Informs Analytics Conference is Virtual

I remind people that the Informs conference in May is now free and virtual.  Have been a long time member, always good value to offer, attend and join!  .  More detailed information at the link:

The INFORMS Business Analytics Conference is going virtual!

Join us for this unique opportunity as we move to a free virtual analytics conference this year. Have you thought about attending in the past and didn’t have the time or funds to commit to a three-day event? Join us May 18-22 to get a sampling of what you have been missing from one of the top rated analytics conferences. The analytics conference will include 13 unique presentations covering the latest research and achievements in topics of great importance in the analytics community, including ethics in data, decision and risk analysis, revenue management & pricing, machine learning, and marketing analytics, along with the role of analytics in addressing the COVID-19 pandemic. You may register for any or all of the sessions.  ... " 

Microsoft and Teams

Adding somenewand novel capabilities to the conferencing method.  Have used it and others since their inception.  Well done.   They also provide some usage numbers.


How Microsoft Teams will use AI to filter out typing, barking, and other noise from video calls
 By Emil Protalinsky in VentureBeat

Last month, Microsoft announced that Teams, its competitor to Slack, Facebook’s Workplace, and Google’s Hangouts Chat, had passed 44 million daily active users. The milestone overshadowed its unveiling of a few new features coming “later this year.” Most were straightforward: a hand-raising feature to indicate you have something to say, offline and low-bandwidth support to read chat messages and write responses even if you have poor or no internet connection, and an option to pop chats out into a separate window. But one feature, real-time noise suppression, stood out — Microsoft demoed how the AI minimized distracting background noise during a call. ...

Google Duo Group Video

Notable this is available for bot IOS and and Android.    Will take a look.   Ability to share docs and screens for sharing work?   Integration with Google Drive?   Support for other business augmentation and functions?

Google Duo's Group Video Calls Roll out to Everyone in Engadget

You can chat with up to seven of your friends at the same time.
Google is making Duo more useful as it's rolling out group video calls to everyone on Android and iOS. You can have up to eight people on a call at once (a far lower limit than FaceTime's 32 and Skype's 50). Group calls gradually went live in some markets this month, but now they'll be available for everyone.  ... "

Presentations from Retail Robotics and AI Conference

Impressive to see what is being done in this space:

RAC Retail Robotics & AI Conference Presentations

HINSDALE, Ill. – The second annual Retail Analytics Council Retail Robotics & AI Conference brought together more than 125 senior-level retailers, academics, and industry leaders for a unique educational event addressing current and future robot and AI trends. 

Topics addressed included: U.S.-China Retailers, Consumer Trends, and AI; Observations on the State of Retail Technology and AI; How to Implement a Retail Analytics Function; Advanced Analytics in Customer-Centric Strategies; AI Use Cases; How Bayesian Network Learning is Applied in Marketing; Data Privacy; Current Retail Robot Applications and Benefits; Robots in Retail Competition; Robust Perception for Robotics Systems; Intelligent Automation; and Future Retail Robot Applications. .... 

Speakers included:

Magali Bervillé, Senior Director of Digital Marketing, Moroccanoil
John Black, Senior Vice President, New Product Development, Brain Corporation
Dr. Martin Block, RAC Executive Director and Professor, Medill/IMC, Northwestern University
Jeff Burnstein, President, The Association for Advancing Automation
Cari Covent, VP, Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Automation, Canadian Tire Corporation
Justine Gottshall, Partner, InfoLawGroup LLP ....  (many more) 

Many of these speakers have made their conference presentations available to view. Visit the Platt Retail Institute website for more information.  Many presentations here.

Alexa, Join My Meeting

Slightly surprising given Google's recent moves, will work with Google Suite and also MS Office, Skype, Zoom, Chime and others.  For a limited time open to all Alexa users,  but apparently later will revert to only subscribers to Alexa for Business.   Have now seen a number of attempts to do conference support and assistance, none yet useful enough, but the assistance possibilities are considerable.

“Alexa, join my meeting” – Join conference calls with Alexa, now open to all Alexa users!  by aakarsh  in AWS  April 4, 2019

Starting today, Alexa device users can join meetings using their existing Alexa devices at home or work by saying “Alexa, join my meeting”! This feature is available for all Alexa users for a limited time, even if their organization does not use Alexa for Business yet. Just say “Alexa, join my meeting” to get started!

Alexa for Business at deskAlexa for Business already enables users to join meetings from conference rooms. Customers who have Alexa devices at home requested us to add the capability to join meetings even without a central deployment of Alexa for Business by their administrator. We are excited to enable this capability today for all Alexa device owners. You can get started by simply saying “Alexa, join my meeting” and following instructions to link your calendar with Alexa. Joining meetings is supported on most Alexa enabled devices that support Alexa Communication and works with a variety of popular conferencing solutions including Amazon Chime, Cisco WebEx, Zoom, and Skype.

By linking your Microsoft Office 365, Outlook, Google Gmail or G Suite, or Apple iCloud calendar via the Alexa app, Alexa will automatically find the next meeting and identify the right meeting ID and PIN numbers so you can join the meeting seamlessly. Once on the call, you can use the mute button to mute or say “Alexa, hang up” to leave the meeting. You can also say “Alexa, press 5” to enter touch tones. Echo Show or Echo Spot owners will join with audio and also see a keypad, the meeting title, call duration, and a hang-up button on screen.   ... "

Demystifying Data Science Free online Conference.

Looks to be of interest with good industry and technical speakers.

A FREE Live Online Conference for Aspiring Data Scientists & Data-Curious Business Leaders
28 Speakers • 2 Days • FREE
July 24 - July 25, 2018     10am - 5pm ET

The #DemystifyDS Experience
Demystifying Data Science is designed to be equal parts informative and interactive. All registrants will have access to the presentation recordings after the conference - but you have to attend live for the full experience!

More information and registration.

Cisco Adds a Spark Conferencing Assistant

Said to be a result of Cisco's acquisition of MindMeld earlier this year.  Makes sense, now will it add a level of attentiveness to a conference and do supporting searches and create to-do lists?

With Spark Assistant, Cisco adds voice-activated A.I. to videoconferencing   By Matthew Finnegan 

Cisco envisions a phased rollout of Spark Assistant, a new service designed to end some of the pain out of setting up office meetings. ... " 

See continually updated and curated  list of virtual assistants.

Google Does Conferencing, Needs Assistant

Below described an announced  business extension of Hangouts. It would seem that a natural next step would combine this with Google Assistant.   A Google Home listening in?  A simple example might have the attentive assistant construct a 'to do' list from the conversation.  Beyond that,  the assistant could do followup research for the call based on a knowledge graph of participants and the goals of the meeting.    Post the results and suggest other participants and future sub tasks.  The big value could be in assistant software rather than just hardware.

Google's video conferencing kit gets an AI camera and display
Chromebox for meetings now comes packaged with upgraded hardware.

by Saqib Shah, @eightiethmnt  in Engadget

Being Charismatic on a Conference Call

Sounds useful.

On a Conference Call, You Have to Act Charismatic (Even If You're Not). Here's How
By treating your conference calls as performances, you can make them not just bearable (though that would be great), but actually enjoyable and productive. .... "
  
By Cathy Salit    Founder and CEO, Performance of a Lifetime. in Inc.

Microsoft Surface Hub

Saw a demonstration of this last week,  Microsoft Surface Hub, with the aim to make it useable from phones to large touch screens using the upcoming Windows 10.  Beyond conferences, can be used to deliver data directly to multiple decision makers that need process synchronization. Saw a presentation of this when it was being delivered by Perceptive Pixel.   And more in CWorld.

" ... Microsoft wants Windows 10 to run on everything—phones, tablets, PCs, and even whiteboards. The Surface Hub is its take on the interactive whiteboard—a collaboration tool for businesses that combines Skype for Business, a 4K HDTV, and the largest capacitive Pen/touch display on the market.

I got some hands-on time with the product at Microsoft's Windows 10 launch event, and came away with one thought—we have to get one of these for the Labs.

I tried the 84-inch and 55-inch versions of the device. Standing next to the 84-inch version, you really get the sense you are standing in front of an enormous blank canvas. The screen runs at 120Hz, which is double what competing whiteboards can deliver.

If you are familiar with Perceptive Pixel, the display company Microsoft acquired two years ago, the Surface Hub will seem familiar, too. In fact, this is the same technology you see on most broadcast news shows. But Microsoft has made some important changes. ... " 

Tracking the Value of Corporate Get-togethers

This week attending IBM's big conference on Big Data and Analytics called Insight2014.  In progress all this week.  A huge affair with thousands of participants.  Each IBM participant is given an RFID tag.  They are allowed to opt out of this, but few do.  This allows IBM to understand not who particularly attends what, but how many people attend what parts of the conference, even the path of individual people.  You can also do data queries against the data.  How many people from a particular organization attended a key talk?   How many meals need to be ready for lunch. It's not that tagging has not been tried in conferences before, its that this data is designed to better understand the microstructure of the data. The statistics of the data.  In aggregate and in real time.  Leading to an understanding of the conference's value. A display in the lobby lets you visualize the results and pose new hypotheses.  An excellent example of behavioral data.

#ibminsight

Cisco and Conferencing

Cisco targets empty conference rooms with videoconferencing push
Cisco is readying a suite of new and enhanced videoconferencing solutions designed to offer companies a number of high-performance but cost-effective avenues to increase enterprise communication. The new offerings, which will include a price cut of up to 45% on some products, will leverage the popularity of bring-your-own-device by adding employee smartphones and tablets ....  Cisco unveiled Wednesday an array of video conferencing products as it seeks to provide video collaboration systems for meeting rooms of all sizes. ....  " 

Informs Analytics

Upcoming Informs Analytics meeting in San Antonio in early April.  I have attended many, hosted a few, written speeches for them, presented at many, even received  an few awards there.  A good conference, like many of them are, if you plan participation carefully.  More here.