We are sponsoring and attending a number of upcoming IEG. Summits and Conferences this year.  We’ll be posting details about these conferences periodically and would love to see you there!

The IEG. Social Media & Web Analytics Innovation Summit, is being held at the Hyatt Regency Boston, September 13 & 14, 2012 is examining the relationship between Social Media and Analytics that has seen companies like Facebook and Linkedin see huge growth and huge IPO’s in the last 12 months.  The summit will bring together over 300 Social Media & Analytics experts to discuss the usage of social media analytics in business. With 80+ sessions covering important topics and key issues facing organisations today, this summit will offer key insights into this new business space.

Confirmed speakers include:

• Vice President, Digital Marketing & Analytics, Discovery
• SVP, Digital Research, NBCUniversal
• Senior Director, Personalization, CBS Interactive
• Director, Product Management, Salesforce
• Director, Channel Analytics, Merrill Lynch
• Director, Global Social Media, Ancestry
• Vice President, Web Analytics, Amazon
• Director, Business Intelligence, KPMG
• Head, Digital Marketing, Siemens
• Director, Analytics, Yammer
• And many more…

To attend this conference, contact Sean at sforeman@theiegroup.com or register online.

To stay up to date with the summit use the hashtag #SMWA to follow updates and key developments.

LEARN MORE ABOUT REAL-TIME ANALYTICS
↳ The Future of Big Data in the Agency

Join us for our free webinar on Real-Time Analytics for Agencies

Big Data is changing the game for companies of all shapes and sizes, including agencies looking to take their social media technologies and customer insight practices to the next level. But, managing the massive velocity, volume, and variety of social media and otherdata sets at scale can be a huge challenge. Infochimps has built the largest open marketplace of data sets in world. Now, we’ve now opened up our platform and work with some of the world’s top digital, advertising, and PR agencies, which use the Infochimps platform to broaden and scale their proprietary data offerings through:

• Sentiment and Influencer Analysis
• Client Customer Insights
• Real-Time Social Media Analytics
• Infographic and Report Generation
• Meme tracking

We’re having a webcast on Thursday, May 31 @ 11:00 CST, titled Real-Time Analytics: The Future of Big Data in the Agency.  Infochimps’ co-Founder, Dhruv Bansal, one of the world’s leading data scientists, will present a quick demonstration on how agencies can build their own Big Data infrastructure, distribute costs across multiple clients while growing their product offerings with Big Data - in a fraction of the time you’d expect and for a fraction of the cost of Big Data talent, enterprise consultants and/or custom enterprise solutions.  We’d love for you to attend and participate.

Learn More

Did you miss us during SXSW? Lucky for you, we may be in a city near you very soon! With about half a dozen speaking engagements at meetups and conferences in New York and the Bay Area over the next few months, we’ll be on both coasts and available for in person conversations.

A little later this week, founders, Joe Kelly and Dhruv Bansal will be in New York City for Structure: Data. Just give us a shout if you’d like to meet up with them to chat about Big Data and the Infochimps Platform!

We’ve been deep in the chaos of SXSW Interactive since late last week and it’s amazing to see how much the conference has changed even in the few years that we have existed as a company. Even more amazing is how far the conference has come since it’s inception in 1994 (18 years ago!) and how it’s changed from a music festival with a “film and multimedia conference” tacked on to the launchpad for tech that it is today.  In 2010, the number of attendees for Interactive surpassed Music for the first time and by all accounts it seems like this trend will only continue.

Infographic via Cool Infographics, created by Silicon Angle and Rocksauce Studios

We’re just four short days away from the start of the beautiful madness we call SXSW Interactive and as you prepare for what has been lovingly referred to as “Geek Spring Break“, you may be wondering how to track down some of the smart chimps in the jungle. Well, you’re in luck, here’s your field guide to finding our founders: Flip Kromer, Dhruv Bansal, and Joe Kelly in the chaos.

Disambiguation: Embrace Wrong Answers & Find Truth
Sunday, March 11 12:30pm – 1:30pm | Hilton Garden Inn (Rio Grande)

Big Data can solve big problems, but it can also head to big headaches. For example, seemingly easy questions can gain immense complexity when you consider ambiguity. Dhruv Bansal and Flip Kromer will be presenting a tag-team panel on how we can embrace ambiguity and #findtruth in our data.

Data Show and Tell: International Data-Driven Journalism Unconference
Sunday, March 11 3:00pm – 5:00pm | Texas Tribune (823 Congress Ave, Suite 210)

We’re joining NPR, Deutsche Welle Innovation Projects and the Texas Tribute for an unconference for the data people  - with a focus on data journalism and data science. Topics of discussion will include examples of reporting based on data, cool data visualization and how to create them, how to create more effective data-driven teams in the newsroom, and more! Interested in attending? Email Mirko Lorenz to reserve a spot!

Austin [Big] Data Party!
Sunday, March 11 6:00pm – 9:00pm | Elysium (705 Red River St.)

Hobnob with some of the world’s biggest data geeks at the Austin [Big] Data Party, organized by GeekAustin. We’re one of the co-sponsors and would love to share a drink with you! No badge required – just RSVP!

Big Data Meet Up
Monday, March 12 3:30pm – 4:30pm | Hilton Austin Downtown (Room 615AB)

Get together with other Big Data professionals for an hour of brainstorming, idea-buidling, networking, friend-making and career-enhancement. This event is presented by Silona Bonewald, co-founder of TuneHopper.
We’ll see you soon!

O’Reilly Strata Conference kicks off today in Santa Clara, CA, and you can view the livestream here after the jump.

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We’re gearing up for Strata 2012 and the wonderful folks at O’Reilly have bestowed upon us one Conference Pass for Strata 2012 that we will be giving away to one of our lucky blog readers!  This pass, worth $1345, gives you access to two amazing action packed days of panels, discussions and workshops at Strata 2012.

All you have to do is comment on this blog post!  That’s it!  We’ll select one winner on Friday, February 17th at 5pm CT and that person will receive a super secret code that will comp them for a Conference Pass.  How cool is that?

Want to learn more about the conference?  We’ve got the full rundown, plus a 20% off discount code for you after the jump!

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We’re excited to have our CTO, Flip Kromer presenting a talk at Strata Conference in Santa Clara later this month.  The discussion centers around disambiguation.  Now you might be wondering… what is disambiguation?  Simply put, disambiguation is the process of resolving conflicts to remove ambiguity.  We’ve discussed this topic a number of times in this blog and Flip will be presenting on how this concept affects the way we ask questions and find answers about Big Data.

For more details on the talk, check out the Strata schedule.

Yesterday, we attended the MadeInAustin Fair, an event that can perhaps be described as a “Job Fair 2.0″.  The event, endorsed by Mayor Lee Leffingwell, Bob Metcalfe and other local leaders, focused on connecting students with start-ups and small companies.  The goal?  To stop the massive brain drain of tech talent from the Silicon Hills.

According to Leffingwell, 80% of the engineers graduating from the University of Texas leave the city to seek work in other cities.  With over 100 companies in attendance at yesterday’s event, the vast majority searching for engineers, it’s obvious that the start-up community of Austin needs to make a concerted effort to keep and attract talent to our fair city.

So what’s the sell to UT’s most talented engineers who tend leave Austin to work for the Googles and Facebooks of the world?  Instead of leaving town, connect to the start-ups in your community and work for the next Google and the next Facebook.

The sell of working for a start-up?  Your job will be a dynamic and exciting.  You’ll have real influence over the direction of the company and its products.  You get to work with similarly driven, innovative, (often) very fun people.  And if it all works out, the monetary payoffs can be huge.

In addition to the openings for full time positions and internships with us, there’s tons of other opportunities in Austin.  We encourage you to keep the spirit of innovation alive by joining or starting your own startup.

Here are some great resources to check out to get you on your way:

MadeInAustin Fair: Interested in a position with an Austin start-up or small tech company?  Peruse the full list of attendees of the first MadeInAustin Fair and check out current openings for full-time, part-time and internship roles.

campus2careers: Connect with positions at start-ups and small/medium sized businesses.  Currently only available in Texas, but looking to be nationwide in the next year.

Capital Factory: Check out this early stage accelerator program for tech startups that provides a small amount of seed capital and weekly mentoring sessions by entrepreneurs who have founded successful companies.

Yesterday, our CEO, Nick Ducoff presented at Data Content, an Infocommerce conference. In this presentation geared towards fellow data publishers, Nick takes us through a history of information and his thoughts on the future and where Infochimps fits into the puzzle.  If you’d like to review a full transcript of his presentation, you can check it out after the jump. Enjoy!

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