Closing Shop

Jeroen Janssens
Jan 1, 2023 • 5 min read

I have decided to close my company Data Science Workshops B.V.

For nearly seven years I’ve had the pleasure of teaching a variety of data science topics to hundreds of students. If you’re curious which workshops I gave and to which clients, you can browse an archived copy of the Data Science Workshops website. Should you have any other questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

Inspiration session about Python at KPN in Amsterdam
Inspiration session about Python at KPN in Amsterdam

Having my own training company has mostly been incredibly rewarding and educational. That feeling when you see a student “get it”, is priceless. So is landing a 10-week training at a big client. Or traveling to Nigeria, the US, or Kuwait, for that matter.

Group picture at e-Health Africa in Kano, Nigeria
Group picture at e-Health Africa in Kano, Nigeria

I’ve not only been able to improve my own data science and teaching skills, I’ve also learned valuable things about marketing, sales, copywriting, advertising, not advertising, implementing static multi-lingual websites, doing taxes, delegating taxes, hiring other instructors, organizing meetups, editing videos, teaching online, live streaming, et cetera. Mostly by making plenty of mistakes.

Two-day data hackathon at Transavia in Schiphol
Two-day data hackathon at Transavia in Schiphol

However, in the past few months, partly due to the pandemic, having a company got increasingly lonely and uncertain. Long story short, teaching and acquisition is a lot easier and more enjoyable to do in person!

Group picture at EQUATE in Ahmadi, Kuwait
Group picture at EQUATE in Ahmadi, Kuwait

Besides this, an important reason why I decided to make the switch from solo entrepreneur to employee is that I missed building things. Training is inherently a short-term engagement where the focus is to teach. I’m happy to share that I started working at Xomnia as a Senior Machine Learning Engineer. I can now collaborate with colleagues on bigger projects.

Data Science NL meetup at Picnic in Amsterdam
Data Science NL meetup at Picnic in Amsterdam

That doesn’t mean I’ll stop teaching all together. I’m still available for workshops related to my book Data Science at the Command Line. Other workshops, such as data visualization or machine learning, are still possible, but these will be facilitated via Xomnia. If you want to know more, best to send me an email.

Workshop Web Scraping with R at Xomnia in Amsterdam
Workshop Web Scraping with R at Xomnia in Amsterdam

I’d like to thank all the students, managers, clients, fellow instructors, conference organizers, meetup members, meetup[1] speakers, meetup hosts, newsletter subscribers[2], friends, and family who have supported me on this journey along the way. Your questions, answers, feedback, ideas, follows, likes, dislikes, acceptances, and rejections have made this endeavor worthwhile.

– Jeroen


  1. I’m also no longer organizing the Data Science NL meetup. Luckily, there are plenty of other data-related meetups being organized in the Netherlands, such as the Data & Drinks meetup by Xomnia. ↩︎

  2. The Data Science Workshops newsletter has been replaced by a new, personal, one. You’ll have to sign up again if you want to continue receiving emails. ↩︎


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