John
I had the opportunity to attend the Great Lakes Business Intelligence and Big Data Summit this past week. There were a good amount of attendees from my understanding. It also happened to be the summit with the most vendors. I saw representatives from MongoDB, DataRobot, Qlik, Alteryx, and even Wayne State University. It was quite a spectacle to see the amount of talent that was siloed in a small hallway of a hotel.
The event opened up with a keynote speaker Christopher Surdak, president of Surdak & Co. After that, there were options to do workshops (hands-on), watch vendor demos, or listen to speeches on case studies. Then it finished up with another keynote speaker Albert Cairo, Director of Visualization Program of University of Miami. In between the speakers, I attended the Alteryx workshop, a case study about the City of Lansing, and another case study of a company called BorgWarner. Here’s my review of them:
Christopher Surdak – Digital Transformation: What It Is, What It Isn’t, and Why It’s Imperative
This keynote speech by Christopher was packed with information. I honestly forgot bits and pieces of it because of how much was in his presentation. From what I can remember, he basically went over how we transition from one era to another, based on how we define power. For example, back in the caveman era, knowledge was considered power. Knowing where water or food sources were key. Now, data is what we consider power because it can be sold for capital (money). Chris then goes into why based on this idea, how companies utilize analytics and business intelligence with data to increase their cash flows. To give an example of how lucrative data can be, FAANG (Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix, Google) as a whole will be worth more than Germany’s GDP next year – or something like that, like I said, it was a bunch of information, look it up. Chris then wraps everything up on how disruption helps companies stay successful because they are “Jerks”. Jerks is used in this connotation as a rocket science equation that is also used to determine disruption of companies, and it also serves as the title of his book. Whew..I hope I got some of that right. Basically, great speech.null
Alteryx Hands-On Workshop
This workshop was a basic level on how Alteryx can be used to merge sources, data cleanse, filter, report, and export to other systems via GUI tools – mostly because there are options to use some code if you want.
Pros of Workshop: It showed how Alteryx is a really cool and simple tool that the business end or architects can use to analyze data and create workflows. It’s pretty damn simple in my opinion and can serve it’s purposes in the right hands and departments.
Cons of Workshop: It was really basic. I stopped halfway because I previously went through tutorials I Googled. It also became hard to focus on what the speaker was saying/doing because the helpers in the room were constantly moving and helping others to get things installed or if others fell behind.
Collin Boyce – City of Lansing – Using Data to Drive a Data Driven City
Collin is currently the CIO of the City of Lansing. This case study was how they utilized data coming in from different systems such as Fire and EMS to develop dashboards to help become more efficient as a city. One of the examples showed the correlation of the number of emergency calls and marijuana dispensaries. Over time, the maps displayed that more calls were coming from areas where these dispensaries were located, but the caveat was that it had to be a heavily populated area. Based on that, the city shifted where their fire houses were located.
Pros on Case Study: I was born and raised in Lansing, so I’m bias. It was damn awesome to see how data was being used across the city. It showed how simple it can be to use data and technologies to quickly generate HIPPA (and other types) compliant data for various users.
Cons of Case Study: Again, I’m bias, I personally do not see a huge impact of all the data being used by the city, so I was kind of like “ehhh..”. I wish there was a deeper explanation of how they got to their “Step 1”.
Monica Kedzierski – BorgWarner – Capturing the Value from the Data & Analytics
Monica basically went over how they utilized data analytics to improve processes of BorgWarner warehouses by millions of dollars that span in three different countries. I can’t lie, it was nearing the end of the day, it was hot in the room, the popcorn bags they decided to use were SO loud and disturbing, and the microphone was not very loud.
Pros on Case Study: It was really cool to see someone outside of the United States explaining the issues they had and how they handled it using data. This was kind of an eye-opener that if they can do that across different countries, we should be able to do it as a single company or business.
Cons of Case Study: Again, it was a very high-level explanation of what happened. As a developer, this information can’t be used until we get to “Step 1”.
Alberto Cairo – How Charts Lie – Getting Smarter about Visual Information
This keynote speech was also packed with information. It was well worth it in my opinion because I’m one of those that enjoy disproving others on why their graphs or charts are incorrect or should be changed. Alberto goes over how graphs should be used correctly, different elements that can be used, and how important it is to make sure we are explaining things correctly. One of the main graphs he explains is how incredibly often everyone misinterprets those hurricane path maps. While explaining it, he simultaneously goes over his rules for giving visual information – which I unfortunately forgot.
Overall, I thought the GLBI event was beneficial and I was able to pick parts from every session or workshop that I went to. Like I keep saying, the only thing I wish I could’ve been exposed to were low-level explanations on what they did to get to their “Step 1”. That seems to be the information that I cannot find anywhere during these types of events. Regardless, pretty cool event. I definitely have nothing against the vendors or speakers, they did a great job at what they came here to do.
