Open Source Webinar with AsterData

Learn how to make money from open source databases, some business intelligence and more business analytics in this webinare at here.

FCC Disclaimer ( even though it is one day before the rules for Bloggers come in effect)-

AsterData is an advertiser on this blog. See the ad on right.

MapReduce was released by Google in 2004 as how to do big data crunching faster.

Google is not an advertiser nor partner on this site. They are busy with mobile phones and advertising (like the TV series Mad Men.)

And yes, Sergey Brin needs to finish his  Phd too.

PAWS goes to SF

Conference :Message on Linkedin groupof Decisionstats

 

[tweetmeme source=”decisionstats”]

Predictive Analytics World, Feb 16-17 in San Francisco

The agenda for Predictive Analytics World – Feb. 16-17 2010 in San Francisco – has been posted: http://www.pawcon.com/sanfrancisco/2010/agenda_overview.php

February’s PAW covers hot topics and advanced methods such as social data, uplift modeling (net lift), text mining, massively parallel analytics, in-cloud deployment, and innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways.

Be sure to register by December 18 for the Super Early Bird to save $400 off the Regular Price:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/register.php

And take an additional $50 off the Super Early Bird with discount code: LIN150

Below is some more info – let me know if you have any questions.

-Eric Siegel, Conference Chair

———–

PAW-2010 includes 25 sessions across two tracks, so you can witness how predictive analytics is applied at 1-800-FLOWERS, Amazon.com, AT&T, BBC, Canadian Automobile Association, Charles Schwab, Continental Airlines, Deutsche Postbank, Google, Group RCI, IBM, PASSUR Aerospace, PayPal (eBay), Sun Microsystems, U.S. Army, Visa, Walmart Financial Services, and Younoodle, plus special examples from the U.S. government agencies CBP, NCMI, NGIC, NSA, and SSA.

Keynote speakers include Kim Larsen, Director Advanced Analytics at Charles Schwab, Andreas S. Weigend, Ph.D., Former Chief Scientist at Amazon.com, and Program Chair Eric Siegel, Ph.D., President of Prediction Impact and former Columbia University professor.

Predictive Analytics World is the business-focused event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today’s commercial deployment of predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors.

For more information, including three pre- and post-event workshops:
http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com

Oracle Open World and Techie Events

An innovate way to showcase collateral thanks to Oracle Open World.

The Post Event has an easily searchable archive with downloadable files and partner collateral.

See this-

http://myexpospace.com/oracle2009/vcr2009/vcr.cfm?search=advance

untitled

An even better site is their streaming site post event-( which is better than an HTML website —isnt it)

http://ondemandpreview.vportal.net/

oracle

However the website-http://myexpospace.com/ which has enabled Oracle to do this Post Event Content Management seems to be in a closed beta (as they update their websites)

Post event content management helps in getting out the word to people who were unable to see it, and the analytics from site visitor behavior can help you gauge viewer interest. I personally also like the concept of Virtual Conferences  as well – as they can be done much more frequently than they are currently are-

Like the Cloud Slam event I was invited to speak earlier ( and missed because of time zone differences !)

https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2009/04/10/cloud-nine/

and https://decisionstats.wordpress.com/2009/03/12/here-comes-the-cloud-slam/

SPSS Directions

spss

SPSS is bringing Directions – its conference in Las Vegas. I am probably skipping this one due to my illness post travel- but it sure seems interesting for potential SPSS watchers as well as competitors in what direction will the IBM- SPSS combine move. Interesting co-sponsor SAP which until recently had been warming up to TeraData (and through it)  SAS Institute.

It would be interesting to see if they combine some of the IBM Cognos reporting software with some in future prediction intervals thanks to SPSS analytics.

Like Sales Jan- Mar 2009  Apr-Jun 2009 Jul-Aug 2009 Sep -Dec 2009 ( expected)

Also of interest- how would SPSS react to cloud computing paradigms, software as a service licensing , existing R – Python support and potential cross sell opportunities to existing customer base for IBM.

 

 

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

Losing a Million Bucks: Netflix Prize Interview

I ( and collective pseudo geeks) across the world lost a potential million dollars when the following team won the Netflix prize. In disgust, I just renewed my Netflix subscription and noticed a 10% increase in the way I liked them.

Jokes apart, here is an except ( perhaps one of the few ever) of an interview of the Netflix winners done by the great Eric Siegel, Phd.

Eric is conference chair of the Predictive Analytics Conference ( a King Arthur’s round table conference on all the shining knights of the data analytic’s world)

Citation-http://www.predictiveanalyticsworld.com/layman-netflix-leader.php

[ES] With no relevant background in statistics — let alone product recommendations specifically — what capabilities or background did make your success possible? Do you consider yourselves mathematicians, or at least strong with math?

[MC] I am certainly not a mathematician – I have engineering level skill. I consider Martin Piotte to have an exceptional mathematical mind (he participated successfully in international math contests when he was a student) even though he never formally studied in that field. In the end, the mathematics used in this contest seem very complex, but are really rather simple. Compared to what most people think, this was more of an engineering contest than a mathematical contest [See Martin’s response below for elaboration on this central point. -Ed]. Also, I think that having a perhaps less in-depth but wider array of skills and knowledge helped us.

[ES] You’ve said, when first getting started, you learned many core strategies/techniques from the Netflix Prize discussion board. Did you do much reading or research elsewhere to ramp up?

[MC] Having started late in the competition, the forum was a good starting point as many avenues had already been explored and links had been posted to many interesting papers. In the end though, reading and getting a good understanding of the actual research papers was a very important step. The forum was also a place where people proposed new (sometimes far fetched) ideas; these ideas often inspired us to come up with our own creative innovations.

PAWS is a great place to meet, greet and do business and though it is 5 hours away I have too much homework to do and grade while at University of Tennessee ( for now)-

Here is a very interesting poll that they are carrying it is good to see conferences take feedback in such a transparent manner-

paws poll

The Return of PAWS

Bigger Wins, Broader Capabilities at Predictive Analytics World

PAW’s October 20-21 program includes 25 sessions divulging how more than 20 brand name companies across a dozen industry verticals apply predictive analytics to over 10 business uses by employing the hottest advanced analytical methods. See the entire conference agenda at a glance, or check out an agenda overview.

Workshop Benefits

Sign up for one of PAW’s leading-edge Workshops and receive these great benefits:

  • PAW’s hands-on workshop, lead by Dean Abbott, has chosen its tool: SAS Enterprise Miner. So attend Hands-On Predictive Analytics for direct experience applying the industry best practices process, and ramp up on this leading, industry-leading tool to boot.
  • A free copy of Dr. John Elder’s just released Handbook of Statistical Analysis and Data Mining Applications book is yours if you attend John’s Predictive Modeling Methods and Common Data Mining Mistakes workshop.
  • A free copy of James Taylor’s book Smart Enough Systems: How to Deliver Competitive Advantage by Automating Hidden Decisions is yours if you attend James’s Putting Predictive Analytics to Work workshop.

Don’t miss the free BetterManagement webinar Sept 23, featuring conference chair Eric Siegel, on Driving Decisions with Predictive Analytics: The Top Business Applications.

Register Now

For inquiries, call (866) 223-2579 or e-mail registration@predictiveanalyticsworld.com.

Sign up for the PAW group on LinkedIn.

Predictive Analytics World
October 20-21 – Washington DC
Location |   Contact Us

Disclaimer- As a student and also I am a blog partner to PAWS and get access to interviews, books, discounts but not financial renumeration for these.