The Good, The Bad and The Summary..

The 3rd Annual National Analytics Conference has now been and gone and as the dust settles on the biggest version of the event to date I wanted to capture my own thoughts on how it panned out.

First off, the location and facilities were excellent - the @MansionHouseDub is a historic venue that has a welcoming feel and is easy to navigate. Lorcan, Ashling and the team from @AnalyticsInsIre did a great job in making it easy for people to connect and kept things moving.

The keynote speech by Fergal Collins, CEO of ACIA was enjoyable. Fergal outlined the journey that the ACIA had embarked upon a number of years ago and how the organisation had (eventually) embraced Data as an organisational asset, as opposed to being a by-product of the business operations.

He touched on a number of solid points in regards to how to "push" new initiatives and work as a business to evaluate their effectiveness, if the value isn't there - go again, and again..until the "flywheel starts to gain momentum" as he put it.

The highlight of the event (for me!) came after lunch, renowned tech author and (self-proclaimed?) Dean of Big Data - Bill Schmarzo @schmarzo arrived like a bat out of hell! His presentation style lit up the stage and to me, he was the most engaging speaker of the day. I did challenge him on a couple of points he made afterwards, but we didn't fall out...he's a big guy.

The low point (again, for me) was when one of the speakers took aim at a specific industry, and very confidently declared that he "hated recruiters". That caused a bit of controversy (as may have been the speakers aim) for a time, especially as the following speaker happened to be Bernie Keogh (MD of Alternatives recruitment agency). Lorcan made light of the situation and I felt Bernie handled it very well, considering the spike in adrenaline that she must have been feeling.

In summary, the event was a big hit and an enjoyable way to spend a day connecting and hearing about the challenges being faced by companies all over the world and how they are being dealt with. Plus, it was our COO Andrew Frazers' first Analytics event and according to him - it was the best one ever!