Written by Frances Sneddon on Tuesday October 8th 2013 in Latest News, News and Events
Informs Day 1 & 2, exhausted!
This week I’m at the Informs Annual Meeting catching up on all the ORMS gossip, meeting old friends and making new ones.
There is so much happening it’s hard to keep up, let along blog, so I apologize but this is going to be a short whirlwind post (no pun intended given some of the SIMUL8 team didn’t make it here thanks to the tornado!)
Favorite moment so far
Watching Forio demonstrate the new open source language they use, Julia. They wanted to show how fast it was so they kicked off a function they’d already written in R. Meanwhile they went to Julia re-wrote the equivalent function, pressed run and Julia was done. R was still processing! The geek in me loves a code smack down.
Best talk so far
Target on the physics of finding the target customer. Mark Von Oven makes the comparison of how physics has managed to take our complicated world and break it down to very simple laws of nature. Can the same be done for customer analytics? Can a “Theory of Loyalty” be created. Love the idea of not just using data for creating insight and making better decisions but taking it that step forward to create a general framework of understanding of how customers behave. If we can do this for nature, surely it can be done for shopping.
Most intriguing idea
Can we use OR techniques to predict exactly the right amount of features to give away in a trial edition of software to successfully convert customers. Being in the OR software business you can understand why this peaked my interest. I spend my whole life immersed in OR, it becomes hard to see the wood from the trees as they say, so I love it when someone else points out how to “do what I say” and apply OR to make our business better.
Favorite meal
No contest, the huuuuuge dessert table at the awards ceremony.
Looking forward to
Woman in OR lunch tomorrow and watching the rest of the SIMUL8 team, do the Saul Gass memorial fun run! I’ll not be running, well someone has to take the photos 🙂
Sorry that’s it, I’m off to the last few talks of the day.
Want to chat simulation? Get in touch!
Frances Sneddon, CTO SIMUL8 Corporation
frances.s@SIMUL8.com
@FrancesSneddon