TROY — WIT Inc. kicked off Michigan’s first “Business Intelligence and Big Data Summit” last week at the Westin Hotel in Southfield. The Summit was attended by nearly 200 of the area’s top business and technology leaders, from Fortune 500 companies to mid-size and small companies from all over Michigan and Ohio.
The Summit began with a keynote from Donald Farmer, a well-known champion of Agile BI and the vice president of product management at QlikTech, discussing “BI for the Right Side of the Brain.” From there, attendees were offered 10 presentations across two tracks of business case studies and technology vendor presentations.
Discussing key successes in BI were Michigan-based organizations Haworth, Kelly Services, Oakland University, and Quicken Loans, as well as the humorous West Coast blog Cheezburger. Tech vendors included Attivio, iDashboards, Microsoft, QlikTech and SAS.
The day came to a close with a final keynote from thought-leader Wayne Eckerson, author of Secrets of Analytical Leaders, speaking about, “The Big Data Revolution: Integrating Big Data in BI Ecosystems.”
Attendees were able to network, learn techniques from other BI industry leaders, and one lucky professional won a Microsoft Surface tablet as a door prize.
WIT plans to continue this event for years to come and already has announced the 2014 date: March 13. Mark your calendars!
