The call for speakers for the new PASS Business Analytics Conference (to be held April 10-12 next year in Chicago) is now live here:
http://passbaconference.com/Speakers/CallForSpeakers.aspx
Since I think this conference is a Very Good Thing, and because I’ve been asked to help shape the agenda in an advisory capacity, I thought I’d do a little bit of promotion for it here.
The important thing I’d like to point out is that this is not just a SQL Server BI conference: it covers the whole SQL Server BI stack, certainly, but really it aims to cover any Microsoft technology that can be used for any kind of business analytics. Which other technologies actually get covered depends a lot of who submits sessions but there are no end of possibilities if you think about it. I’d love to see sessions on topics such as F#, Cloud Numerics, Sharepoint, NodeXL, GeoFlow and especially non-BI Excel topics such as array formulas, Solver and techniques like Monte Carlo simulation, for example.
This brings me to the point of this post. Obviously I’d like all the SQL Server BI Pros out there who read my blog to consider submitting a session (or if you can’t travel to Chicago, the call for speakers for SQLBits is open too) and to attend. However what I’d really like is if the SQL Server BI community could reach out to the wider Microsoft Business Analytics community to encourage them to submit sessions and to attend too. This is where your help is needed! Who do you think should be speaking at the PASS BA Conference? Do you know experts outside the realms of SQL Server BI who you could persuade to come? What topics do you think should be covered? If you’ve got any ideas or feedback, please leave a comment…
I know a whole load of Excel junkies from my wicked past as a spreadsheet junkie. I’ll tap that lot up for starters.
Hi Chris, excellent post. I think integreting powerful programming language like R with Microsoft is one of the must talk about topic in this conf. I’ve been using MSBI stack since SQL 2k, and everybody is fixated and compounced with excel addins like nodexl. I know its reasonable because its the most used widely adopted Business Tool and its MS product. But someone who ‘s like (me) – Developer + power user , will find R much more fascinating and way too powerful in terms of Data discovery , creating models and in story telling. All the packages are created by professional data scientists and supported by powefull R open source communtiy. And you’ll find it way simpler and powerful to create simulations like Monte Carlo in R w/o any third party addins. And MS Data Mining (AS platform never ever even matured. You can measure the adoption rate by going to the Microsoft AS DM forum.
And, I still cannot comprehend why MS cannot create tools Like SAS, SPSS, minitab etc. Or at least support extension for OS like R. When will we find a great DM tool from MS?
Pawan : We are a team in Microsoft SQL/BI that are interested in taking DM forward.
Can you contact me at danyh@microsoft.com to discuss the scenario
Sorry there were few typos in my earlier post.