Tony Rogerson's ramblings on SQL Server

08:50- 09:20 Registration

09:20-09:40 Opening and Introductions

After introductions, we begin the day with an overview of the agenda highlighting the key topics to be covered and the logistics of the event.

09:40-11:00 Introduction to Data Mining

To commence, we will discuss the concepts and the terminology used in the discipline of Data Mining. To make this session as practical as possible, we will then review the common scenarios and applications for the use of Data Mining. We will also look at the “bigger picture” of the discipline of Business Intelligence and see how Data Mining is a part of it. Also in this session we will introduce the fundamental process for data mining, looking at the concepts of data assets and their preparedness. This session will end with a look at the technology product roadmap showing you relationships between Data Mining and technologies of Microsoft SQL Server 2008 & 2005, Microsoft Office 2007, and other systems. At the end of this session you should have a good understanding of applications of Data Mining.

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:30 Working with Data Mining

You are ready to mine data–what are the steps and what is the recommended order? This session covers the already introduced Data Mining Process in detail. We will study its main steps: model preparation, model training, testing and evaluation of the built model, deployment, and ongoing model maintenance. We will spend time looking at possible exceptions and problems that you may be faced with in this process, such as missing or inconsistent data, or even data that seems fine but produces strange results. In the end, we want to make sure that the intelligence you are gathering is of quality that you expected. At the end of this session you will know how to use data mining well.

12:30-13:30 Lunch

13:30-14:45 Using Data Mining in Your IT Systems (Part 1)

14:45-15:00 Break

15:00-16:15 Using Data Mining in Your IT Systems (Part 2)

The two afternoon sessions will apply your knowledge of Data Mining to practical situations and cases that you are likely to encounter in your professional life. We will look at a number of canonical applications of data mining from the perspective of a practical scenario in order to show you how to correctly select the best features of Data Mining technologies. For example, when we look at the scenario of customer segmentation in a consumer-oriented company, we will help you chose the best of the data mining algorithms available and configure its parameters correctly. We will pay attention to common issues that may arise, such as the seasonality of data over a sales year, and we will help you decide when it is correct to rely on sampled data and when you may want to use the entire database instead. By following this pattern a few times we hope to cover all the necessary technicalities of data mining toolkit so that you are ready to use this powerful technology straight away. Before we close this session we will present you with uses of data mining that benefit your own, day-to-day, tasks as an IT Professional, System Administrator, or, perhaps, a Security Officer. For instance, we will show you how you could use data mining to better understand your infrastructure performance characteristics, to build new, higher-level data sources, or, perhaps, to discover insecure chains of infrastructure events that could lead to fraud. We hope that at the end of these two sessions we will have enabled you to work with the intelligence that previously was hidden, inaccessible, or just unknown across your IT systems.

16:15-16:45 Questions and Answers

For those attendees wishing to ask more questions or to discuss additional issues that were not covered during the day we plan a short Q&A session. Please prepare any questions in advance, if possible.

Speaker

In his role as Strategic Consultant at Project Botticelli Ltd, Rafal is responsible for analyzing and forecasting trends in the field of Information Technology. Rafal works closely with teams of up to 150 software developers, as well as with investors and their boards of directors, to practice the best principles of the Microsoft Solutions Framework and the Microsoft Operations Framework. He has helped to build and restructure software development houses and IT consultancies to promote best efficiencies and productivity while stimulating excellent team spirit across organisations. He specializes in several areas: IT architecture models, statistics and more recently data mining, security and cryptography, and management of solution delivery. Rafal is a frequent and popular speaker at Microsoft events having presented at prestigious Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer conferences across Europe, Middle East and Africa. His uniquely energetic speaking style should keep you engaged no matter how complex the subject.