BIWA Summit 2016

The annual BIWA Summit 2016 will be next week from the 26-28 January, and it is back in Oracle HQ at Redwood Shores. If you are into the Oracle Database, Business Intelligence, Big Data, Advanced Analytics, etc then this is the conference for you.

Over the 3 days there is an action packed agenda of 5 parallel tracks, plus a full 3 days of Hands-on Labs. The agenda is filled with the whos-who of the Oracle BI and Analytics world, so if this is your area then BIWA Summit is the conference for you and your training budget. (I'm sure it is not too late to book your place)

I've been lucky this year in that I will have 2 Hands-on Labs and 1 presentation to give. Yes that is 5 hours of presenting/hosting to do. The presentation I will be giving is 'Is Oracle SQL the best language for Statistics?' (on Tuesday 26th). This presentation is listed for the BIWA Summit and also for the NoCOUG Yes SQL conference that is running at the same time in the same venue (i.e. co-located). I've also written a brand new 2-hour Hands-on Lab titled 'Predictive Analytics using SQL and PL/SQL'. The first outing for this will be on Wednesday 27th. I will also be co-hosting, with Charlie Berger, the 'Learn Predictive Analytics in 2hours with Oracle Data Miner' Hands-on Lab on Tuesday 26th.

Come to my Hands-on Labs to be in with chance to win a copy of my book on Oracle Data Mining.

Hopefully I'll see you there!

Check out the full agenda by clicking on the image below.

BIWA Oracle Data Scientist Certificate

Last week I had had the opportunity to present at the BIWA Summit conference. This was held in the Sofitel Hotel beside the Oracle HQ buildings at Redwood Shores just out side of San Francisco.

This conference was a busy 2 days of with 4 parallel streams of presentations and another stream for Hands-on Labs. The streams covered Big Data, Advanced Analytics, Business Intelligence and Data Warehousing. There was lots of great presentations from well known names in the subject areas.

The BIWA Oracle Data Scientist Certificate was launched at the summit. The requirements for this certificate was to attend my presentation on ‘The Oracle Data Scientist’ (this was compulsory) and then to attend a number of other data science related presentations and hands-on labs. In addition to these presentations there is a short exam to take. This consists of some 30-ish questions, which were based on my presentation and some of the other presentations and hand-on labs. The main topic areas covered in the exam include what is data science about, Oracle Data Miner, Oracle R Enterprise and then some questions based on the key notes, in particular the keynote by Ari Kaplan.

There are a few days left to take the exam. Your answers to the questions will be reviewed and you should receive an email within a couple of days with your result and hopefully your certificate.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/BiwaSummitDataScientistCertificate

This was my first trip to Redwood Shores and I had some time to go for a walk around the Oracle HQ campus. Hopefully it wont be my last. Here is a photo I took of some of the Oracle buildings.

The BIWA Summit conference returns to Redwood Shores again in 2014 around the 14th and 15th January. It will be in the Oracle Conference centre that is part of the Oracle HQ campus.

Maybe I’ll see you there in 2014.

BIWA Summit–9th & 10th January, 2013

The BIWA Summit will be on the 9th and 10th January, 2013. It is being held in the Sofitel Hotel beside the Oracle HQ at Redwood Shores, just outside of San Francisco.

The BIWA Summit looks to be leading event in 2013 focused on Analytics, Data Warehousing, Big Data and BI. If you are a data architect or a data scientist this is certainly one event that you should consider attending in 2013.

All the big names (in the Oracle world) will be there Tom Kyte, Mark Rittman, Maria Colgan, Balaji Yelmanchili, Vaishnavi Sashikanth, Charlie Berger, Mark Hornick, Karl Rexter, Tim and Dan Vlamis.

Oh and then there is me. I’ll be giving a presentation on the Oracle Data Scientist. This will be on the first day of the event (9th) at 11:20am.

For anyone interest in the Oracle Data Scientist World there are lots of presentations to help you get start and up to speed in this area. Here is a list of presentations and hands on labs that I can recommend.

As is typical with all good conferences there are many presentations on at the same time that I would like to attend. If only I could time travel.

This is a great event to start off the new year and for everyone who is thinking of moving into or commencing a project in the area. So get asking you manager to see if there is any training budget left for 2012 or get first dibs on the training budget for 2013.

Registration is open and at the moment the early bird discount still seems to be available. You can also book a room in the hotel using the registration page.

To view the full agenda – click here

Accepted for BIWA Summit–9th to 10th January

I received an email today to say that I had a presentation accepted for the BIWA Summit. This conference will be in the Sofitel Hotel beside the Oracle HQ in Redwood City.

The title of the presentation is “The Oracle Data Scientist” and the abstract is

Over the past 18 months we have seen a significant increase in the demand for Data Scientists. But how does someone become a data scientist. If we examine the requirements and job descriptions of this role we can see that being able to understand and process data are fundamental skills. So an Oracle developer is ideally suited to being a Data Scientist. The presentation will show how an  Oracle developer can evolve into a data scientist through a number of stages, including BI developer, OBIEE developer, statistical analysis, data miner and data scientist. The tasks and tools will be discussed and explored through each of these roles. The second half of the presentation will focus on the data mining functionality available in SQL and PL/SQL. This will consist of a demonstration of an Analytics Development environment and how you can migrate (and use) your models in a Production environment

For some reason Simon Cowell of XFactor fame kept on popping into my head and it now looks like he will be making an appearance in the presentation too. You will have to wait until the conference to find out what Simon Cowell and Being an Oracle Data Scientist have in common.

Check out the BIWA Summit website for more details and to register for the event.

I’ll see you there