BI Is Gonna Sizzle in Las Vegas

Whether you're a long-time BI practitioner or a newbie still trying to remember that BI means Business Intelligence, the topic is as hot as the Vegas desert in summer. And that's totally appropriate, given that our annual Customer Conference is in Las Vegas this year (albeit in October - a much more seasonable time). The hot thing is that this year we're featuring 10 industry BI experts who'll give BI and analytics oriented talks in our special "Experts" track.
Elissa Fink

Whether you're a long-time BI practitioner or a newbie still trying to remember that BI means Business Intelligence, the topic is as hot as the Vegas desert in summer. And that's totally appropriate, given that our annual Customer Conference is in Las Vegas this year (albeit in October - a much more seasonable time). The hot thing is that this year we're featuring 10 industry BI experts who'll give BI and analytics oriented talks in our special "Experts" track.

Why an "Experts" track? We want to make the conference more valuable to you. We thought by bringing in a large number of outside experts with diverse skills and opinions about business intelligence, you would get an educational experience that you just can't get anywhere else.

Here are just some of the speakers we've invited who you'll recognize:

  • Howard Dresner of Dresner Advisory Services- Howard is often called the father of business intelligence and credited for inventing the term years ago when he was the BI analyst at Gartner. Now, after multiple successful books and independent studies, he's providing practical BI advice to companies around the world. He speaks frequently around the globe and publishes several landmark industry research studies including Wisdom of Crowds Business Intelligence Market Study and The Mobile Business Intelligence Market Study. Howard is one of those people that is both practical and visionary and he always gets me thinking. So I'm excited to hear about what he's thinking about.

  • Wayne Eckerson of B*Eye Network/TechTarget - Wayne has been a leading thinker in the BI field since the mid 90's. But that doesn't mean he's not fresh and inspired. He conducts numerous in-depth research studies and speaks and blogs regularly. His book Performance Dashboards: Measuring, Monitoring, and Managing Your Business is a best-seller. You may know him from his many years at TDWI (The Data Warehousing Institute). Every time I speak with Wayne, I learn something new.
  • Cindi Howson of BI Scorecard - Cindi was one of the first analysts I met when I came to Tableau. What impressed me then still impresses me now: she does in-depth research and practical fact-finding about her research topics. She's teaches regularly at TDWI's quarterly education conferences and is widely known for her sessions where she shares emerging technologies like Tableau. People also love her "vendor bake-offs." Sometimes, analysts have opinions that don't seem to be based on much more than a few conversations. Not so with Cindi - she does her homework so you don't have to.

  • Claudia Imhoff of Intelligent Solutions - Another industry-leading visionary and BI practitioner, Claudia is a very popular speaker and expert. She is incredibly prolific with five books under her belt, regular columns, blog posts, speaking engagements and teaching. As the President and Founder of Intelligent Solutions, Inc., she also founded the Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT) - a consortium of independent BI analysts who get together regularly to hear from vendors, provide advice and share ideas. I wish I knew how Claudia has the time to do all that she does.
  • Paul Kedrosky of Infectious Greed - I love people with strong opinions that are based on smarts and facts. That's Paul especially when it comes to dissecting the state of our economy and the markets in his incredibly popular blog, Infectious Greed. And what's not cool about someone who has a Ph.D. in the economics of technology (let alone his master’s degree in finance and undergraduate degree in engineering). This is someone who knows data and knows how to tell stories with his clear and compelling findings.

  • David O'Connell of Nucleus Research - David is an analyst I've only recently come to know. But what gets me about David's work is how he focuses on helping people build real and practical business cases that get to the real ROI of technology investments. His talk is going to focus on how you can build an effective business case for your analytics investments - I think this will be a very useful session.

We'll be filling 8-10 sessions with these experts and several more. So stay tuned for our updated agenda - more interesting and compelling experts to come.