Author: Jude McCorry, Head of Business Development, The Data Lab
During the first week of December The Data Lab and Scottish Enterprise/SDI we had a very successful and enjoyable trip to New York with 8 Scottish Data related businesses who attended the Big Data in Finance event and also visited companies like Verrisk Analytics, Dataminr, The Data Incubator and the Data Lab at the New York Times.
You have all heard enough from me from my last blog on the Boston trip, so I will just provide you with the excellent feedback from some of the attendees who put their hearts and souls into this trip and made the most of every opportunity to learn, network and build a network of like minded people in Scotland, who will hopefully continue to build on the camaraderie to help them in their businesses back on home turf:
Callum Morton – Director of Software Strategy, Financial Services at NCR Corporation
The trip to New York to attend the Big Data & Analytics in Banking summit was an excellent opportunity to hear from institutions, vendors and academics how these agendas have progressed beyond the hype and delivering real-world benefits. It was an up-to-date read-out of what’s working (and what’s not working) in the vibrant heart of NY’s Financial district. The chance to see first-hand how companies are exploiting analytics was inspiring, as were the conversations with fellow Scottish delegates who cam from a variety of organisations and perspectives. All-in-all an inspiring couple of days immersed in the world of Big Data possibilities”.
Dan Jermyn Head of Big Data at RBS
Not only was it lots of fun and extremely well organised, it was genuinely really valuable from an RBS Big Data perspective as well. Apart from the ideas and discussions at the conference and the demos I’ve arranged for the guys back home, I’ve already had some great dialogue with some of the organisations we met This would never have happened if you hadn’t arranged the intro meeting, so thank you very much!”
Marc Corbalan Head of Product, Payment Data Insight
Found the sessions at the Big Data in Finance conference extremely relevant and of a very high quality.
The meetings and conference allowed us to understand what peers in other organisations are doing, to validate plans and methodologies, and to enhance our working knowledge on technologies and data models in the big data space. We’d highly recommend our peers to participate in similar events in the future.
John Binnie – CTO at Payfont
I really enjoyed the summit. I had the opportunity to meet some interesting leads, learn some fascinating insights into the current world of Big Data in Banking and also follow up with/brief our US colleagues. Not to forget the great visits to the New York Times and Dataminr who were both fascinating from an R&D and innovation perspective.
And finally from our own Data Guru and Scientist Richard Carter
As a data scientist a trip to the United States is something akin to a religious pilgrimage: for Mecca substitute New York. Americans are far ahead of us in the UK when it comes to treating data scientists as first-class citizens. The enterprises there have embraced the diverse range of skills that such people can offer, and have integrated them into the front-line of their companies. On our recent trip it was a pleasure to engage with such high calibre individuals, who blur the distinction between business-literate technicians and technically-competent business people. The quality of the employees translates into high-quality products, and we were very fortunate to meet with some companies who are on course to become household names in the near future. In all, an excellent opportunity to connect with outstanding individuals putting data science at the core of their businesses.
If you would like to be part of the next trips, you can find out more and apply here.
Or contact me for details at jude.mccorry@thedatalab.com