TDWI World Conference 2013 Recap

Once again I attended the  TDWI World Conference in Las Vegas, Nevada and once again I was impressed with the content, instructors, the TDWI Staff,  facilities and overall conference experience that makes me want to continue to return.

This year I hit the instructor jackpot with the set of instructors for my chosen classes. This year I was lucky enough to have Ralph Hughes, Shawn Rogers, Laura Reeves, Mark Madsen, Steve Dine and Stephen Borbst …needless to say, a killer line up of thought leaders in the field of Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence. Topics ranged from Agile DW Development, Project Management, Social Analytics, “Big Data” and what the future hold for Data Warehousing.

“Big Data” was obviously a hot topic as it is probably the most hyped area in the DW arena now, and the great part was that you heard very different opinions about the topic of Big Data. Most people see the value in exploring this non-relational data, but see the value in the variety of data, not necessarily the volume. Other are completely sick of the topic, saying that it’s been around for years (in regards to volume of data) and the different now is truly that it’s all text driven and building those text analytics, sentiment analysis and deriving the real-time value out of it is really difficult to do. Mark Madsen said it best, “Big Data is like teen sex, a lot of people are talking about it, but if they are doing it, they are doing it poorly.”

If you’ve never had the opportunity to attend a TDWI World Conference I can’t urge you enough to make every effort to attend. The value of the classes, the networking, and the on-one-one interaction you get with the thought-leaders in the industry is priceless. TDWI provides some benefits that can be used to convince your company to send you to the conference but find anyone who’s attended and they will be able to give you a handful of reasons why you should attend.