Speakers / Presentations

Speakers of Panels	Coordinators of Panels
Aamer Ahmed Ahlemeyer-Stubbe Andrea Altaf Muhammad Belhouari Adil Berengueres Ing Jose Ph.D Bourazanis George Dafalla Mustafa Franklin Samuel, Ph.D Madsen Mark Naqvi Syed Samara Mohannad Tsiptsis Konstantinos Zagorsky Victoria	Rahman Abdul Atif Rebaie Ali

Aamer Ahmed Executive Director, SkyComputing Consortium

He is Business & Technology Evangelist, Speaker and Author with more than two decades of experience in Project Management, ERP, Application Development, e-Healthcare, Business Alignments & Transformations. Have delivered wealth of projects for the different business domains across the Different Geographic regions. As a Speaker, he delivered number of conferences on Emerging Technologies such as Cloud Computing, Big Data, and Social Technologies. His professional objective is to unify the Technology & Business so that intelligence information could be available at the speed of light. He is a ‘Thought Provoking’ Speaker and strongly believes that the emerging technologies must work for the "Betterment of Humanity". Today he is actively involved in creating a Cloud Computing Consortium with a Framework “Nin-Jaw© an open Framework – For Private & Hybrid Cloud”, It is an approach driven from the best of breed Methodologies, Frameworks and Industrial best practices. The Objective is to to bring unbiased awareness across the region and create an open Standard Framework complementing from the best of the best methodologies & Frameworks.

Driving Big Value from the Big Data Operations Architecture

Evolution of Big Data Delivery Model can enhance the delivery of IT Services to the business in more efficient & effective manner and it reaps in reduction of cost, dramatizes Elastic Scalability, Integrity and Performance where Big Data can meet the peak demand as-and-when required. Exploring, Visualizing, Understanding and Analyzing the Big Data drivers on ways to Stream, Store, Govern & Transform. This session will look for ways to Anticipate, Accelerate and Differentiate the Reality and Challenges of Big Data, Capturing, Corelating, Coordinating, Corporatization. Unleash the benefits of adopting the Infrastructure, Platforms & Services offered with the alignment to the business objectives which yields a Cloud ready computing environment where Big Data can contribute a Big Value.

Ahlemeyer-Stubbe Andrea Director Strategic Analytics at Draftfcb München, Germany

Andrea draws on the wealth of experience gained from her long-standing commitment in the industry, specifically in the areas of Business Intelligence, Data Mining and Data Warehousing. She studied at the Universities of Dortmund and Sheffield. Upon graduating with a master’s degree in statistic (University Dortmund), Andrea was employed from 1993 to 1998 as a database-marketing specialist in several mail-order companies. She branched out in 1999 to form her own consulting firm with the objective of rendering personalized services focusing in Business Intelligence, DBM, CRM and Marketing Services. Her prefunded know-how met the need of national and international key players in several markets: Mail-Order, Retail, Publishing, Service Provider, Automotive, Energy Provider … Utilities This makes her a frequent lecturer of several universities (University of Applied Sciences Offenburg, Aalen, University Newcastle upon Tyne…) and a wellknown speaker at professional conferences. In addition she is a noted author of publications and actively involved in associations’ governance, f. e. President ENBIS (European Network Business and Industrial Statistics - 2007 – 2009), Leader of ENBIS -SIG Data Mining (since 2001), Programm Committee of ICDM (Industrial Conference on Data Mining - since 2001). Since April 2012 she acts as the Director Strategical Analytics of Draftfcb München and also participates in the Draftfcb global capabilities team.

Technology, Social CRM and BIG Data: How Tourism benefits!

The increasing use of technology in many areas of the travel & tourism sector enables you to collect digital data in a very fast and efficient way. In fact, it allows you to be a constant aid for all travel-related issues, fasten processes, balance your utilization and establish a digital dialogue with your guests. You will be able learn if a guest is likely to become a brand ambassador or defector. All of these technologies generate petabyte of data that should be used to reach your business objectives. These data pools can be used to obtain a higher quality of information compared to the data obtained from old fashioned booking and communication processes. This is where BIG DATA comes in. Apart from data storage you will need data mining techniques. It is possible to "mine" data pools for "hidden" insights and information. These insights give you a major competitive advantage over your competitors to attract new customers and to turn them into frequent guest and loyalists. Insights paired with individualized and data driven communication are crucial for the future development of the tourism sector. Especially in sales and marketing the knowledge about future customer behavior as well as customer intentions/ desires will make a difference between failure and success for any campaign.

Altaf Muhammad Enterprise Data Warehouse Lead, National Bank of Abu Dhabi

Muhammad has more than 12 years of experience in enterprise data warehouse solutions. Previously he worked with NCR / Teradata to manage customers across EMEA region. In this role he worked closely with the C-Levels to deliver analytical solutions tailored to organizational as well as customer needs. He helped these organizations to analyze the detailed data (and refine it) by implementing different analytical solutions leading to business applications like customer segmentation, cross sell of products & services, churn identification & prevention, attrition, revenue reporting, revenue reconciliation, revenue assurance, and regulator reporting related activities. Muhammad is now working with National Bank of Abu Dhabi managing their enterprise data warehouse domain. The key objective of this solution is to consolidate data from several source systems and deliver value through can reporting, as well as supporting business objectives like increasing customer base, controlling attrition, and determining ways of increasing revenues by customer segmentation through behavior analysis, cross sell / up sell of products and other advanced analytics solutions for detailed data analysis.

Data Analysis: Road from reactive to proactive strategy

On the presentations, the following topics will be discussed: • Stages of Maturity in Data Analysis • Importance of enriching data • Challenges in banking sector (in context of data analysis) • National Bank of Abu Dhabi transition from reactive to proactive strategy • Behavior analysis for:   - Attrition   - Cross Selling

Belhouari Adil A. Vice President, Analytics & Data mining - Riyad Bank

Adil Belhouari is a seasoned Analytics expert with a great deal of experience in multiple industries. He's actually working as Vice President Ass. / Head of Analytics and Data mining with Riyadh Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in Saudi Arabia. Prior to Riyad Bank, Adil was a leading Analytics and Data mining Expert at SAS Institute Inc., one of the largest software companies in the world focused on delivering superior software in Business Analytics. Throughout his years of experience in data analytics, Adil's technical capabilities and his strategic skills enabled him to lead even the most complex analytics projects of various scales and magnitudes, across multiple industries including Banking, Oil & Gas, Telecom and Retail. Adil holds two master degrees one in Business Intelligence and one in Finances from the University of Montreal (HEC - Montreal) and has also a diploma in Statistics Engineering. Adil also served as a professor of analytics and statistics at HEC - Montreal. He has participated in several applied scientific researches and papers published in high-level Journals. Adil has been a presenter at many conferences and seminars.

Banking Intelligence: applied Analytics to drive the link between Big Data and Decision Making Process

Between now and 2020, the sheer volume of digital information is predicted to increase to 35 trillion gigabytes – much of it coming from new sources including blogs, social media, internet search, and sensor networks. For this valid reason, Riyad Bank, one of the largest financial institutions in Saudi Arabia arranger of syndicated loans for Oil & Petrochemical industries as well as most of Saudi Arabia’s major infrastructure projects, had decided 8 years ago to give special focus on Business Intelligence by conducting a very big investment program in Data warehousing and Analytics infrastructure. Riyad Bank was a pioneer Organization in the GCC Region creating a Business Intelligence Competency Center to drive and ensure the correct use of information to enhance the Decision Making Process. In his presentation, Adil will share with the audience a quick overview of Riyad Bank experience in using big amounts of data to lead very complex Analytical projects. He will also present some key achievements and success stories that provided a significant add value to the Bank in its competitive environment.

Berengueres Ing Jose Ph.D Assistant Professor UAE University - Director UAE Medialab

Dr. Jose Berengueres has recently joined Faculty of Information Technology, UAE University as Assistant Professor. He received MEE from Polytechnic University of Catalonia, Spain in 1999 and PhD in robotics from Tokyo Tech in 2007 where developed the world most efficient climbing robot. He worked as a consultant in Germany (Deutche Bank), Switzerland and Tokyo. Recently developed for Yamagata University in Japan the world's first vision based humanoid robot that can beat humans at rock scissor paper 100%. His research focus is in the interface of mobile media, robotics and psychology. He has participated in startups such as www.estaesmiboda.com, www.listillos.com. He is consultant on Social Media to the Spanish investment fund: www.koalasicav.com, www.catrealestate.com his twitter is : @harriken

Predicting Value Customers in Airline Miles Loyalty Programs

This is a case study on an airline’s miles program resource optimization. The airline had a large miles loyalty program but was not taking advantage of recent data mining techniques. As an example, to predict whether in the coming month(s), a new passenger would become a privileged frequent flyer or not a linear extrapolation of the miles earned during the past months was used. This information was then used in CRM interactions between the airline and the passenger. The correlation of extrapolation with whether a new user would attain a privileged miles status was 39% when one month of data was used to make a prediction. In contrast, when GBM and other blending techniques were used, a correlation of 70% was achieved. This corresponded to a prediction accuracy of 87% with less than 3% false positives. The accuracy reached 97% if three months of data instead of one were used. An application that ranks users according to their probability to become part of privileged miles-tier was proposed. The application performs real time allocation of limited resources such as available upgrades on a given flight. Moreover, the airline can assign now those resources to the passengers with the highest revenue potential thus increasing the perceived value of the program at no extra cost.

Bourazanis George Head of Insights & Customer Value Management, Vodafone, Qatar

Topic will be announced soon

Dafalla Mustafa Forward Deployed Engineer, Palantir Technologies

Mustafa is an MIT engineer. He spent several years in the oil field, working around the world in a wide range of conditions. From deep-sea rigs to the mountainous regions of Argentina, Mustafa became intimately familiar with needs of large organizations to integrate a wide range of data sources and find ways to gather signal from all of the noise. Since October 2012, Mustafa has worked with Palantir Technologies Inc., as a forward deployed engineer here in the UAE. He worked extensively with customers to bring outsized value to their organizations. Understanding the challenges of large scale disparate data sources and the importance of real-time analysis to decision makers Mustafa has implemented solutions that make a difference. Today, through his work with Palantir, Mustafa is focusing on helping customers understand the challenges, risks, and rewards that come from thousands or even hundreds of thousands of megabytes of data. Whether it’s about dealing with cyber security threats in a multinational organization or financial institution, or trying to find the right investment strategy to move your portfolio to the next level, big data can help you answer those questions and Mustafa is here to help.

What Do Major Banks, Intelligence Agencies, and Oil Companies all have in Common?

Regardless of the type of organization you have the challenges you face with big data are essentially the same. 1. Data Integration: How do I get all of the different kinds of data into one place? 2. Search and Discovery: Once I have all of my data how can I make it so that my analysts can understand quickly what’s going on and give me actionable information to move forward? 3. Knowledge Management: During my analysis how can I manipulate data, test hypotheses and iterate while keeping track of everything that was done along the way? 4. Collaboration: How can I share the knowledge that is gained by one analyst or department within or even across organizations and/or business verticals without compromising privacy or security? This talk will discuss how being able to successfully answer the above questions enabled a bank to save billions, enabled law enforcement to save children, and it could save an oil company against malicious attacks.

Franklin Samuel, Ph.D Senior Analytical Lead, GOOGLE, U.S.A.

Dr. Samuel Franklin is a Senior Analytical Lead at Google with expertise in Big Data analytics, statistics, and consumer psychology. He advises Fortune 50 companies and their advertising agency partners on the application of advanced analytics to digital marketing program optimization and retail strategy development. Sam is also active in Atlanta’s technology start-up and venture capital communities. Dr. Franklin has worked in both the public and private sectors, beginning his career as a Presidential Management Fellow with the U.S. Department of the Treasury. Sam earned his B.S.B.A. in Finance from Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business and continued on to Columbia University where he earned an M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. in cognitive psychology. Dr. Franklin specialized in behavioral finance research at Columbia University and as a Presidential Management Fellow, investigating how short-term wealth fluctuations influence financial risk tolerance and investment strategy. During his free time, Dr. Franklin serves on the Board of Directors for the March of Dimes and the Green Chamber of the South. His hobbies include competitive shooting and brewing high-gravity beer.

Big Data: Minimizing Risks and Maximizing Rewards

Conversations about Big Data are becoming increasingly common in boardrooms all over the world. Organizations are making significant investments in data collection and warehousing projects with the expectation that Big Data will yield Big Rewards. But, there are significant risks associated with owning large data stores. Like any other business initiative, Big Data’s potential for reward is counterbalanced by financial and security risks. Maintaining data collection and storage infrastructure requires hardware, energy, and skilled IT professionals. Possessing large amounts of data, especially customer data, exposes an organization to hacking and corporate espionage threats that can severely impact both business operations and public relations. This presentation will outline a number of strategic actions organizations should take to minimize the risks and maximize the rewards of Big Data. The discussion will highlight key human resource requirements, program planning considerations, and data policy frameworks.

Madsen Mark Founder, Third Nature, Inc. U.S.A.

Mark spent the past two decades working on analysis and decision support projects in many industries. He is the founder of Third Nature, a research and consulting firm focused on emerging technology and practices in analytics, BI and information management. Mark is also an award-winning former CTO and consultant who frequently speaks at US and European conferences. You can reach Mark via http://ThirdNature.net or on Twitter as @markmadsen.

Big data and the nature of business decisions

Big data isn’t hype, but it is being hyped. There is substance to the shift happening in the technology market of which both business intelligence and big data are a part. The important questions to ask are “What’s different now?” and "Is there enough value to make investment worthwhile?" Big data is not a good description: you don't need enormous volumes of data to take advantage of the technology shifts in the IT market. Big data adds information delivery capabilities we didn't have in the past. Data technologies are allowing us to move beyond simple access via reports and dashboards. We can use them to address problems of uncertainty and ambiguity, as well as providing more detailed insight into business operations and customer interactions. The key to getting value from investments in big data is understanding the capabilities that can be delivered. The systems we put in place to support the information needs of business have limitations. Big data technologies tend to be strong where the existing technologies are weak, making them suitable for new types of decision making scenarios and tasks. This presentation will outline the difference between the old world of information delivery by IT and how it is changing, hopefully removing the hype and injecting reality into discussions of where and how to use big data and data science in support of business.

Naqvi Syed Account Manager Enterprise Banking UAE - SAS Institute

Syed is an accomplished Sales / Practice & Program Management professional in the space of Business Intelligence (BI), Analytics and Enterprise Data Warehousing (EDW) with substantive experience of more than a decade in successfully selling and implementing analytical solutions mostly within the financial services markets covering retail, risk, commercial banking and treasury functions in the highly demanding and very competitive financial services industry of the Middle East, Africa and Pakistan. Included in his extensive financial services industry history is his current role with SAS ME where he is managing high touch enterprise banking accounts within UAE. Prior to working for SAS he had a former role of a manager in the sales consulting operations for Oracle Financial Services Global business Unit in the Middle East & African territory covering the space of Enterprise Data Warehousing, Customer Analytics and Risk Management. In this role Syed played a crucial role in building data warehousing client base for Oracle. Syed has also worked with Riyad Bank helping the bank with the journey of implementing a data warehouse and establishing the BI Competency Center. Syed is a certified Project Management Professional and also holds a Certified Master credential on Teradata and has worked on many data warehousing projects with Teradata where he worked as a Program Manager of Professional Services.

Business Analytics in the Banking Sector. The need, the adoption, the challenges and the architectural consideration

The session is going to commence with coverage of some of the challenges financial institutions are facing in this age and time. The need and opportunities for utilizing business analytics to address those challenges, some of the common use cases of analytics in banks followed up by a case study of a bank who successfully utilized business analytics to its advantage

Rahman Abdul Atif Knowledge Manager

Atif’s aim is to enable organizations create, share, transfer, utilize and sustain knowledge within the value chains of enterprises by leveraging analytics and sound knowledge management practices. Atif is currently working as the Knowledge Manager in the Public Sector. Prior to this, he has helped several Middle Eastern companies in program development for BI and Analytics. He is currently working on devising best practices for nurturing cultures of analytics in the Middle East. He holds a master degree in Data & Knowledge Engineering from Germany and has lived in four countries. During his free time, he is either spending more time with his toddlers or volunteering in community events.

Coordinator of the 1st & 3rd Panels

Rebaie Ali Independent BI/BigData Analyst. Director of Data Science at Datoscala

Ali Rebaie is an entrepreneur and independent BI/Big Data analyst. He recently became the Director of Data Science at Datoscala, the first leading data science consultancy in the MENA region. He is currently growing a community chapter in the MENA region to educate and raise awareness about the use of big data for public good. Ali is a frequent blogger at conferences and one of the leading influencers and consultants of the big data spectrum in the Middle East & Africa. He also was the founder & president for the first PASS SQL Server & BI chapter in Lebanon. Ali also led and developed several technology projects in Business Intelligence, m-health, social network analysis, data visualization and analytics. He is a member of the Boulder BI Brain Trust (BBBT) in Boulder, USA, a membership-only consortium of leading independent BI and Big Data consultants, practitioners, and analysts worldwide. Ali earned his bachelor degree in Management Information Systems from the Lebanese American University. You can chat with Ali about anything related to data on Twitter via @AliRebaie.

Coordinator on the 2nd Panel

Samara Mohannad Group Strategy Director - Business Development, Etisalat Group

Mohannad Samara was part of Etisalat team who joint Etisalat Group at its early establishment as Group Director for Business Development back in 2009. Mr. Samara joined Etisalat 15 years ago, over the course of which he has held various senior positions within Etisalat UAE starting with Mobile Engineering & VAS and the last position in the UAE at Marketing P&S, before joining small management team who travelled to Egypt to help setup Etisalat Misr Operation, where he has headed the Mobile Services, Devices, Customer Experience & VAS teams and lastly as Senior Strategy Advisor. Mr. Samara is currently leading Etisalat Group Business Development efforts where he focuses on establishing strategic partnerships with Telecom & TMT Global & Regional players, aimed at creating strong business relationships in specific areas, based on sustainable mutual benefits and meaningful returns.

Telecom providers’ perspective of Big Data

The issues that will be presented and discussed are: 1. Evolution of Telecom, and relevance of Big Data drivers 2. Current challenges due to exploding data 3. New emerging Big Data opportunities related to Telecom 4. Benefits to consumers and industries

Tsiptsis Konstantinos CRM & Customer Intelligence Head at Eurobank Internationally experienced Consultant & Speaker on Business Analytics Author of the book: "Data Mining Techniques in CRM"

Konstantinos Tsiptsis was born in Athens Greece in 1971. He has an MSc in applied statistics and a working experience in CRM & Customer Intelligence for more than fifteen years. Working for companies such as Vodafone, SPSS & Eurobank, he has in-depth understanding of numerous industries including banking, telephony and retail. For the last eight years he holds the position of CRM & Customer Intelligence Head in Eurobank, the second biggest financial institution in Greece & Balkans. He is an internationally experienced consultant and speaker regarding Business Analytics & Relationship Marketing applications. His domains of expertise are mainly strategic CRM, life cycle management, customer segmentation management, direct response marketing and Campaign Management. He has written the book Data Mining Techniques in CRM: Inside Customer Segmentation, regarding Data mining & segmentation management which became a best seller in Europe. His vision is to help Companies bridge the gap between technology and its use in high-value marketing applications.

Customer segmentation & advanced social network analysis for getting the maximum of your customer base

Customer segmentation used to be and will keep on being the first step for enterprises aiming to build strong relationships with their customers. Different types of segmentation are used for supporting strategy development, relationship marketing & new product/service development. Most of the times these applications are applied to individually defined customers ignoring the dimension of strong relations that exist between relatives & friends as well as business partners & associates. Social Network Analysis is the only way of quantifying the word-of-mouth effect especially in industries where strong relationships among customers can be captured and recorded such as telecommunications, email providers & financial institutions. This presentation aims to share thoughts about combining segmentation to SNA in order to get into your actual customers’ DNA. Combining these social properties to individuals’ behavior can help an enterprise take its marketing to the next level. The main topics that will be discussed are the following: • Multiple Segmentation Techniques in Relationship Marketing • ‘Social Network Analysis’ the new dimension in Relationship Marketing • Combining Traditional Segmentation with SNA in order to get into your Customers’ DNA. Case studies from multiple industries such as Telephony & Banking will be presented

Zagorsky Victoria Consumer Insights Manager, Citibank UAE

Victoria Zagorsky is a highly accomplished and award-winning market research professional committed to providing strategic consumer insights that drive business forward. Victoria started her career at Nielsen, where she handled Fortune 500 clients including Pepsi and Nestle. In her current position as the Consumer Insights Manager at Citibank, Victoria acts as the champion and the voice of the consumer and inspires the business with actionable insight. Marketing research is Victoria's passion. She is an innovator, always at the forefront of what is new in marketing research. Her special areas of interest include Big Data, behavioral economics and emerging research methods. Victoria holds an MBA from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and BBA in Marketing (with honors) from the American University in Dubai. Victoria is the member of the Market Research Society UK. You can follow Victoria on Twitter via @victoriazagorsk or get in touch with her at www.VictoriaZagorsky.com.

Big Data Best Practices: Harness Big Data for Deeper Customer Insight to Drive Profitability and Growth

The presentation will offer insights into how to leverage Big Data for competitive advantage. Case studies from the financial services sector will be presented.