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Boston Data Festival 2014 Kickoff Event @ Thomson Reuters
November 3, 2014 @ 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm
$25,00
Special Note: Please bring photo identification for registration at Thomson Reuters.
Overview
The Boston Data Festival will get off to a festive start with an evening of networking and talks. We will be providing food and drinks at our registration and networking session where you can mingle and network with fellow festival speakers, data scientist, data enthusiasts, startups and many others with an interest in data. We are delighted to have two very distinguished speakers; Andy Palmer and Owen Zhang (bio and talk details below) join us as our evening speakers. We will then wrap up with a final networking stretch. We will be hosted at the wonderful Thomson Reuters event venue. Space is limited at this venue so be sure to book early. Looking forward to seeing you there!
Agenda
| 6:00 – 7:00pm | Registration and Networking Cocktails/Appetizers |
| 7:00 – 7:15 pm | Introducing the Boston Data Festival Sheamus McGovern |
| 7:15 – 7:45 pm | Using Data and Analytics to Make Elephants Dance Andy Palmer |
| 7:45 – 8:30 pm | Winning Data Science Competitions Owen Zhang | DataRobot |
| 8:30 – 9:00 PM | Networking Stretch |
TALK BIOs and ABSTRACTS
Using Data and Analytics to Make Elephants Dance
Andy Palmer – Most recently, Andy co-founded Tamr with renowned database researcher Mike Stonebraker, PhD. He also founded Koa Labs, a start-up club in Harvard Square, Cambridge, Mass. Previously, Palmer was co-founder and CEO of Big Data analytics pioneer Vertica Systems (acquired by HP).
Big Data 2.0 and Analytics 3.0 create an unprecedented opportunity for large companies to become as nimble and innovative as smaller companies by democratizing analytics and decision-making. However, success requires building an information culture, with an emphasis on bottom-up information-seeking and sharing – plus giving people the power to act on the information to make faster and better decisions. Learn why transforming information culture is never easy – but necessary for those companies that want to facilitate the development of a data-driven enterprise.
Winning Data Science Competitions
Owen Zhang – Chief Product Officer at DataRobot | Ranked #1 on the Kaggle leaderboard out of a community of 200,000 data scientists.
Owen Zhang is the Chief Product Officer at DataRobot. Owen spent most of his career in the Property & Casualty insurance industry. Most recently Owen served as Vice President of Modeling in the newly formed AIG Science team. After spending several years in IT building transactional systems for commercial insurance, Owen discovered his passion in Machine Learning and started building insurance underwriting, pricing, and claims models. Owen has a Masters degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Toronto and a Bachelors degree from University of Science and Technology of China.
Owen Zhang is no stranger to data science competitions. He has competed in and won several high profiles challenges, and is currently ranked 1st out of a community of 200,000 data scientists on Kaggle. This is an opportunity to learn the tips, tricks and techniques Owen employs in building world-class predictive analytic solutions.
