Five reasons INFORMS is the top practical AI conference
You still have time to sign up and come to this year's event in Houston from April 3-5.
I think the INFORMS Business Analytics Conference is the best conference for Practical AI. Here are my reasons:
1. It’s Practical
The talks are about solving business problems.
Here is a sample:
The Chief Scientist for Amazon talking about workforce planning
Host of Nova Wonders and Ted-Talker, Talithia Williams on making data actionable throughout an organization.
Walmart on the top 10 reasons data science projects fail
Predicting arrival times at DoorDash
US Army Material Command bringing analytics to the 4-star level.
Gurobi’s new game to teach data scientists about optimization
This is just a few. There are too many good ones to mention. Here is the full list.
2. It’s Inspirational- in a Nobel Prize Way
You get to hear talks of the Edelman Award finalists and see the winner. The Edelman is like the Nobel Prize for the implementation of practical AI (optimization and analytics).
It doesn’t get the same press as the Nobel Prize. But, it should. These projects make the world work better and inspire others to think bigger.
Past winners have included the UN Food Programme to help get food to more people, UPS to cut $300M in delivery costs and cut 100K tons of CO2 emissions, and Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center to help treat cancer and allocate resources better.
Over the years, the finalists have brought $336B of value, saved lives, and solved tough problems.
This year’s finalists include Alibaba, the U.S. Census Bureau, Chile, General Motors, Janssen Pharmaceutical Companies of Johnson & Johnson, and Merck Animal Health.
You’ll like these talks.
You’ll also be inspired to tackle your challenging problems. And, hopefully, inspired to try to win the award for your organization.
3. It’s Educational
This is a great conference for data scientists- both the doers and the leaders.
The talks and tutorials are meaty.
There are people from many industries. So, you’ll find your own industry, but you’ll also get to hear ideas from other industries.
One of my big complaints about the data science movement over the last 10 years is that it has tended to ignore mathematical optimization. This conference makes up for this.
4. It’s a Great Place to Network and Find New Hires
You’ll get to a chance to meet your peers.
You’ll get a chance to meet the professors in the field who are most concerned with how to implement these techniques— this will give you a link to the latest in academia as well as a pipeline for future hires.
And, you’ll get to meet people, at all stages of their career, who might be a good fit for your organization.
5. It’s in Person this year
Enough said.
I hope to see you in Houston!
I really resonate with the "It's inspirational" point.