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

[Kurt Thearling]

We're looking to get a good cross section of users and developers 
of commercial data mining software for this workshop.   I encourage 
readers of the datamine list to submit a position paper and 
participate in the workshop!

- kurt



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 Analytics
        Exchange Applications
        One Lincoln Plaza
        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 (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