Make the Case for ODSC East 2020: 10 Points to Convince Your Manager

Everyone practicing in the field of data science is faced with the same dilemma: how to stay on top of projects and stay current in a field that seems to change rapidly every six months. Getting out of the office can help you focus on building new skills, building your network, and offer a welcome respite from the office.

Need help convincing your manager that it’s in their best interest to send you to ODSC? Here are 10 reasons why ODSC East 2020 is a compelling investment of your time.

Reason # 10 — Content

No other conference offers both the breadth and depth of an ODSC event. The proof is in the numbers. We are the number-one leading data science conference in terms of sessions with over 400 hours of content by 250 presenters, including 17 tracks, 55 half-day or full-day training sessions, 75 workshops, and 150 general sessions.

Reason # 9 — Hands-on Applied Training

As an applied data science conference, we focus on practical data science that can be utilized immediately. Our expert speakers and instructors are drawn from across industries and know what it takes to make machine learning and deep learning work. Over 50% of our content is hands-on training in either full-day, half-day, or 2-hour sessions. Thus, you can return to the job ready to put your newfound skills to work.

Reason # 8 — Best of the Best

Our instructors are some of the leading experts in the world. Not only are they the best and brightest, but they also work at some of the top companies at the forefront of the AI revolution. You’ll get to rub shoulders with speakers like from Tom M. Mitchell, PhD, founder of the renowned Machine Learning Department at Carnegie Mellon University, Cassie Kozyrkov, PhD, Googles’ Chief Decision Scientist, Mike Stonebraker, PhD, the father of modern databases and an A.M. Turing Award winner, and leading researcher Michael Kearns, PhD, founding director of UPenn’s Center for Data Science. You’ll return to work with numerous insights from these famous minds.

Reason # 7 — Open Source Rock Stars

Advances in machine learning, deep learning, NLP, and other areas of data science continue to be powered by open source. Chances are that your company is using many of these tools and pretrained models. ODSC is the leading conference with a focus on these platforms. Most importantly, we host multi-day training sessions and workshops by the authors and core contributors of these platforms. Andrea Muller of scikit-learn, Thomas Wolf of Hugging Face Transformers, Max Kuhn, PhD, of caret, Adam Paszke of PyTorch, and Matei Zaharia of Apache Spark and MLFlow are just a few. After ODSC, you’ll return to work with a deeper understanding of these frameworks directly from their main authors.

Reason # 6 — Demo Hall

Companies need to constantly stay abreast of developments in the market. Much of data science is moving to the cloud and advanced machine learning workflow is a must-have. Teams and companies need to make purchasing and build vs buy decisions. The AI Expo hall at ODSC East 2020 is where you can learn about the latest products and features from leading providers like Microsoft, DataRobot, and many more. Hear directly from the providers and attend our demo theater sessions for more in-depth presentations. Return to work armed with insights to make build vs buy and purchasing decisions.

Reason # 5 — The Latest Trends and Topics

NLP pretrained models like BERT, ERNIE, and ELMo and APIs like Hugging Face Transformer were some of the breakout topics of 2019. We have over 20 sessions on NLP and numerous sessions on other topics, including machine learning workflow, federated models, explainable AI, recommendation systems, graph networks, computer vision, self-supervised and semi-supervised learning, synthetic data, DeepRacer, and reinforcement learning. You’ll return to work well-versed in the latest data science topics to help keep your team ahead of the rest.

Reason # 4 — The Connections

Like many fields, data science is a community. The collaborative effort that goes into building open source platforms and the sharing of ideas is a large part of that. Exchanging insights and connecting with people who have a shared passion is always rewarding. Companies are also embracing this collaborative trend. At ODSC East you’ll make connections through our many networking events and return to work with a stronger network of potential partners and collaborators that can help you and your company grow.

Reason # 3 — Return on Investment

Attending conferences and training can be a big budget item for any business. ODSC combines the best of both the technical and the community building. You’ll be inspired by our top data science leader keynotes but also get hand-on training you can readily apply at work. The best part is that we offer some of the most competitive pricing and widest range of content of any AI or data science conference. Businesses care about ROI and this is an event that is an excellent investment for you and your company.

Reason # 2 — Value your Time

You and your company know your time is valuable. However, the field is changing so rapidly it’s hard to know what skills to upgrade and what to focus on. Between the demands on your time at work, project deadlines, and a busy outside life, it’s a constant battle to carve out time to upskill. ODSC is an accelerated learning where your time is maximized. You can get hands-on training where you can get current quickly and set up the foundation to continue learning throughout the year. After 2 to 4 intense days of sessions, you’ll return to the office ready to put new skills and knowledge to work immediately.

Reason # 1 — You Deserve it

Perhaps the most important reason of all. Let’s face it. Being a data scientist, software engineer or technologist of any stripe is generally a well-paying and very professionally rewarding gig. But it’s also a demanding one. There is no better way to reward yourself, get inspired, and get re-energized.

Hopefully, these reasons are enough to convince your manager to help you get to ODSC East 2020 this April 13–17 in Boston! Fill out this form to get a handy downloadable guide with everything you need to seal the deal. Be sure to tell them quickly, as our 20% discount ends on March 27th! Register here.