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Business and academia collaborate to close the business intelligence gap by aligning research and teaching with critical industry needs
ATLANTA — Teradata University Network today announced the 2010 Business Intelligence Congress (BI) II where academic professionals and industry representatives will meet to discuss current academic research, teaching methods and industry demands for business intelligence, decision support and analytics.
The inaugural BI Congress, co-founded by Teradata University Network and the Association for Information Systems Special Interest Group for Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management Systems, was held in December 2009. It revealed gaps between industry needs and current business intelligence teaching and research. Set for December 11 and 12 in St. Louis, Mo., BI Congress II will work to close those gaps by providing industry support for those who teach analytics and by facilitating constructive discussions around analytics research. A key feature of this year’s event will be the presentation of results of a survey of academics, students and practitioners on the state of BI research, resources, teaching and needs.
“Business intelligence is core to business success today. Yet, traditional approaches to BI have been challenged by the addition of unstructured data, real-time technologies, cloud computing and customer-focused strategies, to name just a few. That’s why it’s critical to our success to have strong industry involvement,” said BI Congress II program co-chair Barbara Wixom. Wixom is an associate professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia, a research fellow of The Data Warehousing Institute and an executive director for the Teradata University Network.
Attending the Congress will be 175 invited industry-leading practitioners, members of the Teradata University Network, and members of the Association for Information Systems, principally those who are part of the Special Interest Group on Decision Support, Knowledge and Data Management Systems. Major sponsors of the event are Deloitte, IBM Corporation, SAS and Teradata Corporation.
“We all want students that are well-prepared for tomorrow’s roles in supporting advances in corporate technology and analytics,” said Wixom.
The two-day conference will be kicked off by keynote speaker Thornton May, executive director and dean at the IT Leadership Academy and author of the book, “The New Know: Innovation Powered by Analytics.” May is the co-founder of the CIO Solutions Gallery at the Fisher College of Business at Ohio State University, where he also teaches.
“The BI Congress is unique in the collaboration of the sponsors and practitioners together supporting academia to shape and create the future. This isn’t an end, it’s a beginning to activities where everyone involved can assess, evaluate and offer constructive guidance about research underway and how the next generation workforce should be taught business intelligence,” Teradata Chief Development Officer Scott Gnau said.
Submissions are being accepted now for presentations on research in BI, decision support or analytics from management or application perspectives, and on teaching cases and pedagogical materials to better prepare the future workforce. Both vendor-neutral and vendor-specific pedagogical content is welcome and industry collaborators are encouraged to co-author submissions with academic colleagues. Submissions are due September 1.
“We’re asking professors to submit their research that is in progress so that we can assess and award research grants to help drive the ones that are most beneficial to the industry,” Wixom said.
All teaching submissions will be considered for a BI Congress Innovation in Pedagogy Award. All accepted teaching submissions will be featured on the Teradata University Network, a peer-reviewed free web-based portal for faculty and undergraduate and graduate students in data warehousing, business intelligence, decision support, and database.
About Teradata University Network
Teradata University Network is a free web-based portal for faculty and undergraduate and graduate students in data warehousing, business intelligence/decision support, and database. Led by academics, Teradata University Network currently has over 2,000 registered faculty members from over 1,000 universities in 75 countries, and thousands of student users.
