M2006: Data Mining Conference Returns to Vegas

Whether it's used to drive new business, reduce costs or more accurately predict the future, data mining is critical to every organization's well-being. By analyzing vast amounts of data and using the resulting knowledge to make more informed decisions, companies who employ data mining techniques know how to harness the full power of their greatest asset: their data.

To help individuals learn the latest data mining theories, trends and best practices in the field, SAS hosts M2006, its ninth annual data mining conference, this Oct. 23-24 in Las Vegas. The largest data mining conference of its kind, M2006 provides attendees a forum for exchanging ideas with hundreds of data mining practitioners and more than 40 of the most respected data mining experts in the world.

This year's conference is chaired by SAS' Director of Higher Education Consulting Jerry Oglesby and Tom Bohannon, the Assistant Vice President and Director at the Office of Institutional Research & Testing Services at Baylor University.

"M2006 addresses the latest advances and best practices in the industry and offers something for everyone doing data mining," says Oglesby. Last year's conference attracted more than 700 data mining practitioners and business decision makers from more than 280 business, academic and government organizations, making it the largest data mining conference of its kind in the world.

"We're very excited about the quality speakers we've secured to date," says Vice President of SAS Education Herbert Kirk. "Not only are they innovative thought leaders in the field of data mining, but they are engaging speakers who will provide information and ideas that will help our attendees become better data miners."

Keynote Speakers
Keynote speakers for the conference include:

• Usama Fayyad, Yahoo!'s Chief Data Officer and Senior Vice President of the Strategic Data Solutions group. Fayyad is responsible for Yahoo!'s overall data strategy, architecting Yahoo!'s data policies and systems, prioritizing data investments, and managing the company's data processing infrastructure and analysis.
  
• William B. Smith, Executive Director of the American Statistical Association and Professor Emeritus of Statistics at Texas A&M University, where he was also chairman of the department for nine years. Prior to working for the ASA, Smith was a program director in statistics at the National Science Foundation. He has co-authored two books and more than 50 articles on statistics.
  
• Will Potts, Vice President of Statistical Analysis at Capital One. Potts has more than 15 years of experience as a statistical consultant in science and industry. In addition to authoring numerous technical papers, Potts has developed several popular training courses on predictive modeling.
  
• Randy Collica, Senior Business Analyst at Hewlett-Packard. Collica has 16 years' experience in the semiconductor manufacturing industry, working on yield and product and quality engineering. He has authored or co-authored 11 articles and is currently writing a book on CRM segmentation and clustering for business applications.

Come for the knowledge; leave with the skills to make a difference
What makes the conference so successful, many attendees agree, is its balance between theory and practice. M2006 keynote speakers will share the latest research and data mining methodology, while breakout sessions focus on the more practical, offering best practices, case studies and advice on how to begin implementing or expanding data mining within an organization. The conference offers participants more than 30 session talks available in multiple sessions each day. Session topics on the agenda include:

• Business applications.
• Perspectives from the financial services industry. 
• Fraud detection. 
• Perspectives from the healthcare industry. 
• New and emerging technologies. 
• Perspectives from the retail industry.
  

Immediately following the conference, M2006 will offer training courses that highlight the latest data mining technology. Participants may choose one or more of the six courses.

For those interested in pre-conference training, two half-day workshops precede the conference on Sunday, Oct. 22.