Datacraft, a club dedicated to data scientists and their companies, whose mission is to contribute to the efficient and responsible use of data, has just announced the launch of a digital escape game to raise awareness of the challenges of a data/IA project. This unique Club model, inspired by the companionship model, was created by Isabelle Hilali to allow data scientists/data engineers to train permanently among peers and to allow companies to accelerate their AI/data projects.

Graduated from the Institute of Political Studies of Grenoble and the University of Paris I – Panthéon Sorbonne in military strategy, Isabelle Hilali has held many positions as president or business manager in the mobile, e-health and internet industry in France but also internationally. In 2015, she created the Healthcare Data Institute, which brings together a large number of players around big data and health. She was also director of the CRI, the Paris Interdisciplinary Research Center. In 2020, she created Datacraft, a place where data scientists could meet and exchange.

Datacraft

Isabelle Hilali launched DataCraft in January 2020, with the Accor group and the Insep, and the following month set up the company in the Marais. The first containment led to the temporary closure of the club, but revealed the real need for exchange in the data science community and the community grew very quickly, from 80 to 500 at the deconfinement. In an interview for visionarymarketing.com, she said:

“In data science, it’s really complicated to be on the cutting edge in terms of skills. It’s a world where you need to share. There’s always the image of the geek who is alone behind his or her microphone, but in fact, if you want to be good, you need to cross-reference data and be imaginative.”

The club is now housed at CSAI, the Sorbonne’s Artificial Intelligence Center, which contributes to the excellence of interdisciplinary research and teaching in AI by promoting exchanges between researchers, students and industry.

It hosts a team of more than 500 researchers from prestigious teams such as SCAI, Télécom Paris… Independent and freelance data scientists can be hosted and become members of the Club for free in return for the time they give. However, companies must pay a membership fee to join.

An exchange of best practices

During the interview, Isabelle Hilali had stated:

“in our model, everyone learns from each other, there is no master or pupil. Everyone is a master on a piece of the subject.”

When a member of the community is faced with a problem, he or she asks the community to help solve it. Datacraft takes the opportunity to organize a workshop so that members can share. For example, he organized one on data in high-level sports, with problems such as helping a coach to optimize his team, to choose the team that will be the most efficient according to the opponents, according to data, weather or all this environment. For projects like this, the members cooperated and exchanged during two days.

The creation of other Datacraft bases designed around the same concept of collaboration and responsibility is envisaged.

Datacraft’s digital escape game

Datacraft launched this digital escape game to raise awareness among its employees of the challenges of a data / AI project. The game is played in teams of 6, with an integrated video that allows them to talk to each other and help each other solve the puzzles. The scenario was designed by Laurent Oudre, Professor at ENS Paris-Saclay in ML and researcher in residence of the datacraft Club, and Xavier Lioneton, COO and Lead data scientist of datacraft.

The game is available in English and French. It can be customized for companies that are interested.

Translated from Datacraft, club dédié aux data scientists, lance un escape game digital