Day One - Wednesday 25 September
The first day of the Data Innovation Showcase was opened by keynote speaker Dr Mhairi Aitken of the Alan Turing Institute, whose engaging talk explored the importance of public involvement in data-intensive innovation. This was followed by a lively panel discussion in collaboration with Scott Logic as part of our Art of Innovation specialism.
The day also featured a variety of workshops under the umbrella of the Art of Innovation and Data Mastery tracks, including an insightful deep dive into the risks of Prompt Injection Attacks by Scott Logic’s Doro Hinrichs and Kira Clark.
The networking opportunities which arose throughout the day culminated in the evening social at St James’ Park, which was very kindly sponsored by Red Hat. We had a brilliant time chatting to you all whilst overlooking the Magpies’ pitch!
Day Two – Thursday 26th September
Day Two of the Showcase kicked off with a captivating keynote by How Might We founder Hannah Underwood. Her talk about the overlap between data, technology and human connection certainly took us on an unexpected but enlightening journey!
Thursday's programme also featured a range of workshops designed to broaden attendees’ understanding and working knowledge of specialist data science techniques. For example, Dr Myles Mitchell of Jumping Rivers delivered an informative session on deploying machine learning models into production as part of our Data Mastery track.
Both days of the conference featured an extensive range of interactive workshops and masterclasses led by members of the NICD team. This included Dr Georgia Atkinson’s stand-out talk about the applications of machine learning in wildlife conservation, which received special mentions in our post-conference feedback.
We also welcomed businesses such as Sage and the NHS as part of our series of Data-Driven Success Stories. For many attendees, hearing about the real-world applications of data to foster business innovation was a particular highlight of the Showcase.
Data Innovation Showcase Mobile App
As a specialist data and innovation event, this year’s conference saw the addition of NICD’s white label event app, designed to optimise attendee experience by increasing engagement, networking and interaction between speakers and delegates alike.
The app contained each delegate’s personalised agenda over the two days, answered questions about the conference, and also allowed users to share their live updates from the event across platforms such as LinkedIn and X, using the official #NICDShowcase hashtag.
The app’s gamified interface encouraged networking with other attendees and exhibitors to earn points and win sponsored prizes. We hosted a prizegiving during the closing address of the conference, which saw us award some incredible prizes such as two weeks’ access to the award-winning Altair AI studio and a three-hour consultancy session with Jumping Rivers.
Congratulations to all our lucky winners!
Event Feedback
We were blown away by the reception to this year’s Data Innovation Showcase. These are just a handful of the comments we received:
“Inspiring to hear real business use cases of latest data technology and know how much benefit is generated.”
“The app was a great addition this year, really easy to find where I should be and kept me on schedule all day.”
“The social was really well planned. The networking and engagement that happened there was amazing.”
“Overall a very professional showcase. Excellent talks. The app was astonishingly good. An example of how future conferences should be monitored and run. The networking and coffee discussions were the activities that I'll take forward. Congratulations on being bold enough to take risks in running the showcase. The risks worked. You all deserve a medal. Thank you.”
We were also encouraged by the volume of positive responses to our feedback forms:
- 100% of respondents said that they would attend next year’s conference,
- 93% of respondents found the content shared during Day Two of the Showcase highly engaging,
- 87% of respondents are highly likely to recommend the Data Innovation Showcase to friends, family or colleagues,
- 80% of respondents said that they are highly likely to use what they learnt at the Data Innovation Showcase to benefit their organisation or role.
Our Sponsors and Exhibitors
We would like to thank our sponsors, Altair, Red Hat, Newcastle University, Arrow, Hartree SME North East Hub and UKRI, for helping to make this year’s Data Innovation Showcase possible.
Many of our sponsors and supporters had stands in the exhibition hall at our conference, and the networking opportunities this provided was consistently listed as a highlight amongst event attendees.
Our 2024 Data Innovation Showcase was really special, and we loved meeting you all there - we can’t wait to welcome you back next year!
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