Who Should Attend a Big Data Conference This Year? | Fusion …
Who Should Attend a Big Data Conference This Year?
February 10, 2014 by Dave Leininger
“I think this would be a good technology conference to attend,” I suggested to the owner of a small company for whom I worked years ago. “Here is why: out of 24 sessions being presented over two days, I can attend the eight that are closely aligned with our current and near-future projects. It is a good way to learn, to gain insight, and to meet others that have the same outlook,” I reasoned. His response? “I’m not sending anyone to Vegas to lay around the pool all day and play games all night!” The company has since ceased operations.
A better approach would have been to learn and share. As breakthrough technologies mature, it is time for people in various roles to have a priority of engaging with others in their industry peer groups. This doesn’t mean that a couple of operations execs from competing companies should have a round of drinks and let loose lips give away the secret sauce. Instead, people with similar responsibilities find high value in conferences, industry roundtables, and meet-ups attended by people representing companies from many industries. Cross-pollination of ideas with others can be powerful, especially when a process or work flow or technology is the topic. It is common for a potato chip maker to have much in common with a truck trailer manufacturer, in terms of feeding just-in-time production lines and tracking customer interactions and providing relevant analytics to different management levels. In the latter case, data technologies are rapidly evolving, making the need for learning and sharing with peers quite necessary for ensuring growth.
Analytics and reporting are often discussed as if they are the same concept. They are not. Search for “reporting vs. analytics” to gain perspective from 4.5M results. Or attend a conference focused to your level of responsibility and learn from experts and peers. Big Data Conferences are presented by a variety of companies. Each of the presenting companies has a reason to do so.
Focus on Relevant Topics
Examples of an altruistic approach are seen in meet-ups and guilds and roundtables. Search MeetUp.com for “big data,” and you will find that dozens of meetings are being held worldwide, usually monthly, and having attendance ranging from a handful of people to well over 100 peers eager to learn and share. Nearly all offer free attendance. Few have any kind of sponsorship, and even fewer subject the group to sales and marketing messages. The groups meet to learn and share. Guest speakers are sometimes featured, and often the meetings take a topic and discuss as a group. Here is a sampling of recent topics for Big Data meetups:
Data Governance, Compliance, and Security in Hadoop
Windows Azure in Healthcare
Learn how Netflix uses Cassandra
Data and Causal Inference in Political Campaigns
Big Data Analytics: Scalable Machine Learning Using Open-source Tools
Telling Stories with Data
Father of Data Warehousing, Bill Inmon: “Creating Business Value from Big Data”
Data Science : Innovation and Business Transformation
Prof. Polo Chau, GATech CS: Making Sense of Large Graphs
Brew & BI
City of Houston Open Innovation Hackathon v2
Future Trends in Data
Building a Business Analytics Organization
Commercial conferences from local technology firms and conference planners usually have a cadre of sponsors and exhibitors to provide the financial support needed to host a conference. Attendees pay $100 to $500 or more. Even a small conference in a hotel has a budget of thousands of dollars. A two- or three-day event for 300 attendees can exceed $100,000 rapidly. These conferences often have a committee of outsiders who vet the speakers and topics. Groups like INFORMS and Global Big Data Conference and IndyBigData are producing big data conferences in the first half of 2014 with topics such as:
Data Science and Big Data Value generation
Modeling and Prediction—Important skills
Difference Between Traditional and Big Data
Vendors and Tools for Big Data
Case Studies and Lessons Learned on Real-world Implementations
Identifying, Storing, Searching, Cleaning the Data You Have
Gaining Insight from New Data Sources
Emerging Trends in Big Data
Big Data Marketing Insights Create Better Customer Experiences
Workforce Strategic Planning Analytics
Healthcare Fraud Detection With The Help of Big Data
Competitive Advantage in Professional Sports: Big Data = Big Dollars
Security Settings For Big Data Databases
Ask the Experts
Commercial conferences from research firms and publishers have a different goal, and usually focused on subscription-based research. They offer deep analysis on topics that are of interest to many industries. Gartner, Gigaom, and O’Reilly are prime examples. Here is a sampling of session titles in their upcoming conferences:
Data-Driven Business Day
Those Numbers Won’t Measure Themselves
Getting There from Here: Moving Data Science into the Boardroom
Leveraging Value from Open Data Through Collaboration
Becoming a Learning Organization: From Data Teams to Corporate Influence
Data Driven Design at Formula One Speed
How MetLife Data is Transforming the Customer Experience at MetLife
How Microdata Can Say a Lot About Macroeconomics
Deep Learning: How Web Giants Are Doing AI at Hyperscale
Why the Future of Social Search is Semantic
The Best Websites Aren’t Just Built, They’re Calculated
How to Make Business Decisions with Data
Fundamentals of Corporate Performance Management
Customer Service Metrics: What, Why, and How
Networking Breakfast for Analytic Professionals in the Healthcare Payer Industry
Roundtable: Best Practices in Financial Analytics
Last Call for Datatopia…Boarding Now
Applied Infonomics: How and Why to Become an Infocentric Organization
Big Data Responsibilities Across the Organization
Clearly, some sessions are focused on technology practitioners while others are relevant to C-level and senior management personnel. Sign up and attend when the topic makes sense. Suggest a meeting attendance to someone in your company. Network with your peers. The rate of learning and growth is accelerated when you share and participate.
SOUND OFF: Have you attended a Big Data conference? What learnings did you take away that were timely and relevant to your organization?
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Who Should Attend a Big Data Conference This Year? | Fusion …
