INFORMS Big Data Conference

How do you get from data discovery to return on investment and real business value? The INFORMS Big Data Conference, set for June 22-24 in San Jose, Calif., aims to help you discover just that. This newly launched topical conference will put the focus squarely on the business of big data. A major component of the conference will be case studies of big data projects that illustrate the complete journey from business problem to analytics solution.

The conference committee is being spearheaded by Margery Connor, CAP,  senior operations researcher-Advanced Analytics at Chevron, and Diego Klabjan, CAP, professor and director of the Master of Science in Analytics Program at Northwestern University. Other conference committee members are practitioners in the data arena, hailing from organizations such as Humana, IBM, Booz Allen Hamilton, SAIC, Intel, SAS, Alcatel-Lucent, and UPS. The talks are being arranged into tracks on Case Studies, Big Data 101, and Emerging Trends. Other talks will
address topics such as:

• expediting the journey from business problem to analytics solution;

• bridging the gap between decision-makers, IT managers and analytics professionals; and

• selecting and using the right big data technologies.

Speakers are handpicked by the committee from an impressive list of “who’s who” in the field of big data. Anthony Goldbloom of Kaggle, Ion
Stoica of UC- Berkeley, Paul Kent of SAS and Simon Zhang of LinkedIn have all confirmed they will share their best practices, success stories and lessons learned on real implementation of big data analytics. The Big Data 101 track will offer tutorials on how to navigate the big data ecosystem, how to select and use the right technologies, as well as the challenges of building data science teams. The speakers will also address critical topics such as ethics and privacy requirements.

Bill Franks will deliver the keynote address, “Putting Big Data to Work.” Franks is the chief analytics officer at Teradata Corporation. At Teradata and throughout his career, Franks has focused on translating complex analytics into terms that business users can understand and then helping organizations implement the results effectively within their processes. He is author of the book, “Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave,” and his work has spanned clients in a variety of industries.

The INFORMS Big Data Conference will be held at the San Jose Convention Center. Rooms are being held for conference attendees at the Marriott San Jose, which is connected to the center.