Day 2 of The Analytics Forum 2023 (TAF) has come to an end! The third and final day of TAF will resume tomorrow for the highly anticipated #TAFHACK. With eye-opening sessions led by over 30 expert speakers, data visionaries, and Spotfire users from around the world, TAF has secured its place as the leading visual analytics and data science event of the year.
Continue reading to discover the Day 2 insights from TAF2023, or catch up on the expert tips and tricks from Day 1 of TAF.
The new frontiers of AI & visual analytics
The Analytics Forum continued with Spotfire leadership setting the stage in an exciting general session. Attendees heard from Matteo Masotti, Head of the Data Competence Center of Global Trading and Commodity Management at Enel, on the company’s innovations in sustainability as well as an in-depth conversation with Heleen Snelting, Director of Data Science at Spotfire, on the topic of digital sustainability in the energy management sector.
When asked about what he sees as the next big game changer for energy utilities from his perspective, Masotti states, “I think the evolution of generative AI has the potential to significantly impact utility processes and profits in several ways. Generative AI can be used to create new designs and models to improve efficiency and reduce costs––for example, generative design can be used to create optimized designs for wind turbines and predictive maintenance models to help utility companies identify potential issues producing downtime and maintenance costs.”
Following a discussion on innovations in sustainability, we heard from Niklas Amberntsson, Director of Product Management at Spotfire, who shared a comprehensive summary of what’s new in Spotfire and a detailed explanation of the product’s direction.
Watch the on-demand session, “New Frontiers in AI and Visual Analytics: Spotfire Showcase,” to gain a greater understanding of sustainability innovations and immersive Spotfire technology.
NLP and LLM trends to watch
In another thought-provoking session––Spotfire’s Senior Director of Data Science, Ahmad Fattahi, and Lead Data Scientist, Sweta Kotha, discuss what has been trending in Natural Language Processing (NLP) in the last year. They opened the session on the releases of popular models and applications, including Large Language Models (LLMs), and how these advancements came about. They also detail how Spotfire can use cutting-edge, state-of-the-art NLP and LLM technology to gain greater insights.
The session highlighted the exciting research the Spotfire data science team is doing with large language models (LLMs), called Spotfire Copilot™ as an R&D project. The tool is geared toward a Spotfire-centric conversational system with the goal of autochart generation, data interrogation, product help, customers’ industry-specific topics, and developer assistance. In the presentation, Kotha shows how Spotfire Copilot is evolving to a conversational digital assistant with advanced natural language query abilities to answer analytics questions and produce innate Spotfire visuals.* The session concluded with a detailed architectural review of Spotfire Copilot™.
Watch the on-demand session, “What’s Trending in Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models,” to learn more about generative AI and Spotfire. This article provides a detailed description of the topic.
*The functionality of Spotfire Copilot is not currently available. If and when the functionality is made available, it may be as an optional add-on to Spotfire offerings.
Self-service Spotfire insights and customer wins
In this informative breakout session, we heard from Barry Rowan, Senior BI Developer at Riteway Sales and Marketing. Riteway Sales and Marketing is a data-driven food broker agency for retail outlets in the Southeast, covering a wide variety of food products and consumer packaged goods. By applying advanced, self-service analytics, the company enables its business users to have access to the power of data and analytics—utilizing Python scripting, Spotfire Property Controls, Spotfire Mods, and more.
When discussing the company’s Spotfire workflow, Rowan states “From the left, we have our data sources where data is pushed automatically to the cloud. We then use custom segmentation that allows us to divide the data into categories using our own data dictionary. Once the data is segmented with any custom retailer attributes and characteristics, it’s connected to a dashboard with a JDBC info link within Spotfire’s information designer––this component is user friendly, making establishing or modifying these connections seamless.”
Watch the on-demand session, “Self-service Insights with Spotfire: Increased Adoption, More Wins for Customers,” to discover how Spotfire grew business and paid for itself in less than a year.
Gearing up for #TAFHACK
That’s a wrap on our sessions for The Analytics Forum! It’s been a thought-provoking and insightful conference discovering the power of what Spotfire can do for your real-time insights, decision-making capabilities, and operational excellence––but the excitement isn’t over. The third and final day of The Analytics Forum will continue tomorrow with the highly anticipated #TAFHACK!
Miss TAF this year? You can watch most of the sessions on-demand until November 21, 2023. To see the winners of tomorrow’s Hackathon, keep an eye on #TheAnalyticsForum on LinkedIn.