INFORMS Big Data Conference

INFORMS is launching a new topical conference that will put the focus squarely on the business of big data – how organizations can transition from being data-rich to decision-smart. The INFORMS Big Data Conference will be held June 22-24 at the San Jose Convention Center in San Jose, Calif. The conference is organized around tracks on “Big Data Case Studies,” “Big Data 101” and “Emerging Trends in Big Data.”

Case studies of big data projects that illustrate the complete journey from business problem to analytics solutions will be a major component of the conference. Sessions on big data 101 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. Critical topics such as ethics and privacy requirements will also be addressed. Other sessions on the program will look into the future, exploring emerging technologies and business trends.

The committee has hand-picked speakers to address defined topics in an intensive program geared to the interests of business decision-makers, IT managers and analytics professionals. Poster sessions, technology workshops, tutorials and panel discussions will also be part of the program, as well as facilitated networking opportunities.

Bill Franks, chief analytics officer at Teradata Corporation, and Michael Svilar, managing director, delivery lead and capability lead at Accenture, will deliver keynote presentations. 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 the author of the book “Taming the Big Data Tidal Wave” and holds a patent in forecasting analytics. For more than 30 years, Svilar has run analytics projects across multiple industries including retail, communications, financial services, automotive, consumer packaged goods and electronics.

Early registration rates will be available until May 23. Rooms are being held at the Marriott San Jose at a discounted rate until May 26. Conference organizers anticipate that rooms will sell quickly and advise attendees to make reservations early, well before the cut-off date. After that date, reservations will be accepted at prevailing rates on a room available basis.

Visit http://meetings.informs.org/bigdata2014/ for more information on the INFORMS Big Data Conference.

Program tracks and speakers

Track: Big Data Case Studies

• Google – Behdad Masih, quantitative analyst
  
  
• HERE, a Nokia Business – Toby Tennent, product development manager
  
  
• Exponent®, Inc. – Juergen Klenk, principal scientist
  
  
• Kabbage, Inc. – Pinar Donmez, chief data scientist
  
  
• U.S. Census Bureau – Cavan Capps, big data lead
  
  
• Merck & Co., Inc. – John E. Koch, director of informatics
  
  
• Intel Corp. – Link C. Jaw, Internet-of-things solutions group
  
  
• JP Morgan Intelligent Solutions – Govind Nagubandi, data scientist
  
  
• Analytics Media Group (AMG) – Alan Papir, software engineer
  
  
• Teradata Aster – Lee Paries, vice president, Central & Western U.S.
  
  
• Bell Laboratories – Marina Thottan, director
  
  
• Alpine Data Labs – William C. Ford, lead data scientist

Track: Big Data 101

• Amazon – Vikram Garlapati, manager, solutions architect
  
  
• Northwestern University – Diego Klabjan, professor, industrial engineering & management sciences; director, master of science in analytics program
  
  
• Kaiser Permanente – Anton J. Mobley, MS, security data scientist
  
  
• Booz Allen Hamilton – Peter Guerra, BS, principal
  
  
• IBM – Kevin Foster, MS, big data solutions architect
  
  
• Koverse, Inc. – Paul Brown, MS, CEO and founder
  
  
• Verizon Wireless – Anne Robinson, Ph.D., director, supply chain strategy & analytics
  
  
• Booz Allen Hamilton – Brian Keller, Ph.D., data scientist

Track: Emerging Trends in Big Data

• IBM – Rob High, BA, chief technology officer, Watson solutions, IBM fellow and vice president
  
  
• LinkedIn Corp. – Simon Zhang, MD & MBA, senior director, business analytics
  
  
• SAS – Paul Kent, B Commerce (WITS), vice president, big data
  
  
• Univ. of California Berkeley – Ion Stoica, Ph.D., professor, Univ. of California Berkeley; CEO, Databricks; CTO, Conviva
  
  
• Kaggle – Anthony Goldbloom, B Commerce, founder and CEO
  
  
• SAP – Chris Hallenbeck, global vice president
  
  
• Pivotal – Kaushik Das, senior principal data scientist
  
  
• GraphLab – Shawn Scully, data scientist

Continuing ed courses set for San Jose

INFORMS’ popular continuing education courses will be held June 20-21 (“Essential Practice Skills for Analytics Professionals”) and June 25-26 (“Data Exploration & Visualization”) before and after, respectively, the 2014 INFORMS Conference on the Business of Big Data in San Jose, Calif. Register early to save $100.

Essential Practice Skills for Analytics Professionals

Taught by Dr. E. Andrew Boyd, Texas A&M, University of Houston, and Houston Public Media

Participants will learn practical tools for integrating their analytical skills into real-world problem solving for businesses and other organizations. The course provides approaches that can be applied immediately to a wide variety of settings, whether within a participant’s own organization or for an external client. By the end of the course, participants will:

• learn to link their subject-matter expertise to the challenges of messy, unstructured problems, organizational noise, and non-technical decision makers; and
  
  
• understand best-practice techniques, including: problem statement summaries, issue trees, interview guides, work plans, sensitivity analysis, stress-testing recommendations, story-boarding, slide-craft, delivering presentations and fielding Q&A sessions.

Course dates: June 20-21, San Jose, Calif.

Data Exploration & Visualization

Taught by Stephen McDaniel and Eileen McDaniel, Freakalytics, LLC

Attendees will experience first-hand the power of visualization in exploring data as an adjunct to tried and trusted analytics methods. Using a hands-on lecture and case study approach, attendees will walk away with a proven framework for data exploration that is directly relevant to real-world problems in many fields. Incorporating popular free and leading software tools to facilitate hands-on learning, attendees will be able to directly apply the methods and techniques from this course in their work, regardless of their visualization tool of choice.

At the end of the course, participants are expected to:

• have confidence to explore new data using the exploration/visualization approach;
  
  
• have the ability to approach and deploy interactive visualization;
  
  
• understand how to identify practically meaningful discoveries;
  
  
• experience the use of state-of-the-art visualization software; and
  
  
• think creatively about data and insights.

Course dates: June 25-26, San Jose, Calif.

For more information on the course and available discounts, visit www.informs.org/continuinged.