Conference Details - Agenda

Auto-ID Labs Director and Professor of Mechanical Science and Engineering Sarma will outline “New Directions” in Auto-ID Labs research, including the Omni Channel Supply Chain, “Mobile Retail Commerce and the new Cloud City initiative. Dr. Sarma co-founded The Auto-ID Center at MIT, which developed many of the technical concepts and standards prevalent in the RFID industry today. Dr. Sarma currently serves on the Boards of Governors for EPCglobal. He is a board member for OATSystems, a software company he helped found during his leave of absence from MIT 2004-2006. Dr. Sarma is also a trustee of the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council.

The Associate Director of the SENSEable City Laboratory and Associate Professor of the Practice in the Department of Urban Studies and Planning, Biderman will demonstrate Big Data visualization projects from around the world. The “Spring Spree” BBVA map of expenditures in unprecedented data set illustrates purchasing patterns across Spain during Easter 2011 Day 1, Plenary Session.

Sinan Aral, an affiliated faculty member of the MIT Center for eBusiness at MIT Sloan is an expert on Social Networks, Social Media and Digital Strategy. He has worked closely with Facebook, Yahoo, the New York Times, Microsoft, IBM, Cisco, Intel, Oracle, SAP and many other leading Fortune 500 firms on realizing business value from social media and information technology investments. Sinan has been a Fulbright Scholar, served as Chief Scientist and on the board of directors of SocialAmp, a social commerce company that enables targeting and peer referral in social media networks (which was sold to Merkle in January, 2012), and is currently an organizer of the Workshop on Information in Networks (WIN):

How does the increased use of the smart phone in the store and at home, impact on store systems, marketing campaigns, fulfillment, etc.?

Everywhere you look, consumers are turning to their smartphones and social media to get more value and better inform their shopping experience. The resulting data is creating new opportunities for retailers to better understand the wants and needs of their consumers, to improve the customer experience and ultimately drive more sales. Retail chains are complex ecosystems producing large and diverse data-sets. Object identification technologies like RFID, NFC and barcodes also create new streams of data. And numerous platforms and websites are sprouting up that offer location-based deals and sales promotions for consumers using the myriad data sources. There is tremendous potential for Big Data applications that mine and aggregate these data siloes to improve retailer supply chain efficiencies, and enhance the shopping experience. How can retailers improve the real-time interaction between consumers and goods on the retail floor using mobile? What can be learned to drive sales and profit for retailers ? large and small? How can retailers improve the overall brand experience for consumers? Those are just a few of the questions that should be answered in the Mobile Retail App Challenge!

Cloudera augments existing analytical platforms with some new tools for data management and analysis. In this talk, they will share some experiences of what has worked across industries and workloads, and what new software components might help complete a new analytical platform.

No one will dispute the fact that Big Data is transforming retail. Beyond the excitement of new opportunities to engage consumers is the challenge to find creative ways to harness the data deluge. DataXu co-founder and CEO Mike Baker will put Big Data in perspective for retailers, discussing the big trends and top data-driven use cases, and provide a map to help you navigate this new digital world.

Consumer are today increasingly using their mobile phone when making purchasing decisions. Dr. Christian Floerkemeier is the CTO and Co-Founder of Scandit, a company specializing in product interaction technologies for mobile applications. In this talk, Floerkemeier provides insights into when, where and why consumers interact with consumer products using their smartphone by leveraging Big (Mobile) Data from our Scanalytics platform. With its leading mobile barcode scanning software in use by over a hundred companies in more than 25 countries, Scandit products enable, analyze and monetize mobile product interaction.

Megacities ? cities with a population of at least 10 million people ? are increasing in both number and size, and their share of world GDP is expected to grow from about 14% to over 20% in a decade. Most of the 23 megacities that currently exist are located in emerging markets. The presentation will provide an overview of the unique characteristics of freight movement in megacities in emerging markets, focusing on opportunities for novel policy, business and technology approaches to transform future planning and decision making processes.

Big data initiatives are cropping up across every industry and market sector. Where are the information layers and synergies to bring this information together so it can be put to meaningful use?