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Conference To Focus on Business Intelligence in Academia

• By Dian Schaffhauser
• 07/12/10

A conference that will work to strengthen the impact of business intelligence (BI) teaching and research in academia has been scheduled for December 2010 in St. Louis, MO. This second annual BI Congress is hosted by Teradata's University Network, a vendor-supported teaching resource, and the Association for Information Systems, a professional society that advances information systems academics.

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, particularly in the area of analytics.

"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 program co-chair Barbara Wixom, associate professor at the McIntire School of Commerce at the University of Virginia. "We all want students that are well prepared for tomorrow's roles in supporting advances in corporate technology and analytics." Wixom is also a research fellow of The Data Warehousing Institute (owned by the same company that publishes CampusTechnology.com) and an executive director for the Teradata University Network.

Teradata Chief Development Officer Scott Gnau said he finds value in the event's mix of practitioners, academic people, and vendors. "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," he said.

Proposals and submissions are being accepted until Sept. 1 for presentations on research in BI, decision support, or analytics from management or application perspectives, and on teaching cases and pedagogical materials to prepare the future workforce. Those teaching submissions that are accepted will be featured on the Teradata University Network, a peer-reviewed, free Web-based portal for faculty and students covering data warehousing, business intelligence, decision support, and databases.

The organizers are also asking instructors to submit research in progress for potential grants.