Schedule

Schedule subject to change.

Session Descriptions

Building the Big Data Ecosystem
A panel discussion of venture capitalists with an interest in Big Data solutions, followed by a panel of some of the field’s hottest new startups.

Predicting the Present with Google Trends
Hal Varian, Michael Chui
It is now possible to acquire real time information on economic variables using various commercial sources. Hal Varian will illustrate how one can use Google Trends data to measure the state of the economy in various sectors, and discuss some of the implications for research and policy with Michael Chui of the McKinsey Global Institute.

Chaos Control: the Art of Using Data to Manage in Today’s Chaotic World
DJ Patil
In today's chaotic world, data is the key advantage. What does it really take to be able to use data effectively and who are the new types of people that can make it happen? We'll walk through the new art of data science and how it’s become one of the most in demand roles for every company.

Scaling Smart: Understanding Data Skill Needs for Any Organization
Amr Awadallah, DJ Patil, Sharmila Shahani-Mulligan
Just as technologies, processes, and people have to scale with a company’s growth, what are the changes that are required as a data science team scales? This panel of experts will discuss, what works, what doesn't and what to watch for as a company scales its data science teams.

Data as a Service: The Next Big Layer in the Cloud?
Gil Elbaz
Today, the internet is human-centric, designed for searching, browsing, and consumption by people. Tomorrow's internet will be dominated by machines — searching, navigating, consuming, then integrating data into ever more powerful applications. This will require new technologies, standards, and organizing principles. We anticipate that a thriving data layer will emerge which will enable a drastically simpler model of application development — access to clean, structured data, at big data scale, at millisecond speed.

Big Data? Bigger Decisions!
Steve Weber, Andy Brooks
Big data offers ways to better understand a complex world, but the most important contribution will be to help improve decision making. And here lies a practical challenge. When it's time to make the really big, strategic decisions that determine the future of an organization, today's leaders often rely on analogical reasoning and storytelling for guidance. Big data analytics proposes doing away with such “imprecise” methods in favor of "facts" and discipline. The stage is set for a decision making culture clash. Can these methods and mindsets get along? We believe that for high stakes strategic decisions analogical reasoning and big data can and should be used together, and propose a framework for doing so in a constructive way that uses the strengths of each in concert.

The Art of Social Data
Andreas Weigend
Based on his work with the CEOs of Amazon, Lufthansa, MasterCard, Thomson Reuters, and the World Economic Forum, Andreas will share his insights on the social data revolution — how context, connection, and conversation have joined content, community, and conversion in commerce.

What Data Scientists Can Learn From Data Artists
Martin Wattenberg
Big Data has become essential to science and business. What is less well-known is that it has also entered the realms of art and the humanities. Martin will discuss some of these artistic applications, and how they hold clues to solving tough, practical design problems.

Size Matters: Big Data, New Vistas in the Humanities and Social Sciences
Mark Liberman, Geoffrey Nunberg, Matthew Salganik
Vast archives of digital text, speech, and video, along with new analysis technology and inexpensive computation, are the modern equivalent of the 17th-century invention of the telescope and microscope. We can now observe social and linguistic patterns in space, time, and cultural context, on a scale many orders of magnitude greater than in the recent past, and in much greater detail than before. This transforms not just the study of speech, language, and communication but fields ranging from sociology and empirical economics to education, history, and medicine — with major implications for both scholarship and technology development.

Privacy Challenges for Big Data
danah boyd
The ability to do massive data crunching with big data is both exciting and terrifying. On one hand, there is tremendous opportunity to provide people with powerful insights that can be truly beneficial. On the other, there are grave concerns about privacy and surveillance. In this talk, danah will examine some of the key challenges for managing privacy in an era of big data.