DM: Workshop: Keys to the Commercial Success of Data Mining

[Kurt Thearling]

 Call For Participation  
 Workshop: Keys to the Commercial Success of Data Mining  
 To be held in conjunction with The Fourth International 
Conference on  Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining 
 New York City, August 31, 1998  


http://www.aaai.org/Conferences/KDD/1998/  
 Chairs:  
       Kurt Thearling 
       Director of Advanced Analytics 
       Exchange Applications 
       695 Atlantic Avenue 
       Boston, MA 02111  
       Roger M. Stein 
       Vice President, Senior Credit Officer 
       Quantitative Analytics and Knowledge Based Systems
       Moody's Investors Service 
       99 Church Street 
       New York, NY 10007  
 Contact Info:  
       kdd-workshop@exapps.com 
  
 Description:  
 Data mining is on the cusp of true commercial success.  
Commercial 
 institutions are starting to move beyond pilot studies and 
research programs 
 toward the production use of predictive models for real world 
business  applications.  While this is exciting, it is also where it 
gets harder.  
 Successful data mining in business doesn't come down to simply 
having a hot 
 algorithm and giving it to an experienced modeler.    
Business users care 
 about things such as database support, application integration, 
business 
 templates, flexibility, scalability, real profitability, and 
other issues 
 that have not historically been the concern of the KDD 
community. 
From a development point of view, the core algorithms are 
now a small part, 
 perhaps 10%, of the overall data mining application, which 
itself is only 
 10% of the business process that contains the application. The 
purpose of 
 this workshop is to focus on the remaining 99% so that 
commercial data 
 mining application are relevant to business users.  
 A number of the issues that we hope will get addressed at the 
workshop are 
 described in a recent article by Kurt Thearling titled 
"Some Thoughts on the  
 Current State of Data Mining Software Applications" 
(available online at 
 
http://www.santafe.edu/~kurt/text/dsstar/top10.shtml and 
in an interview given by Roger Stein (also available online at 

http://www.stern.nyu.edu/~rstein/interview.html

Objectives:    
The goal is to bring together a diverse group of developers, 
users, and integrators of business data mining applications.
The workshop will 
consist of a number of in-depth case studies and analyses, 
several invited 
speakers, and panel sessions.  Time will also be set aside 
for  discussions.    
It is expected that the workshop will include forty to fifty 
participants.  
 Approximately half of the participants will come from the data 
mining development community with the other half coming from the
data mining 
business user community.  Developers of commercial software 
for data 
 mining will also be eligible to attend the workshop if they have 
significant contributions to make beyond promotional pitches.   
The set of business 
 users attending will be selected from a diverse set of 
industries such as 
 banking, retail, insurance, government, internet services, 
telecom, etc.  In 
 addition to developers and users, a small number of participants 
will come from system integration and services companies.  
 Position Paper Submission:  
 All participants must submit a position statement of at least 
1000-words 
 (about two pages) describing their views on the subject of 
commercial data 
 mining.   The focus should be on the practical 
application of data mining  rather than the underlying algorithms.    
 For business users, position paper topics might include: 
       - Experiences (positive or negative) 
regarding the use of data mining software for 
commercial applications; 
       - Areas needing improvement in data mining software; 
       - Issues in problem formulation for 
business domains; 
       - The impact of data mining applications on business processes;  
       - The lifecycle of mining projects 
in commercial organizations; or 
       - Potential data mining applications 
in specific business domains.  
 For developers, examples of some possible topics include: 
       - Issues of database integration for data mining; 
       - Automated model selection; 
       - Strategies for addressing data problems;   
       - Integration with other business 
software applications; 
       - Issues in the design of business templates; or 
       - User interface design for business datamining.  
 The all submissions should be sent to the workshop chairs via 
email at  kdd-workshop@exapps.com. 
    
 In addition to the position statements, participants need to 
include the 
 following information in their submission:  
 1)    Developers: Software developers 
should include the name of their 
 software application, technical specifications, and the names 
of  three representative customers with deployed 
applications.  
 2)    Users (and SI/Services):  End users 
should include the names of  
 data mining applications that they have worked with, the 
industry 
 that they are working in, and the general problem space they are 
applying  data mining to.  
 Participants will be chosen based on position statements and 
their ability 
 to contribute to the workshop.  All position statements 
will be  distributed to each attendee before the workshop.  
Depending on the content 
 and variety of submissions, a collection of the papers from the 
workshop may 
 be published either in book form or as a special issue of a 
relevant  journal.  
 Timetable:  
       Jun 15:          Papers due 
       Jul 10:           Notification of acceptance/rejection 
       Aug 31:           Workshop