Thanks for keeping us in the loop 👏. Happy to help with testing or whatever is needed as things arise 👍. 

I really do like the idea of the study groups too. I think project-based learning as a group would be awesome. Someone proposes a project, we then vote to get accepted in (or something to form the project group). We then provide updates into the project-space to let other community members see how we're tackling it 😎. Also, learning a certification alongside others is always a really nice thing to iron out misconceptions and raise motivation/commitment. 

At some stage, if there were links from the exam prep guides to specific challenges on the community i.e. past papers or specific data challenges, I think this would naturally channel more traffic to the community. Worth chucking that out there ☺️.

All the best,
BS

[Pilsner]

I think this is a great idea @BS_THE_ANALYST. It is true that when preparing for the exams, it is difficult to practice some of the skills without having a larger project to get immersed in. I'd love to get involved in this, so feel free to count on me when the new platform goes live. 

I do agree with @szymon_dybczak that we risk taking some solution material away from the forums, but I'd like to think we could also gain value in other areas. If we use the live channels for projects, maybe there could be a dedicated space for "mock project" write-ups, rewarded by some incentive, like community badges.