The third annual Big Data Congress, to be held in Halifax this October, will feature as its keynote speaker Google’s Director of Engineering Ray Kurzweil.
The brainchild of T4G CEO Geoff Flood, the first two Congresses were held in Saint John and both attracted more than 600 delegates even though they were held in the depth of winter. The event is designed to promote the use of data analytics to generate economic growth and improve the performance of all organizations.
This year, the event will shift to Halifax and to the autumn, and it will have a special emphasis on how Big Data is improving productivity. The event will be held in conjunction with the World Confederation of Productivity Science, which will also be meeting in Halifax.
The other themes of this year's Congress will be the internet of everything, smart cities and industrial efficiency.
"Big Data is having an incredible impact on productivity in government and industry,” said Co-Chair Peter Watkins, president of the World Network of Productivity Organizations. “We believe this may be one of the most important Big Data conferences in 2015."
The main organizers of the event are T4G, Digital Nova Scotia, Dalhousie University and the World Network of Productivity Organizations. (Full disclosure: Some of these organizations have sponsored or advertised in Entrevestor publications and we continue to seek them as clients.)
The organizers announced Tuesday that Kurzweil will be the keynote speaker. He is primarily an inventor and futurist, having created the first CCD flat-bed scanner, the first omni-font optical character recognition, the first print-to-speech reading machine for the blind, and several other inventions.
Inc. magazine described him as the “rightful heir to Thomas Edison”, while PBS selected him as one of the “sixteen revolutionaries who made America.”
The other speakers include Dave Kasik, Boeing’s Senior Technical Fellow in visualization and interactive techniques, and Hilary Mason, the Data Scientist in Residence at Accel Partners, a leading Silicon Valley venture capital firm.
"The past two years saw this event grow in importance,” said Co-Chair Michael Shepherd, the Dean of Computer Science at Dal. “Big Data is having a profound effect on our world and this year we are delighted to be partnering with the World Confederation of Productivity Science to expand the event across three days."
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