SIAM Data Mining 2012 Conference

Note: This would have been up a lot sooner but I have been dealing with a bug on and off for pretty much the past month!

From April 26-28 I had the pleasure to attend the SIAM Data Mining conference in Anaheim on the Disneyland Resort grounds. Aside from KDD2011, most of my recent conferences had been more “big data” and “data science” oriented, and I wanted to step away from the hype and just listen to talks that had more substance.

Attending a conference on Disneyland property was quite a bizarre experience. I wanted to get everything I could out of the conference, but the weather was so nice that I also wanted to get everything out of Disneyland as I could. Seeing adults wearing Mickey ears carrying Mickey shaped balloons, and seeing girls dressed up as their favorite Disney princesses screams “fun” rather than “business”, but I managed to make time for both.

The first two days started with a plenary talk from industry or research labs. After a coffee break, there were the usual breakout sessions followed by lunch. During my free 90 minutes, I ran over to Disneyland and California Adventure both […]