Our first project in boot camp was to work with 3 other students on an analysis to help a tech non-profit sign up potential donors for a gala. The problem was outlined in an email as partially quoted below:

WomenTechWomenYes (WTWY) has an annual gala at the beginning of the summer each year. As we are new and inclusive organization, we try to do double duty with the gala both to fill our event space with individuals passionate about increasing the participation of women in technology, and to concurrently build awareness and reach.

To this end we place street teams at entrances to subway stations. The street teams collect email addresses and those who sign up are sent free tickets to our gala.

Where we’d like to solicit your engagement is to use MTA subway data, which as I’m sure you know is available freely from the city, to help us optimize the placement of our street teams, such that we can gather the most signatures, ideally from those who will attend the gala and contribute to our cause.

Our team eagerly downloaded several MTA file from the public repository of the turnstile data and set to work identifying the busiest stations, days of week and times of day. You can see our presentation at [this link:] (https://mitchki.github.io/resources/MTA_traffic_Team6.pdf)

Alternative Strategy

The WTWY team seems to be focused on entrances to subway stations. We focused on a “data driven” strategy, where we looked for patterns in the data from which to direct potential email-collecting street teams.

If I were going to attack this project again, I would start from the problem statement, as this is the extent of information we have regarding this organization’s needs. Instead of diving headfirst into turnstile data, I’d spend more time formulating the question. We know that the organization is looking for “individuals passionate about increasing the participation of women in technology.” Based on this characterization, I’d want to hone in on individuals who were already involved in technology, especially women.

Many technical organizations host conferences in New York, and I’m thinking it would be productive to set up the street teams at the subway stations closest to where those conferences are being held. For example, this week there is a big STRATA conference at the Javits Center. If we are going to maintain the street-team-at subway entrances strategy, the closest subway stations would be 34th St-Hudson Yards and 34th St-Penn Station.

However, rather than soliciting people on the street, I think a more effective strategy for our WTWY organization would be to obtain a booth or other presence inside the event, whihc should increase the conversion rate by allowing attendees to come to them, and also increasing their credibility by being inside the event. By staffing a table, it is likely that fewer people would be required to collect email addresses.

Of course, their gala is being held in early summer, so I would target springtime tech events for this effort.

It is possible to use the turnstile data to check the traffic at subway stations near the venues of large conferences, so that may be a worthy extension of the project.