I wish I’d taken a photo of the papers stuck to the wall making up the final schedule — I’d guess in the end there were well over 20 talks on various topics related to data mining. Large-scale data processing with Hadoop and its machine-learning cousin Mahout was a hot topic. So was financial data mining (which was surprising to me, for a West Coast event). There were also talks on the semantic web, natural language processing, and many other topics I can’t remember now.

I proposed a topic on Data Mining and Machine Learning with R, which with a show of hands about 50 people were interested in. Then someone proposed a topic on Basic R, and more than 80 people signed up for that one. So there was a lot of interest in R at the conference — lots of people had heard about R but hadn’t yet used it. I participated in both those sessions. For the Basics session, I have an introduction to R resources for beginners and the R syntax. For the Machine Learning session, I relied heavily on Josh Reich’s machine learning script and other blog posts about predictive analytics. There was also a general session on open-source data mining tools. In addition to R, there was an interesting demo of KNIME (a workflow-based data mining tool that reminded me of Insightful Miner). It was interesting to see that KNIME can run algorithms from R and Weka, too.

All in all, a really invigorating event. Many thanks to the folks from the ACM for organizing it.

SF Bay ACM: 2009 Silicon Valley Data Mining Camp

Please send any updates or corrections, and I will revise.

Patrick Nicolas
“ I do not think that you can gather so many experts in this field on a Sunday afternoon anywhere in the world except Silicon Valley. The organization of the camp was just awesome. I was able to share both technical issues and potential solutions with some very smart engineers. Greg and Tricia did a remarkable job. ”

Bill Tang
“ This is a great camp. The organizer did a fantastic job. The panel and the people leading the sessions are some of the best people in this field. I wish I could have attended all the parallel sessions. ”

Bob Blum
“ Fantastic! Great lectures, bright participants, fascinating subject. ”

video.syntience.com and vimeo.com

Thanks to Syntience and Monica Anderson!

While Hacker’s Dojo is a great facility, with 225 people participating last time, and expectations of more people next time, I am investigating options for other locations. I am seeking contacts at large companies or universities, to discuss holding the next free Data Mining Camp.

I am also seeking constructive suggestions for improving the next DM Camp – please send to my email (listed at the top of this posting).

Thanks, Greg

http://tinyurl.com/acmdmsig

http://www.hewettresearch.com/svcc2009/

A great text for beginners looking into the Semantic Web …

“Explorer’s Guide to the Semantic Web” by Thomas B. Passin