One of the queries I frequently get on my blog is:
Which events / conferences are happening in India and are they worth attending?
So, I thought I will collate the resources about these articles and give my opinion about them.
I have collated the events happening in India and pointed to places which already have a collated list of events outside India (with my recommendations).
Disclaimer: Before we go any further, I have to admit, I am not a big fan of events and conferences! I go to these events only if I am convinced that they are sure to add value. Also, I do not have any first hand experience of events outside India. I am giving the recommendation basis what I have read on the Internet and assimilated during my regular reading.
[stextbox id = “section”]Analytics events in India:[/stextbox]
1. Gartner Business Intelligence & Information Management Summit, June 9 – 10, Mumbai – A must attend event for all BI leaders. Expect who’s who of the BI industry in this event. The sessions are divided into 3 tracks and workshops. The topics vary from the assessment of your BI strategy to the integration of Hadoop in your BI landscape. Also, there will be opportunities to ask questions specific to your problems, which is a big plus.
You can see the latest agenda here. I would recommend this every to BI leader who has the resources to attend this (it is a bit expensive, but worth every rupee).
2. NASSCOM Big Data and Analytics Summit, June 27, Hyderabad – The agenda looks to have a mix of entire analytics spectrum. Probably aimed to have mid-management / Senior management in the participants. The speakers also come from diverse background. If you want to attend this event, the early bird discount ends today (5th May 2014). Register and save on cost, if you are keen to attend this.
3. PyCon 2014, 26 – 28 September, Bangalore – I had mentioned this event while recommending tutorials from PyCon 2014, USA. The event would not be as big as the one in the US, but would still be a good opportunity to meet the Python community. Also, session details are not available currently, so it is difficult to comment how many sessions would be there on data analysis.
4. The fifth elephant, 23 – 26 July, Bangalore – OK, this is not an analytics event strictly! But, this would probably leave you with more knowledge / leads about Big data and Big data analytics, compared to any other events mentioned above. A word of caution – Go to this event, only if you want to get into details of big data and can cope up with IT jargon and technical details.
[stextbox id = “section”]Analytics events outside India:[/stextbox]
As mentioned, there are a few websites listing these events already. I usually refer KDNuggets list of meetings. The list differentiates business oriented and research oriented events and lists most of the events across the world.
Which are the events I would recommend? Here is the list:
1. Chief Data Officer Summit, May 22 – 23, San Francisco – One of the various events from Innovation enterprise.
2. Dataedge, May 8 – 9, UC Berkeley School of Information – for meeting the mathematicians, computer scientists and data scientists
3. Predictive Analytics World – Various chapters across the globe. PAW, founded by Eric Siegel, hosts one of the most recognized event in the industry. One not to miss
4. Gigaom Structure 2014, June 18 – 19, San Francisco – For looking at what Thought leaders across the globe are doing.
5 2014 INFORMS Conference on the business of big data, June 22 – 24, San Jose – Another event hosted by veterans
6. Discovery Summit, JMP, Sept 15 – 19, North Carolina – How could a SAS summit not be in this list?
Each of these conferences has an impressive list of speakers and should leave you with a lot of information, if you happen to attend them.
Which events are you attending this year? For what reasons? Do add your recommendations through the comments below.
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Kunal is a post graduate from IIT Bombay in Aerospace Engineering. He has spent more than 10 years in field of Data Science. His work experience ranges from mature markets like UK to a developing market like India. During this period he has lead teams of various sizes and has worked on various tools like SAS, SPSS, Qlikview, R, Python and Matlab.
