Struggle to get the investment you need for business-critical data management projects? It can feel like you’re banging your head against a wall to get the business to appreciate its importance. But, as a profession, we need to better explain the foundational role it plays in delivering business outcomes. 

Join Helen Mannion, Chief Data Officer at Specsavers, Paula Rudkin, Partner & Head of Data Management at Knight Frank and Antony Marlow, Director of Data Management at Cynozure as together they aim to create the spark that ignites the fire for how we better engage, communicate and relate to our business colleagues on this topic. 

Expect to take away ideas, different approaches and be inspired to embrace a new way of getting data management the look-in your business needs to enable its success.

In the wake of the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (CSRD), organisations are tasked with enhancing their ESG data management and reporting frameworks. This presentation will guide data leaders through the complexities of CSRD compliance, focusing on the pivotal role of effective ESG data governance. We will explore the three core challenges:

1. Double Materiality Assessments: Evaluating both financial and impact materiality to align with regulatory expectations.

2. Comprehensive ESG Data Collection: Sourcing data across the entire business ecosystem to ensure comprehensive reporting.

3. External Assurance: Ensuring third-party certification of ESG reports, highlighting the importance of data accuracy and governance.

Attendees will gain practical insights into implementing a logical data management approach that addresses these challenges, while also aligning ESG data practices with broader enterprise data strategies.

For decades, data modeling has been fragmented by use cases: applications, analytics, and machine learning/AI. This leads to data siloing and “throwing data over the wall.”

With the emergence of AI, streaming data, and “shifting left" are changing data modeling, these siloed approaches are insufficient for the diverse world of data use cases. Today's practitioners must possess an end-to-end understanding of the myriad techniques for modeling data throughout the data lifecycle. This presentation covers "mixed model arts," which advocates converging various data modeling methods and the innovations of new ones.

Prioritizing Product Roadmaps with Causal Inference Methods. In the talk, I'll be walking through an example of turning an ambiguous ask into insights that lead to an action plan for what to build in the coming year. Using Double ML on our workout data allowed us to tackle the tricky question of causality in a product landscape where we haven't tested many features.

Generative AI (GenAI) has garnered significant attention for its potential to revolutionize various industries, from creative arts to data analysis. However, organizations are realizing that implementing GenAI is not as easy as just asking ChatGPT a few questions. Providing the most relevant and accurate contextual data to the LLM is critical if organizations are going to realize the full benefits of GenAI. Retrieval Augmented Generation, or RAG, is a well understood and effective technique for augmenting the original user prompt with additional, contextual data. However, many examples of RAG grossly oversimplify the reality of enterprise data ecosystems. In this session, we will examine how a Logical Data Fabric can make RAG a practical reality in large, complex organizations and deliver AI-ready data that make RAG effective and accurate.

Anywhere from 24 million to 190 million women are affected by endometriosis worldwide, and that’s just one of many Women’s Health conditions where lack of research, data and investment is leading to a $1 trillion challenge to our global economy. This needs urgent attention. This session explores the intersection of data science and women’s health, showcasing innovative approaches and solutions that leverage data to improve health outcomes, and how you can help Women in Data® change lives. 

Key topics will include the use of retail, health, pharmacy and lifestyle data and data donation to identify health trends to advance research in women’s health. By bringing together experts from Asda and Endometriosis UK, as well as featuring leading gynaecologist Tom Holland and real women suffering from this disease, we will highlight the issues faced and the potential of data-driven strategies to empower women, enhance healthcare delivery, and ultimately transform lives. Hosted by Natalie Cramp, Chair of Women’s Health as part of Women in Data®, join us to discover how data can be harnessed to create a healthier future for women worldwide and the role you can play in making this happen.

"Are you ready to revolutionize how you handle data? Join us to discover how the Workspace

Group, a leading provider of flexible office spaces in London, transformed their data processes to create and enhance marketing materials more efficiently and cost effectively. As Workspace Group’s portfolio has expanded, they faced growing challenges in managing their property and unit information accurately and timely. To address these challenges, they have used FME to support data integration, automation, digitisation and standardisation. Recently, the combined power of FME and Generative AI have helped to transform the way digital assets are attributed and marketing materials are created. Learn how they have automated manual tasks to improve efficiency, freeing up time for their team to focus on more important projects. Join us to learn how FME can transform your data processes, connect diverse sources, and automate workflows. Don’t miss this chance to see how your organisation can achieve similar success and optimise your data workflows with AI and FME.

In today's dynamic landscape, data has become a cornerstone for driving impactful change across various sectors. However, to truly harness the power of data and create positive outcomes for all, it's essential to adopt inclusive data strategies that prioritize diversity, equity, and inclusion. In this engaging talk, we will explore the importance of inclusive data strategies in promoting diversity and driving meaningful change. Drawing from real-world examples and practical insights, we will delve into key components of inclusive data strategies, including diverse representation, bias awareness, community engagement, transparency, accessibility, and equitable decision-making. Participants will gain a deeper understanding of how inclusive data practices can lead to more accurate, fair, and inclusive outcomes, while also addressing systemic disparities and promoting social justice. Whether you're a data scientist, policymaker, or community advocate, this talk will provide actionable steps and guidance for incorporating inclusive data strategies into your work, empowering you to drive positive change and create a more equitable and inclusive future for all.

Many people call AI, "the biggest technology change in their lifetime". The race is on for data & analytics leaders to turn this hype into business outcomes. What can we learn from the early adopters of AI? How do we avoid their mistakes and maximize the value of AI? This session will explore common failure points in data leaders' adoption of AI and provide actionable advice for how to ensure your AI roadmap is successful.

As many organizations strive to harness the transformative power of Generative AI, implementing a data fabric has emerged as the solution of choice to manage and leverage vast amounts of data effectively.

Join Kaycee Lai, Founder of Promethium, and Matt Clark, who leads data at National Grid Energy Transmission (NGET), as they explore how National Grid is deploying a data fabric to accelerate time-to-insight, enhance data value, and empower AI initiatives. They will discuss the specific challenges their team aimed to address, the strategic approach they took to implement the data fabric, and the critical role that data products play in delivering rapid analytics and enabling Generative AI.

Don’t miss this insightful session to learn how the company is pioneering data fabric technology to drive innovation and efficiency in the energy sector.

We'll explore innovative strategies to shift DQ from a technical to a business-centric mindset. This session will guide the audience in transforming DQ into a tool that business owners won't just use, but will rely on every morning to kickstart their day. The focus will be to reinvent how your organization perceives and interacts with Data Quality, making it an integral part of your business narrative.

This presentation will explore the cutting-edge applications of generative AI within the highly regulated landscape of pharmaceuticals, highlighting the potential benefits for patient care while addressing the challenges of compliance and ethical standards. At the heart of this discussion lies Novo Nordisk's pioneering work in constructing a multi-modal clinical data platform designed for the secondary use of data. This platform is particularly crucial for the cultivation of high-quality datasets that are integral to the success of generative AI. The presentation will introduce the concept of AI agents - intelligent systems equipped with the capabilities of planning, utilizing tools, and accessing memory. Moreover, the session will highlight the crucial role AI agents play in bridging the data literacy gap among teams within the pharmaceutical sector. By facilitating a deeper understanding of data, these agents empower professionals across disciplines to collaborate more effectively and make strides towards transformative healthcare solutions. 

Attendees will gain valuable perspectives on how to responsibly harness the power of generative AI to accelerate clinical breakthroughs, ensuring that ethical considerations and regulatory requirements are met.

Are you struggling to gain leadership support, craving stakeholder engagement, and begging for proper funding? Even though you may create analytic Gen AI wonders with your data, it won’t matter unless you explain the value in practical business terms. Join The Data Whisperer’s rollicking and riotous review of current buzzwords and some practical tips to help you bridge the story gap between data and the business. n this session, you’ll learn:

• How to differentiate between a data management narrative and other data storytelling efforts 

• Strategies to secure executive sponsorship and ongoing funding 

• The 3Vs of Data Storytelling for effective Data Management

In this session we will discuss Gen AI and the issue we face in regards to cognitive biases. 

What are cognitive biases and how do they relate to Gen AI?

Personality traits for tech professionals in the world today, and how that has impacted the industry. 

How being an ‘other’ can be a USP and an advantage. 

We’ll look as diversity and how diversity drives innovation. 

We’ll take a look at Bootcamps and Apprenticeships in the UK, and how this can bring in more diversity without breaking the budget. 

Gen AI has been the sole talk of the town since last 18 months and leaders across the world are feeling the heat to leverage its benefit. However, is simply adding Gen AI to the work solving the problem or creating future Tech Debt. Can Gen AI supplement or (even) replace data professionals?

How do you build your data strategy around Gen AI with limited early experience and knowledge. Join this talk to find out.

From the perspective of a multidisciplinary professional (tech/law/change management) “How to get fired by ignoring AI Governance” is for CDOs & CDAOs, those leading AI Governance, business executives & product owners with products that might fall within the new EU Artificial Intelligence Act (“EU AI Act”) passed in March 2024. 

Starting with an overview of the current global regulatory landscape with a focus on the EU AI Act, the talk dives into the most relevant impact, actionable takeaways, and strategic questions to reflect on.

Finding anomalies and significant deviations in high quality business-critical data in real-time is key to any data-intensive business, especially in the financial sector where trust and reliability are paramount. Join us for a deep-dive on how global real-time payment network Volt leverages Validio’s data quality and observability platform, to catch deviations in key metrics such as traffic and payment volume, payment initiation and conversion.

Leveraging customer data is essential for improving customer experiences and creating competitive advantage. However, many organizations struggle with fragmented data infrastructure, limited flexibility, and high costs associated with traditional customer data platforms (CDPs).

In this fireside chat, Steven Collings, Data Platform Engineering Lead at Zoopla, and Eric Omwega, Chief Operating Officer at RudderStack, will discuss how Zoopla tackled these challenges by adopting a warehouse-native approach to customer data with RudderStack.

Steven will share insights into Zoopla's journey, including:

• The challenges that prompted Zoopla's switch from Segment to RudderStack
• How RudderStack enabled Zoopla to regain control over their data while leveraging existing infrastructure investments
• The importance of flexibility and control in a customer data platform
• Zoopla's innovative use cases for customer data, including website personalization, email marketing, and advertising
• Future plans for advanced data applications, including building an identity graph, anonymous user personalization, and AI-driven recommendations

High-performance analytics can be a game-changer, but the infrastructure to support it often comes with a hefty price tag. In this talk, I'll share strategies to build a cost-effective sub-second analytics platform using open-source tools and lessons learned from cloud services. I'll cover the trade-offs between self-hosting and managed offerings and discuss ways to optimize infrastructure costs — from maximizing cloud 'nuggets' to ensuring your engineering team is right-sized and focused on solving important business challenges. Drawing from patterns, caveats, and success stories observed with our clients, the goal is to power lightning-fast analytics without breaking the bank.

Have you ever received 50 emails from an Executive asking why a number changed on a business reporting dashboard? Come and hear how Databricks customers are experimenting with Gen BI to explain “The Why”.

• IT and data teams build dashboards, the business continues to use Excel - the last-mile problem

• Our analytics tools don’t explain “The Why”

• GenAI allows us to blend context and semantics in a way we could never previously scale

We call this Generative BI, enabled by the Databricks Data Intelligence Platform.

To stay competitive in the current economy, businesses need to use data democratisation to gain insights through BI and analytics.

Breaking data silos, deriving 360° insights, blending data across business functions, and empowering everyone with insights can truly transform business outcomes.

Artificial intelligence is now augmenting every layer of business intelligence to be more powerful, democratising access to insights. By adopting a modern BI and analytics platform, businesses can unlock transformative potential and uncover growth opportunities.

Join us to start your BI journey and learn how AI is evolving in the data and analytics domain to meet emerging business needs.

Here's what you can expect from this session:

• The state of data and analytics adoption

• Data and analytics challenges faced by businesses

• How generative AI is reshaping analytical insights

• Guide to transforming outcomes by adopting a modern AI-driven BI platform

Electric vehicles produce billions of diagnostic data points, combining these data with advanced cloud-based battery models we can use software to unlock longer battery lifetimes, increased range, faster charging and predict safety issues. 

Elysia Battery Intelligence from Fortescue Zero is built on over 15 years of experience in electric motorsports. Elysia provides battery manufacturers and owners with actionable battery insights using Snowflake’s data platform as the backbone of their AI-driven battery analytics. In this session, Pezhman Zarabadi and Matt Clarke will demonstrate how Elysia are leveraging Snowflake to scale Elysia, enabling seamless conversion of innovative battery research to new features. They will also discuss Elysia’s recently announced collaboration with Jaguar Land Rover to monitor their entire portfolio of electric vehicles.

The analytics field has grown increasingly complex, leading to an 'analytics debt' that hinders strategic focus and burdens businesses. This talk will dissect analytics debt and its impact on scaling operations. We'll showcase how MicroStrategy AI can streamline analytics by reducing the need for extensive reporting with AI chat and applications simplification. Features like Auto Answers, Auto Dashboards, Auto SQL and Auto Expert not only speed up development but also democratize data expertise, making vast resources accessible to all. Discover how these innovations can redirect efforts towards business growth, improve margins, and empower stakeholders with smarter, user-friendly analytics tools. Join us to unlock your data's true potential and eliminate analytics debt.

The business landscape is rapidly changing and demands a transformational response. We all need to future proof our organisations and PEOPLE are your force for change. 

Join Jez Clark for actionable insights as he explores: 

• How to mobilise the right Talent & Capability 

• The need for POWERskills to navigate change

• Demand & Talent Trends in 2024 & beyond

Join us for an in-depth exploration of Apache Iceberg and Apache Polaris (incubating), where we delve into the past, present, and future of these transformative technologies. This session will provide a comprehensive overview of Iceberg's journey, its current role within the data ecosystem, and the promising future it holds with the integration of Polaris (incubating). We will discuss how these technologies redefine table formats and catalog management, empowering organisations to efficiently manage and analyse large-scale data. Attendees will gain valuable insights into the evolving landscape, ensuring they remain at the forefront of innovation and continue to shape thought leadership in the data ecosystem.