Big Data LDN 2024, the UK’s leading data, analytics, and AI event, has just come to a close following two days filled with ground-breaking stories, expert insights, and endless innovation.
The two-day event, which came to its conclusion yesteday, is a hub for the Data Community to learn and share best practices, build relationships and find the tools needed to develop an effective data-driven business.
Attendees were given the opportunity to learn first-hand from pioneers, experts and industry leaders, discovering the tools and techniques required to deliver business value from successful data projects from some of the brightest minds in the industry.
There were also plenty of opportunities face-to-face with tech providers and consultants to find solutions to your data challenges and view the latest product releases and software demos to enhance your business' data capabilities.
In total, there were 15 theatres and 300 speakers, featuring keynote presentations and panels, conferences, and workshops exploring everything from AI and automation to Datamesh to DataOps to Observability.
As official media partners at Big Data LDN 2023, the EM360 team was there to cover the excitement, insights and incredible stories shared at the event. Here are our highlights!
Day 1
The first day of the event kicked off with a talk from Conference Chair, Mike Ferguson, who summarised where companies are in data, analytics and AI in 2024, what the key challenges and trends are, how are these trends impacting how companies build a data-driven enterprise and where you can find out more about these at the show.
That was followed by a talk by Anupam Datta, Principal Research Scientist in AI at Snowflake, who discussed Key design patterns and methodology for evaluating, experimenting and monitoring enterprise gen AI apps to address common failure models.
Other notable sessions from the day included a talk from Adrian Estala, VP and Field Chief Data Officer at Starburst Data, who discussed how data products are feeding data-hungry AI strategies across the enterprise to improve productivity, unlock new opportunities, drive competitive advantage, and lead in the era of intelligent business.
There was also a fascinating session over in the X-Axis Theatre with Google Cloud’s Paola Olivari , who discussed how to build a modern, cloud-based data foundation for data-driven applications, real-time analytics, and high-performance, immersive gen AI
Day 2
As thousands of attendees filled the Olympia for day two, the event continued with a talk from Helen Mannion, Director of Propore Leadership, Lynne Bailey, Field CTO at Databricks, and Lizzie Harris, Customer Director at B&Q. They discussed how organizations can enable and educate organisations to embrace a GenAI strategy and narrow down use cases to those that truly drive value.
Then came a talk by Leigton Searle, Head of EMEA Data and Analytics at Microsoft, who dissected the challenges and opportunities data leaders face in preparing their organisations for the AI era.
One of our favourite sessions was a talk from Federico Frumento, Vodafone and Stijn 'Stan' Christiaens about learning how Vodafone has used data governance fundamentals to increase the scalability and collaboration of Gen AI use cases.
Day 2 concluded with the show’s headline keynote “Data in Sport”, which brought sports personalities including Sir Matthew Pinsent CBE, Rebecca Adlington OBE and Sir Chris Hoy MBE for a discussion hosted by Sports presenter Claire Balding about how they overcame personal challenges and use data to achieve success at the highest levels of the sport.
A New Standard for Data Events
Big Data LDN 2024 has been the biggest event to date, with over 20,000 visitors attending across the two-day event and a whole new area to accommodate not one but two keynote theatres this year.
It was also incredibly exciting, insightful, and busy for the EM360 team, who spoke to over 40 data experts about some of the latest data trends leading the discussions at the event and the importance of the event in the global data community.
We’ll be posting all of our interviews to our Video Resources Page, so stay tuned to listen to all of the conversations we had with experts at this incredible event!
