Greater Nashville Technology Council has announced that the 8th Annual Nashville Analytics Summit, presented by AWS, will be a fully virtual event. The summit has always focused on community building, and at a time when other conferences are being cancelled, the tech council has reaffirmed its commitment to helping the data and analytics community still come together. Going fully virtual will not only protect the health of event attendees and sponsors during the COVID-19 pandemic; it will enable analytics teams from across the country to participate remotely for the first time.
"Creating an online experience that delivers the same high value as our in-person event has been an exciting challenge," said tech council President and CEO Brian Moyer. "People love coming to Music City and we love having them here. But a great thing about going virtual this year is that no matter where you live, you can join the analytics summit without the time and expense of having to travel. As a result, we expect that the mix of event attendees will be even more diverse than usual, which can only add to the shared learning and networking opportunities."
One of America's leading conferences on how to effectively leverage big data and analytics, the 2020 summit will be held on Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 21 and 22, from 7 a.m. to 4 p.m. Central Time. The event will feature more than 60 presentations and workshops on a broad range of data-related topics, plus online networking sessions.
The workshops will provide virtual "hands-on" learning for attendees wanting to sharpen their skills with leading experts. All presentations will include a live Q&A session with the speaker to ensure more opportunity for real-time engagement. The summit's online guide and mobile app will also enhance connectivity by allowing participants to live chat with other attendees, and schedule video calls with attendees and sponsors for face-to-face interaction.
The 2020 keynote speaker is Hilary Mason, data scientist in residence at leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm Accel Partners. Mason will draw from her rich experience to provide insights on the challenges and rewards of working with big data combined with machine learning.
Other guest speakers will include:
- John Liu, founder and CEO of Intelluron: "Explainable AI: An Introduction to Causal Machine Learning"
- Drew D'Agostino and Greg Skloot, co-founders of Crystal: "How to Segment Your Customers by Personality and Actually Do Something With It"
- Ujjwal Ratan, principal AI/machine learning solutions architect, healthcare and life sciences, at AWS: "The Role of Artificial Intelligence in Clinician Efficiency"
- Heather Whiteman, lecturer at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business: "People Science: Using Data to Understand People at Work"
- Kenneth Graham, senior research engineer at Digital Reasoning: "Digital Reasoning and Adversarial Machine Learning: How to Attack and Defend Models"
The summit was created in 2013 by Greater Nashville Technology Council members and continues to grow each year. The 2019 event welcomed 822 attendees, of whom 55% were manager level and above. In 2020, the event is being produced by the tech council in partnership with Tennessee HIMMS.
"Now more than ever during the pandemic, the analytics summit is important for learning and community building between data and analytics professionals," said planning committee chair Dan George. "If you manage a group, the summit presents a great opportunity to level up your understanding from experts and improve your competitive edge."
Event registration is now open, for individuals and groups. For full details click here.
