#RIUC13

For those of you who weren’t able to attend the 2013 Rapid Insight User Conference, we set a new record for most attendees and largest number of customer presentations. With two full days of dual track programming, the presenters covered a lot of ground. While we wait for some of the video recordings of customer presentations to be formatted, I thought it would be good to do a quick recap here. 

Mike Laracy, Data Geek (at right)

The conference opened with a keynote from our Founder and CEO, Mike Laracy, who talked a bit about the future of predictive analytics. With a mass public education on the value of analytics (from people like Nate Silver and Billy Bean, with a little help from Brad Pitt), as well as significant advances in data storage and processing power, a stronger need for predictive analytics is emerging. The market is shifting towards the view that more data access is better than restricted access, and that given the right tools along with access, smart people – data scientists – can turn raw data into actionable information. Given these changes, the data scientist – that’s you – will be in increasingly higher demand over the next decade and beyond, as will predictive analytics. 

The user presentations covered lots of different topics, and we’ve made all of their slide decks available here; I’d highly recommend checking them out. In addition to what’s there, I’d also recommend checking out some of the interviews we’ve done with customers on building campaign pyramids and using predictive modeling to drive fundraising efforts. The RI staff team also gave a few presentations,  including topics like Tips and Tricks in Veera, Techniques for Improving Your Predictive Models, and An Introduction to Reporting and Dashboarding with Veera.

Another thing worth mentioning is that we announced our partnership with Tableau to provide a complete solution for both predictive modeling and visualization. Now users can use Veera to clean up their data, Analytics to build their predictive models, and Tableau’s visualizations to turbocharge their presentations. For more information, check out our partner page.

I am now a scientist according to @RapidInsightInc. I feel super smart! #RIUC13
— Dustin Mayfield (@dlm0078) June 27, 2013

My favorite part of the User Conference has always been talking to customers about the cool data projects that they’ve been tackling, and this year was no different. Kudos to our users for being so creative and smart with the ways they use our software. We also owe a big thanks to the folks at Yale for hosting us, and to all who were able to attend. Here’s to the best User Conference so far and to making next year’s even better!