Interview Ken O Connor Business Intelligence Consultant

Here is an interview with an industry veteran of Business Intelligence, Ken O Connor.

Ajay- Describe your career journey across the full development cycle of Business Intelligence.

Ken- I started my career in the early 80’s in the airline industry, where I worked as an application programmer and later as a systems programmer. I took a computer science degree by night. The airline industry was one of the first to implement computer systems in the ‘60s, and the legacy of being an early adaptor was that airline reservation systems were developed in Assembler. Remarkable as it sounds now, as application programmers, we wrote our own file access methods. Even more remarkable, as systems programmers, we modified the IBM supplied Operating System, originally known as the Airline Control Program (ACP), later renamed as Transaction Processing Facility (TPF). The late ‘80s saw the development of Global “Computer Reservations Systems” (CRS systems) including AMADEUS and GALILEO. I moved from Aer Lingus, a small Irish airline, to work in London on the British Airways systems, to enable the British Airways systems share information and communicate with the new Global CRS systems.

I learnt very important lessons during those years.

* The criticality of standards

* The drive for interoperability of systems

* The drive towards information sharing

* The drive away from bespoke development

In the 90’s I returned to Dublin, where I worked as an independent consultant with IBM on many data intensive projects. On one project I was lead developer in the IBM Dublin Laboratory on the development of the Data Replication tool called “Data Propagator NonRelational”. This tool automatically propagates updates made on IMS databases to DB2 databases. On this project, we successfully piloted using the Cleanroom Development Method, as part of IBM’s derive towards Six Sigma quality.

In the past 15 years I have moved away from IT towards the business. I describe myself as a Hybrid. I believe there is a serious communications gap between business users and IT, and this is a frequent cause of project failures. I seek to bridge that gap. I ensure that requirements are clear, measurable, testable, and capable of being easily understood and signed off by business owners.

One of my favorite programmes was Euro Changeover, This was a hugely data intensive programme. It was the largest changeover undertaken by European Financial Institutions. I worked as an independent consultant with the IBM Euro Centre of Competence. I developed changeover strategies for a number of Irish Enterprises, and was the End to End IT changeover process owner in a major Irish bank. Every application and every data store holding currency sensitive data (not just amounts, but currency signs etc.) had to be converted at exactly the same time to ensure that all systems successfully switched to euro processing on 1st January 2002.

I learnt many, many lasting lessons about data the hard way on Euro Changeover programmes, such as:

* The extent to which seemingly separate applications share operational data – often without the knowledge of the owning application.

* The extent to which business users use (abuse) data fields to hold information never intended for the data field.

* The critical distinction between the underlying data (in a data store) and the information displayed to a business user.

I have worked primarily on what I call “End of food chain” projects and programmes, such as Single View of Customer, data migrations, and data population of repositories for BASEL II and Anti Money Laundering (AML) systems. Business Intelligence is another example of an “End of food chain” project. “End of food-chain” projects share the following characteristics:

* Dependent on existing data

* No control over the quality of existing data they depend on

* No control over the data entry processes by which the data they require is captured.

* The data required may have been captured many years previously.

Recently, I have shared my experience of “Enterprise wide data issues” in a series of posts on my blog, together with a process for assessing the status of those issues within an Enterprise (more details). In my experience, the success of a Business Intelligence programme and the ease with which an Enterprise completes “End of food chain” data dependent programmes directly depends on the status of the common Enterprise Wide data issues I have identified.

Ajay -Describe the educational scene for science graduates in Ireland. What steps do you think governments and universities can do to better teach science and keep young people excited about it?

Ken- I am not in a position to comment on the educational scene for science graduates in Ireland. However, I can say that currently there are insufficient numbers of school children studying science in primary and 2nd level education. There is a need to excite young people about science. There is a need for more interactive science museums, like W5 in Belfast which is hugely successful. Kids love to get involved, and practical science can be great fun.

Ajay- What are some of the key trends in business intelligence that you have seen-

Ken- Since the earliest days of my career, I have seen an ever increasing move towards standards based interoperability of systems, and interchange of data. This has accelerated dramatically in recent years. This is the good news. Further good news is the drive towards the use of external reference databases to verify the accuracy of data, at point of data entry (See blog post on Upstream prevention by Henrik Liliendahl Sørensen). One example of this drive is cloud based verification services from new companies like Ireland based Clavis Technology.

The harsh reality is that “Old hardware goes into museums, while old software goes into production every night”. Enterprises have invested vast amounts of money in legacy applications over decades. These legacy systems access legacy data in legacy data stores. This legacy data will continue to pose challenges in the delivery of Business Intelligence to the Business community that needs it. These challenges will continue to provide opportunities for Data Quality professionals.

Ajay- What is going to be the next fundamental change in this industry in your opinion?

Ken- The financial crisis will result in increased regulatory requirements. This will be good news for the Business Intelligence / Data Quality industry. In time, it will no longer be sufficient to provide the regulator with ‘just’ the information requested. The regulator will want to see the process by which the information was gathered; the process controls, and evidence of the quality the underlying data from which the information was derived. This move will result in funding for Data Governance programmes, which will lead to increased innovation in our industry.

Ajay- Describe your startup Map My Business, your target customer and your vision for it.

Ken- I started MapMyBusiness.com as a “recession buster”. Ireland was hit particularly hard by the financial crisis. I had become over dependent on the financial services industry, and a blanket ban on the use of external consultants left me with no option but to reinvent myself. MapMyBusiness.com helps small businesses to attract clients, by getting them on Google page one. Having been burnt by an over dependence on one industry, my vision is to diversify. I believe that Data Governance is industry independent, and I am focussing on increasing my customer base for my Data Governance consultancy skills, via my company Professional IT Personnel Ltd.

Ajay- What do you do when not working with customers or blogging on your website?

Ken- I try to achieve a reasonable work/life balance. I am married with two children aged 12 and 10, and like to spend time with them, especially outdoors, walking, hiking, playing tennis etc. I am involved in my community, lobbying for improved cycling infrastructure in our area (more details). Ireland, like most countries, is facing an obesity epidemic, due to an increasingly sedentary lifestyle. Too many people get little or no exercise, and don’t have the time, willpower, or perhaps money, to regularly work out in a gym. By including “Active Travel” in our daily lives – by walking or cycling to schools and local amenities, we can get enough physical exercise to prevent obesity, and obesity related health problems. We need to make our cities, towns and villages more pedestrian and cyclist friendly, to encourage “active travel”. My voluntary work in this area introduced me to mapping (see example), and enabled me to set up MapMyBusiness.com.

Biography-

Ken O’Connor is an independent IT Consultant with almost 30 years of work experience. He specialises in Data: Data Migration, Data Population, Data Governance, Data Quality, Data Profiling…His  company is called Professional IT Personnel Ltd.

Ken started his blog (Ken O’ Connor Data Consultant) to share his experience and to learn from the experience of others.   Dylan Jones, editor of dataqualitypro, describe Ken as a “grizzled veteran”, with almost 30 years experience across the full development lifecycle.

New York Diner

In a New York Thai restaurant
I dine alone being new to York town
Borrowing conversation from left and right
Bringing no conversation of my own in the fading twilight

As bubbles slowly bubble from a sparkling dollar five glass
I watch from shadows as pretty people come and go as they say excuse me and quickly pass

I am an odd ball I know
Brown monkey nowhere to go
The waiters give me a look best called quizzical
What on the napkin do I scribble

Will the fellow eat and clear in peace start by giving chicken panang a nibble

Will I pay up this after all is west Harlem
Asians don’t tip they have been before on this trip

And I drink and devour
Dinner fine and dine
IMG_0084
Watching conversation sparkle up
As sparkling wine goes down
I nod I say people are just the same
Appearances change but they play the same old games

Up when happy when sad they are down
Every big big city every new yet old town

We drink different wines
But then think similar thoughts

Daily joys and same different struggles
That our love and life bought

Wine brings heat to our face
Letting my jacket slip a bit
The waiter slips me a seen it all look
Are you. Serious he thinks you silly twit

Leaving all pretences
I chug wine like we chug beer
Expensive to my sponsors
But hey it brings me cheer

Ole  lady on my left
Drunk college chicks on my right
Smart  dame right across room
Cute Thai waitress completes a pleasant sight

IMG_0114

Chug chug chug
We drink sparkling wine
Eating and being merry
Old wine makes new troubles all fine

Now thinking deeper-

In the middle of urban sub arcana
Face to face verbal smacks in your space
Comes a concept called Americana

Passionate adjectives and superlative passions
Americana is an euphemism for monetary nirvana

Nasal voices on my right
Deep bass slightly in front
To my left a wavering voice wavers
Aromatic cacophony my ears take the brunt

Wine slipping down slowly
But hey rising so fast
After effects may disappear soon
But the mellow pleasure promises to last

The Big Data Event- Why am I here?

I am here braving New York’s cold weather, as I prepare for this evening’s events. If you follow this blog closely ( including the poems) ,it is a welcome change— New York is a nice city people are friendly if you ask them nicely and the bus is a great way to watch the city – best of all I like the crowds which I have grown used while living in India.

Why Am I here?

Because the topics that are discussed here are cutting edge to the point that I cannot find anyone willing to teach me Hadoop and Map-Reduce while in University and at the same time teach me statistics on them as well ( as in how do we do a K Means clustering on a 1 terabyte dataset).

I asked the organizers on what makes the event special ( every event promises special Mojo after all).

This is what they said-

What is the unique value proposition of the event that will help developers and both current and potential customers-

The essence of the event is to explore new innovations in massively-parallel processing data warehousing technology and how it can help companies gain more insight from their data.  Applications include fraud detection, behavioral targeting, social network analysis, better predictions/forecasting, bioinformatics, etc.  We are exploring how MapReduce and Hadoop can be integrated into the enterprise IT system to help evolve data warehousing/BI/data mining

and to put it even more nicely’

““The industry’s first big data event, Big Data Summit ‘09, being held this evening in New York City, will showcase Hadoop’s fit with MPP data warehouses. Aster Data will be presenting alongside Colin White, President and Founder of BI Research, Mike Brown of comScore Inc., and Jonathan Goldman, who represents LinkedIn.”

That’s good enough for me to drop into Roosevelt Hotel on East 45th Street at around 6 pm for some reluctant networking ( read: beers). 5 years ago whie working for GE , I used to run queries using SAS on a 147 million row database (the size of the DB) and wait 3 hours for it to come back. Today that much data fits very snugly in my laptop. How soon will we have Terabyte level personal computing, and Petabyte level business computing and the challenges it poses to standard statistical assumptions and synching of hardware and software- Big Big Data is an interesting area to watch.

Interview Shawn Kung Sr Director Aster Data

Here is an interview with Shawn Kung, Senior Director of Product Management at Aster Data. Shawn explains the difference between the various database technologies, Aster’s rising appeal to its unique technological approach and touches upon topics of various other interests as well to people in the BI and technology space.

image001

Ajay -Describe your career journey from a high school student of science till today .Do you think science is a more lucrative career?

Shawn: My career journey has spanned over a decade in several Silicon Valley technology companies.  In both high school and my college studies at Princeton, I had a fervent interest in math and quantitative economics.  Silicon Valley drew me to companies like upstart procurement software maker Ariba and database giant Oracle.  I continued my studies by returning to get a Master’s in Management Science at Stanford before going on to lead core storage systems for nearly 5 years at NetApp and subsequently Aster.

Science (whether it is math, physics, economics, or the hard engineering sciences) provides a solid foundation.  It teaches you to think and test your assumptions – those are valuable skills that can lead to a both a financially lucrative and personally inspiring career.

Ajay- How would you describe the difference between Map Reduce and Hadoop and Oracle and SAS, DBMS and Teradata and Aster Data products to a class of undergraduate engineers ?

Shawn: Let’s start with the database guys – Oracle and Teradata.  They focus on structured data – data that has a logical schema and is manipulated via a standards-based structured query language (SQL).  Oracle tries to be everything to everyone – it does OLTP (low-latency transactions like credit card or stock trade execution apps) and some data warehousing (typically summary reporting).  Oracle’s data warehouse is not known for large-scale data warehousing and is more often used for back-office reporting.

Teradata is focused on data warehousing and scales very well, but is extremely expensive – it runs on high-end custom hardware and takes a mainframe approach to data processing.  This approach makes less sense as commodity hardware becomes more compute-rich and better software comes along to support large-scale MPP data warehousing.

SAS is very different – it’s not a relational database. It really offers an application platform for data analysis, specifically data mining.  Unlike Oracle and Teradata which is used by SQL developers and managed by DBAs, SAS is typically run in business units by data analysts – for example a quantitative marketing analyst, a statistician/mathematician, or a savvy engineer with a data mining/math background.  SAS is used to try to find patterns, understand behaviors, and offer predictive analytics that enable businesses to identify trends and make smarter decisions than their competitors.

Hadoop offers an open-source framework for large-scale data processing.  MapReduce is a component of Hadoop, which also contains multiple other modules including a distributed filesystem (HDFS).  MapReduce offers a programming paradigm for distributed computing (a parallel data flow processing framework).

Both Hadoop and MapReduce are catered toward the application developer or programmer.  It’s not catered for enterprise data centers or IT.  If you have a finite project in a line of business and want to get it done, Hadoop offers a low-cost way to do this.  For example, if you want to do large-scale data munging like aggregations, transformations, manipulations of unstructured data – Hadoop offers a solution for this without compromising on the performance of your main data warehouse.  Once the data munging is finished, the post-processed data set can be loaded into a database for interactive analysis or analytics. It is a great combination of big data technologies for certain use-cases.

Aster takes a very unique approach.  Our Aster nCluster software offers the best of all worlds – we offer the potential for deep analytics of SAS, the low-cost scalability and parallel processing of Hadoop/MapReduce, and the structured data advantages (schema, SQL, ACID compliance and transactional integrity, indexes, etc) of a relational database like Teradata and Oracle.  Often, we find complementary approaches and therefore view SAS and Hadoop/MapReduce as synergistic to a complete solution.  Data warehouses like Teradata and Oracle tend to be more competitive.

Ajay- What exciting products have you launched so far and what makes them unique both from a technical developer perspective and a business owner perspective

Shawn: Aster was the first-to-market to offer In-Database MapReduce, which provides the standards and familiarity of SQL and databases with the analytic power of MapReduce.  This is very unique as it offers technical developers and application programmers to write embedded procedural algorithms once, upload it, and allow business analysts or IT folks (SQL developers, DBAs, etc) to invoke these SQL-MapReduce functions forever.

It is highly polymorphic (re-usable), highly fault-tolerant, highly flexible (any language – Java, Python, Ruby, Perl, R statistical language, C# in the .NET world, etc) and natively massively parallel – all of which differentiate these SQL extensions from traditional dumb user-defined functions (UDFs).

Ajay- “I am happy with my databases and I don’t need too much diversity or experimentation in my systems”, says a CEO to you.

How do you convince him using quantitative numbers and not marketing adjectives?

Shawn: Aster has dozens of production customers including big-names like MySpace, LinkedIn, Akamai, Full Tilt Poker, comScore, and several yet-to-be-named retail and financial service accounts.  We have quantified proof points that show orders of magnitude improvements in scalability, performance, and analytic insights compared to incumbent or competitor solutions.  Our highly referenceable customers would be happy to discuss their positive experiences with the CEO.

But taking a step back, there’s a fundamental concept that this CEO needs to first understand.  The world is changing – data growth is proliferating due to the digitization of so many applications and the emergence of unstructured data and new data types.  Like the book “Competing on Analytics”, the world is shifting to a paradigm where companies that don’t take risks and push the limits on analytics will die like the dinosaurs.

IDC is projecting 10x+ growth in data over the next few years to zetabytes of aggregate data driven by digitization (Internet, digital television, RFID, etc).  The data is there and in order to compete effectively and understand your customers more intimately, you need a large-scale analytics solution like the one Aster nCluster offers.  If you hold off on experimentation and innovation, it will be too late by the time you realize you have a problem at hand.

Ajay- How important is work life balance for you?

Shawn: Very important.  I hang out with my wife most weekends – we do a lot of outdoors activities like hiking and gardening.  In Silicon Valley, it’s all too easy to get caught up in the rush of things.  Taking breaks, especially during the weekend, is important to recharge and re-energize to be as productive as possible.

Ajay- Are you looking for college interns and new hires what makes aster exciting for you so you are pumped up every day to go to work?

Shawn: We’re always looking for smart, innovative, and entrepreneurial new college grads and interns, especially on the technical side.  So if you are a computer science major or recent grad or graduate student, feel free to contact us for opportunities.

What makes Aster exciting is 2 things –

first, the people.  Everyone is very smart and innovative so you learn a tremendous amount, which is personally gratifying and professionally useful long-term.

Second, Aster is changing the world!

Distributed systems computing focused on big data processing and analytics – these are massive game-changers that will fundamentally change the landscape in data warehousing and analytics.  Traditional databases have been a oligopoly for over a generation – they haven’t been challenged and so the 1970’s based technology has stuck around.  The emergence of big data and low-cost commodity hardware has created a unique opportunity to carve out a brand new market…

what gets me pumped every day is I have the ability to contribute to a pioneer that is quickly becoming Silicon Valley’s next great success story!

Biography-

Over the past decade, Shawn has led product management for some of Silicon Valley’s most successful and innovative technology companies.  Most recently, he spent nearly 5 years at Network Appliance leading Core Systems storage product management, where he oversaw the development of high availability software and Storage Systems hardware products that grew in annual revenue from $200M to nearly $800M.  Prior to NetApp, Shawn held senior product management and corporate strategy roles at Oracle Corporation and Ariba Inc.

Shawn holds an M.S. in Management Science and engineering from Stanford University, where he was awarded the Valentine Fellowship (endowed by Don Valentine of Sequoia Capital).  He also received a B.A. with high honors from Princeton University.

About Aster

Aster Data Systems is a proven leader in high-performance database systems for data warehousing and analytics – the first DBMS to tightly integrate SQL with MapReduce – providing deep insights on data analyzed on clusters of low-cost commodity hardware. The AsternCluster database cost-effectively powers frontline analytic applications for companies such as MySpace, aCerno (an Akamai company), and ShareThis.

Running on low-cost off-the-shelf hardware, and providing ‘hands-free’ administration, Aster enables enterprises to meet their data warehousing needs within their budget. Aster is headquartered in San Carlos, California and is backed by Sequoia Capital, JAFCO Ventures, IVP, Cambrian Ventures, and First-Round Capital, as well as industry visionaries including David Cheriton and Ron Conway.

KXEN Conference :How to get the Best ROI..
Citation : http://www.kxen.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=560&Itemid=1005

kxen

How to get the Best ROI from your Advanced Analytics Investment?
MonDAY, NovemBER 2, 2009
09:30-10:30 AM Registration & Breakfast
10:30-10:45 AM Welcome & Opening Remarks,
by Roger Haddad, CEO KXEN
10:45-11:30 AM Keynote Session:
Customer Focus and Momentum Strategy,
by Marc Beauvois-Coladon, on the original work of
Professor Jean-Claude Larréché, INSEAD Alfred
H. Heineken Chair of Marketing
11:30-12:30 AM Technology Directions,
by Erik Marcade, CTO KXEN
12:30-01:45 PM Lunch
01:45-02:30 PM Customer Case Study: Groupama – Insurance
02:30-03:15 PM Boosting Lift by integrating Web Browsing Behavior in Affinity Modeling, by Edouard Servan-Schreiber, Assistant Director Advanced Analytics Teradata EMEA
03:15-04:00 PM Customer Case Study: Leveraging Social Network Analysis in Customer Retention with KXEN
by Jaroslaw Kosinski, Project Manager Planning and Strategic Analysis TPSA (Telco)
04:00-04:15 PM
Break
04:15-05:00 PM Business Track 1: Towards Predictive BI: Manage your strategic KPI’s (workshop part 1)

Technical Track 1: How to build a Data Factory
05:00-05:45 PM Business Track 2: Towards Predictive BI: Manage your Strategic KPI’s (workshop – part 2)

Technical Track 2: How to build a Modeling Factory
05:45-06:30 PM Customer Case Study: Industry
08:00-00:00 PM Gala Dinner @ the Eiffel Tower
TuesDAY, NovemBER 3, 2009
09:00-09:30 AM Welcome Coffee
09:30-10:15 AM How to optimise Performance and Effectiveness of Relationship Management Programs, while Taking Advantage of just-in-time Marketing,
by Alexandre Losson, Head of CRM, Business & Decision
10:15-11:00 AM Customer Case Study: Wolters Kluwer – Publishing & Media
11:00-11:15 AM Break
11:15-12:00 AM Business Track 3: Automate the Production of Hyper Targeted Campaigns, by Emmanuel Duhesme, CEO Probance

Technical Track 3: How to implement Social Networks Analysis
12:00-12:45 AM Business Track 4: How to present your Data Mining Results to get Visibility, by Frederic Binon,
Marketing Expert Manager at Belgacom

Technical Track 4: KXEN New Versions Tips & Tricks
12:45-01:45 PM Lunch
01:45-02:15 PM Partner Presentation: Geoconcept
02:15-03:00 PM Customer Case Study: The Co-operative Financial Services – Bank
03:00-03:15 PM
Break
03:15-04:15 PM Ask your Questions to KXEN Executives!
04:15-05:00PM Closing Remarks by Roger Haddad, CEO KXEN
Option: NOVEMBER 4, 2009
Complimentary Post-Conference Technical Workshop

Registrations on a First Come / First Served Basis – Places are limited
09:00-11:30 AM ADM: KXEN Data Manipulation Training & Exercices
11:30-01:00 PM KMF: Tour of KXEN Modeling Factory
01:00-02:00 PM Lunch
02:00-05:00 PM KSN: KXEN Social Network Analysis Training & Exercices
Registration requests for this workshop should be sent by e-mail to event-eur@kxen.com once your Conference Registration has been proceeded.

KXEN EMEA & Asia user CONFERENCE
NovembER 2 & 3, 2009 – Paris
Agenda

And now- The Business Analytics Summit

Citation-http://www.businessanalyticsnews.com/usa/speakers.shtml

Here is another conference but focused on Business Analytics ( which is an under hyped term compared to Business Intelligence which some feel is over hyped)

It seems ( jokes apart) Business Analytics is really the Business to be in this season and with the economy picking up steam- more power to the Numerati is all I can say.

One must really say- this conference does have a very long list of speakers ( maybe the most exhaustive I have seen this year) and almost like they went around with an encyclopedia of who’s who. It is also partnered by KD Nuggets and good ol Gregory sure knows how to partner and promote ( I am still a kid at that 😉

Surprisingly No R ,SPSS and No SAS in this one – so what exact software are they going to use in the case studies ( machine learning ( an oxymoron)  or SQL ?

Speaker Job Title Company
Michael Berry Founder & Principal Data-Miners Inc
Richard Boire Partner Boire Filler Group
Chris Bowman Former School Superintendent Schools in the City of Baker School System
John Elder Chief Scientist Elder Research Inc
Usama Fayyad CEO Open Insights
Regina Gray Vice President of Strategic Insight Services, Experian Marketing Analytics Experian
Seth Grimes President Alta Plana
Mitch Hendricks System Analyst ConAgra Foods
Duncan Houldsworth Global Head of Analytics Hall and Partners
Jean-Paul Isson VP Business Intelligence & Predictive Analytics Monster Worldwide
Evan Sandhaus Semantic Technologist New York Times Company
Mark Smith CEO & EVP Research Ventana Research
David Stodder Editorial Director, Writer and Principle Analyst Perceptive Information Strategies
James Taylor CEO Decision Management Solutions
Bill Tuohig Senior Director, Web Intelligence J.D. Power & Associates
Dave Wells Director of Education eLearningCurve
David White Senior Research Analyst Aberdeen Group
Michael Berry
A founder and principal of Data Miners with twenty years of experience applying data mining techniques to business problems in marketing and CRM. With his colleague, Gordon Linoff, Michael has authored three of the most widely read and respected books on data mining, Data Mining Techniques, Mastering Data Mining, and Mining the Web (all published by John Wiley & Sons). These best sellers in the field have been translated into many languages.

A data mining educator as well as a consultant, Michael is in demand as a keynote speaker and seminar leader in the area of data mining generally and the application of data mining to customer relationship management in particular.

Prior to founding Data Miners, Michael spent 8 years at Thinking Machines Corporation. There he specialized in the application of massively parallel supercomputing techniques to business and marketing applications, including one of the largest database marketing systems of the time. He later ran a data mining laboratory for Naviant Technology Solutions.

Recent projects include clustering towns to create localized content editions of a major metropolitan newspaper and modeling anniversary churn for a wireless telephone company.
Richard Boire
Richard Boire’s experience in database marketing and data mining  dates back to 1983, when he received an MBA from Concordia University in Finance and Statistics. Immediately after, he joined Reader’s Digest where he developed segmentation and modeling routines for all direct marketing programs.

Richard’s progressive career path led him to American Express, where he pioneered predictive modelling technology for all direct marketing programs. He was quickly promoted to senior manager, responsible for credit risk and market behaviour segmentation. As a result of this expanded role, he pioneered the development of models which targeted the acquisition of new customers based on return on investment.

With this experience, Richard formed his own consulting company back in 1994 which is now called the Boire Filler Group , a Canadian leader in offering  analytical and database services to companies seeking solutions  to their existing data mining or database marketing challenges.

Richard is a recognized authority on data mining and is among a very few, select top five experts in this field in Canada, with expertise and knowledge that is difficult, if not impossible to replicate in Canada. He gives seminars on segmentation and data mining for such organizations as Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), Direct Marketing News,Direct Marketing Association Toronto and AARM. His articles have appeared in Direct Marketing News, Strategy Magazine, and Marketing Magazine. He has taught applied statistics and database marketing at Concordia University, Vanier College in Montreal, and  Humber College in Toronto and is currently a part-time lecturer at both George Brown College and Seneca College   in Toronto. Richard is currently  Chair at the CMA’s Database and Technology Committee  where he  has chaired  sub-committees  responsible for  both the 2000 Database and Technology Seminar as well as the  2002 Database and Technology Seminar and has currently chaired the first-ever Customer Profitability Conference  which was  held on Nov.17/2005. He has co-authored  white papers on the following topics: ‘Best Practices in Data Mining’ as well as   ‘Profitability:  The State of Evolution among Canadian Companies’
Chris Bowman
Chris Bowman has been in education since 1969 as a teacher, an assistant principal, a principal, and a supervisor of transportation, technology, federal programs, and middle schools.  He is now retired after serving as the superintendent of schools in the City of Baker School System in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.   I have a picture for you if you choose to use it.  Please correct the fact that I am not the retired superintendent of The Lafourche Parish School System.
John Elder
Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC (www.datamininglab.com).  Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on Federal, commercial, investment, and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, stock selection, image recognition, biometrics, process optimization, cross-selling, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.

John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining.  Prior to 14 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice’s Computational & Applied Mathematics department.

Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris.  John’s courses on analysis techniques — taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs — are noted for their clarity and effectiveness.  Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security.  His book on Practical Data Mining, with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, was published in May 2009. John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5.
Regina Gray
Regina Gray is the Vice President of the Strategic Insight Services team for Experian Marketing Services. With proven results and expertise, Regina leads her team in providing consulting and analytical services to help facilitate clients in their efforts to acquire and retain customers, increase profitability and return-on-investment from marketing campaigns, and communicate effectively.  Regina oversees the teams delivering strategy and planning, customer insights and targeting, and campaign management services.  In addition, she supervises all phases of professional services and analytics projects including providing up-front client consultation, assessing business needs, analyzing complex internal and external data, model delivery, and post-campaign assessment of model performance.

As a nationally recognized speaker at industry conferences and events, Regina informs and enlightens her audiences to the realm of possibilities in marketing strategy. Regina  has executed and supervised consulting and analytical projects for clients across all vertical markets, including, retail, catalog, publishing, financial, travel, fundraising, insurance, consumer packaging goods, telecommunications, cable and health care industries.

Graduating with honors from both, Rutgers University, where she earned her Bachelors Degree in Mathematics, and Montclair State University, where she earned her Masters Degree in Statistics, Regina brings a richly diverse analytical and mathematical view as Vice President of Strategic Insight Services.  Her previous experience teaching mathematics and statistics, both at the high school and undergraduate college level, and as a statistical consultant analyzing and reporting survey results for large university-based programs, has enabled Regina to apply innovative strategies and techniques in obtaining her goals and objectives.  Regina’s commitment and vision make her an admirable advocate with valued Experian clients in their pursuit of individual success.
Duncan Houldsworth
Duncan is the leader of brand and communications research Hall & Partner’s Analytics Practice which is a leading in unlocking the analytical promise of brand research. Previously he held leadership positions in analytics at Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Experian and Simmons Market Research. He began his career in the UK working for Experian, working on marketing analytics for financial services and retail customers like Barclays Bank, HSBC and Discover Card.

Experian moved him to the US in 2000, where he led analytical product development and consulting, working with companies like Sears, Best Buy, American Express and Citibank. After a spell leading Simmons Marketing Research efforts to develop new analytical products based on their syndicated research data, Duncan took a senior position at IRI leading their analytical technology practice and delivering solutions built around marketing mix modeling and econometric analysis for the major names in the CPG industry such as Kraft, Campbell’s soup and Sara Lee. A graduate of the University of Warwick, UK, with a masters degree in Marketing Research from Nottingham Business School and an Executive MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Jean-Paul Isson
Jean-Paul Isson heads up the Global Business Intelligence & Predictive Analytics group at Monster Worldwide. His team is responsible for Global Customer Scoring/Segmentation, Predictive Modeling and Sales Support Web mining Applications building. Mr. Isson built the Global Business Intelligence team from ground up .The Global BI team has been a pioneer in delivering innovative solutions to Monster and its customers throughout:The Job Posting Benchmarking tool (Optimizer tool) and the Global BI Score segmentation that are now used worldwide to prioritize sales and CRM activities across Monster. JP Isson has more than 16 years in data mining focusing on customer behavior modeling and segmentation. Prior to joining Monster more than 4 years ago, Mr. Isson was Leading the Global Customer Behavior Modeling team at Rogers Wireless (# 1 Canadian Telco Company) where he worked for over 5 years in developing and implementing actionable Customer Life Time Value Models, Churn Predictive Models, Acquisition & Propensity to buy models, Market segmentation, and marketing research solutions for Price plan optimization.Mr. Isson started his professional career as a Statistician at Credit scoring department team at Credit Lyonnais Paris; A France leading Bank Company. When moved to Canada 11 years ago Mr. Isson worked as principal statistician at Universite du Quebec at Hull. Where he worked conjointly with several Professors for various publications including Youth Smoking Behavior Study utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen Fishbein).

Mr. Isson has a Master Degree in Mathematics and Applied statistics from Universite Pierre & Marie Curie Paris 6 France. He has several articles related to his successful implementation of Business Intelligence And Predictive Analytics solutions; (1to1 media, ItWorld Canada, SAS Magazine, CRM Magazine Scott directories, Direction informatique, It Business Canada): He gave several interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index.

He has been speaker for SAS users groups and at IDC events like the most recent 2009 CIO of the year event in Denmark. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association.
Bill Tuohig
Bill Tuohig draws on nearly a decade of market research experience in his role as senior director of product management for J.D. Power and Associates’ Web Intelligence division. His expertise involves mining marketing intelligence from social media, which, in turn, is used by Fortune 1000 companies to drive their marketing programs and product innovation. Bill serves as the bridge between the business and technology sides of the business, contributing to both long-term product strategy and near-term development roadmaps, and providing guidance to the development and packaging of the company’s technological advances in machine learning and natural language processing.

Bill formerly served as the vice president of product management for Umbria, a company that was acquired by J.D. Power and Associates in 2008. Prior to Umbria, he oversaw voice-of-the-customer (VoC) solutions for Informative Inc., helping customers such as Bose, Sprint and Mars with product development, marketing and branding initiatives. Bill also spent several years consulting for prominent firms such as Deloitte Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand and Sapient.

Bill received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a bachelor’s of science degree in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. He is the co-author of a patent on “Tribe or Group-Based Analysis of Social Media Including Generating Intelligence from a Tribe’s Weblogs or Blogs.”
Dave Wells
Dave Wells is a consultant, mentor, teacher, and author in the field of Business Intelligence (BI). He brings to every endeavor a unique and balanced perspective about the relationships of business and technology. This perspective – refined through a career of more than thirty-five years that encompassed both business and technical roles – helps to align business and information technology in the most effective ways. Dave focuses on strategic, functional, and organizational alignment as the keys to building and sustaining valuable and high-impact BI cultures and systems.

Dave writes a regular column at B-Eye-Network (b-eye-network.com/wells) and is a contributor to other trade publications. He is a co-author of the book BI Strategy: How to Create and Document. Dave is a frequent speaker at industry events ranging from international conferences to local group meetings such as DAMA and CIPS.  His consulting practice focuses on areas such as BI program management, BI program assessment and revitalization, BI architecture, and applied business analytics
Speaker Job Title Company
Michael Berry Founder & Principal Data-Miners Inc
Richard Boire Partner Boire Filler Group
Chris Bowman Former School Superintendent Schools in the City of Baker School System
John Elder Chief Scientist Elder Research Inc
Usama Fayyad CEO Open Insights
Regina Gray Vice President of Strategic Insight Services, Experian Marketing Analytics Experian
Seth Grimes President Alta Plana
Mitch Hendricks System Analyst ConAgra Foods
Duncan Houldsworth Global Head of Analytics Hall and Partners
Jean-Paul Isson VP Business Intelligence & Predictive Analytics Monster Worldwide
Evan Sandhaus Semantic Technologist New York Times Company
Mark Smith CEO & EVP Research Ventana Research
David Stodder Editorial Director, Writer and Principle Analyst Perceptive Information Strategies
James Taylor CEO Decision Management Solutions
Bill Tuohig Senior Director, Web Intelligence J.D. Power & Associates
Dave Wells Director of Education eLearningCurve
David White Senior Research Analyst Aberdeen Group
Michael Berry
A founder and principal of Data Miners with twenty years of experience applying data mining techniques to business problems in marketing and CRM. With his colleague, Gordon Linoff, Michael has authored three of the most widely read and respected books on data mining, Data Mining Techniques, Mastering Data Mining, and Mining the Web (all published by John Wiley & Sons). These best sellers in the field have been translated into many languages.

A data mining educator as well as a consultant, Michael is in demand as a keynote speaker and seminar leader in the area of data mining generally and the application of data mining to customer relationship management in particular.

Prior to founding Data Miners, Michael spent 8 years at Thinking Machines Corporation. There he specialized in the application of massively parallel supercomputing techniques to business and marketing applications, including one of the largest database marketing systems of the time. He later ran a data mining laboratory for Naviant Technology Solutions.

Recent projects include clustering towns to create localized content editions of a major metropolitan newspaper and modeling anniversary churn for a wireless telephone company.
Richard Boire
Richard Boire’s experience in database marketing and data mining  dates back to 1983, when he received an MBA from Concordia University in Finance and Statistics. Immediately after, he joined Reader’s Digest where he developed segmentation and modeling routines for all direct marketing programs.

Richard’s progressive career path led him to American Express, where he pioneered predictive modelling technology for all direct marketing programs. He was quickly promoted to senior manager, responsible for credit risk and market behaviour segmentation. As a result of this expanded role, he pioneered the development of models which targeted the acquisition of new customers based on return on investment.

With this experience, Richard formed his own consulting company back in 1994 which is now called the Boire Filler Group , a Canadian leader in offering  analytical and database services to companies seeking solutions  to their existing data mining or database marketing challenges.

Richard is a recognized authority on data mining and is among a very few, select top five experts in this field in Canada, with expertise and knowledge that is difficult, if not impossible to replicate in Canada. He gives seminars on segmentation and data mining for such organizations as Canadian Marketing Association (CMA), Direct Marketing News,Direct Marketing Association Toronto and AARM. His articles have appeared in Direct Marketing News, Strategy Magazine, and Marketing Magazine. He has taught applied statistics and database marketing at Concordia University, Vanier College in Montreal, and  Humber College in Toronto and is currently a part-time lecturer at both George Brown College and Seneca College   in Toronto. Richard is currently  Chair at the CMA’s Database and Technology Committee  where he  has chaired  sub-committees  responsible for  both the 2000 Database and Technology Seminar as well as the  2002 Database and Technology Seminar and has currently chaired the first-ever Customer Profitability Conference  which was  held on Nov.17/2005. He has co-authored  white papers on the following topics: ‘Best Practices in Data Mining’ as well as   ‘Profitability:  The State of Evolution among Canadian Companies’
Chris Bowman
Chris Bowman has been in education since 1969 as a teacher, an assistant principal, a principal, and a supervisor of transportation, technology, federal programs, and middle schools.  He is now retired after serving as the superintendent of schools in the City of Baker School System in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.   I have a picture for you if you choose to use it.  Please correct the fact that I am not the retired superintendent of The Lafourche Parish School System.
John Elder
Dr. John Elder heads a data mining consulting team with offices in Charlottesville, Virginia and Washington DC (www.datamininglab.com).  Founded in 1995, Elder Research, Inc. focuses on Federal, commercial, investment, and security applications of advanced analytics, including text mining, stock selection, image recognition, biometrics, process optimization, cross-selling, drug efficacy, credit scoring, market timing, and fraud detection.

John obtained a BS and MEE in Electrical Engineering from Rice University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from the University of Virginia, where he’s an adjunct professor teaching Optimization or Data Mining.  Prior to 14 years at ERI, he spent 5 years in aerospace defense consulting, 4 heading research at an investment management firm, and 2 in Rice’s Computational & Applied Mathematics department.

Dr. Elder has authored innovative data mining tools, is a frequent keynote speaker, and was co-chair of the 2009 Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining conference, in Paris.  John’s courses on analysis techniques — taught at dozens of universities, companies, and government labs — are noted for their clarity and effectiveness.  Dr. Elder was honored to serve for 5 years on a panel appointed by the President to guide technology for National Security.  His book on Practical Data Mining, with Bob Nisbet and Gary Miner, was published in May 2009. John is a follower of Christ and the proud father of 5.
Regina Gray
Regina Gray is the Vice President of the Strategic Insight Services team for Experian Marketing Services. With proven results and expertise, Regina leads her team in providing consulting and analytical services to help facilitate clients in their efforts to acquire and retain customers, increase profitability and return-on-investment from marketing campaigns, and communicate effectively.  Regina oversees the teams delivering strategy and planning, customer insights and targeting, and campaign management services.  In addition, she supervises all phases of professional services and analytics projects including providing up-front client consultation, assessing business needs, analyzing complex internal and external data, model delivery, and post-campaign assessment of model performance.

As a nationally recognized speaker at industry conferences and events, Regina informs and enlightens her audiences to the realm of possibilities in marketing strategy. Regina  has executed and supervised consulting and analytical projects for clients across all vertical markets, including, retail, catalog, publishing, financial, travel, fundraising, insurance, consumer packaging goods, telecommunications, cable and health care industries.

Graduating with honors from both, Rutgers University, where she earned her Bachelors Degree in Mathematics, and Montclair State University, where she earned her Masters Degree in Statistics, Regina brings a richly diverse analytical and mathematical view as Vice President of Strategic Insight Services.  Her previous experience teaching mathematics and statistics, both at the high school and undergraduate college level, and as a statistical consultant analyzing and reporting survey results for large university-based programs, has enabled Regina to apply innovative strategies and techniques in obtaining her goals and objectives.  Regina’s commitment and vision make her an admirable advocate with valued Experian clients in their pursuit of individual success.
Duncan Houldsworth
Duncan is the leader of brand and communications research Hall & Partner’s Analytics Practice which is a leading in unlocking the analytical promise of brand research. Previously he held leadership positions in analytics at Information Resources, Inc. (IRI), Experian and Simmons Market Research. He began his career in the UK working for Experian, working on marketing analytics for financial services and retail customers like Barclays Bank, HSBC and Discover Card.

Experian moved him to the US in 2000, where he led analytical product development and consulting, working with companies like Sears, Best Buy, American Express and Citibank. After a spell leading Simmons Marketing Research efforts to develop new analytical products based on their syndicated research data, Duncan took a senior position at IRI leading their analytical technology practice and delivering solutions built around marketing mix modeling and econometric analysis for the major names in the CPG industry such as Kraft, Campbell’s soup and Sara Lee. A graduate of the University of Warwick, UK, with a masters degree in Marketing Research from Nottingham Business School and an Executive MBA from The Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.
Jean-Paul Isson
Jean-Paul Isson heads up the Global Business Intelligence & Predictive Analytics group at Monster Worldwide. His team is responsible for Global Customer Scoring/Segmentation, Predictive Modeling and Sales Support Web mining Applications building. Mr. Isson built the Global Business Intelligence team from ground up .The Global BI team has been a pioneer in delivering innovative solutions to Monster and its customers throughout:The Job Posting Benchmarking tool (Optimizer tool) and the Global BI Score segmentation that are now used worldwide to prioritize sales and CRM activities across Monster. JP Isson has more than 16 years in data mining focusing on customer behavior modeling and segmentation. Prior to joining Monster more than 4 years ago, Mr. Isson was Leading the Global Customer Behavior Modeling team at Rogers Wireless (# 1 Canadian Telco Company) where he worked for over 5 years in developing and implementing actionable Customer Life Time Value Models, Churn Predictive Models, Acquisition & Propensity to buy models, Market segmentation, and marketing research solutions for Price plan optimization.Mr. Isson started his professional career as a Statistician at Credit scoring department team at Credit Lyonnais Paris; A France leading Bank Company. When moved to Canada 11 years ago Mr. Isson worked as principal statistician at Universite du Quebec at Hull. Where he worked conjointly with several Professors for various publications including Youth Smoking Behavior Study utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior (Ajzen Fishbein).

Mr. Isson has a Master Degree in Mathematics and Applied statistics from Universite Pierre & Marie Curie Paris 6 France. He has several articles related to his successful implementation of Business Intelligence And Predictive Analytics solutions; (1to1 media, ItWorld Canada, SAS Magazine, CRM Magazine Scott directories, Direction informatique, It Business Canada): He gave several interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index.

He has been speaker for SAS users groups and at IDC events like the most recent 2009 CIO of the year event in Denmark. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association interviews on Canadian local business news magazines and TV to cover Business Intelligence and Monster Employment Index. He is member of conference board of Canada, and Canadian Statisticians Association.
Bill Tuohig
Bill Tuohig draws on nearly a decade of market research experience in his role as senior director of product management for J.D. Power and Associates’ Web Intelligence division. His expertise involves mining marketing intelligence from social media, which, in turn, is used by Fortune 1000 companies to drive their marketing programs and product innovation. Bill serves as the bridge between the business and technology sides of the business, contributing to both long-term product strategy and near-term development roadmaps, and providing guidance to the development and packaging of the company’s technological advances in machine learning and natural language processing.

Bill formerly served as the vice president of product management for Umbria, a company that was acquired by J.D. Power and Associates in 2008. Prior to Umbria, he oversaw voice-of-the-customer (VoC) solutions for Informative Inc., helping customers such as Bose, Sprint and Mars with product development, marketing and branding initiatives. Bill also spent several years consulting for prominent firms such as Deloitte Consulting, Coopers & Lybrand and Sapient.

Bill received an MBA from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a bachelor’s of science degree in systems engineering from the University of Virginia. He is the co-author of a patent on “Tribe or Group-Based Analysis of Social Media Including Generating Intelligence from a Tribe’s Weblogs or Blogs.”
Dave Wells
Dave Wells is a consultant, mentor, teacher, and author in the field of Business Intelligence (BI). He brings to every endeavor a unique and balanced perspective about the relationships of business and technology. This perspective – refined through a career of more than thirty-five years that encompassed both business and technical roles – helps to align business and information technology in the most effective ways. Dave focuses on strategic, functional, and organizational alignment as the keys to building and sustaining valuable and high-impact BI cultures and systems.

Dave writes a regular column at B-Eye-Network (b-eye-network.com/wells) and is a contributor to other trade publications. He is a co-author of the book BI Strategy: How to Create and Document. Dave is a frequent speaker at industry events ranging from international conferences to local group meetings such as DAMA and CIPS.  His consulting practice focuses on areas such as BI program management, BI program assessment and revitalization, BI architecture, and applied business analytics