The INFORMS Practice meeting coming up in Orlando has an extremely impressive set of methodology tutorials planned. Here is the list:
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M. Kevin Geraghty, MS, Vice President, Research & Analytics, on “Marketing in Online Social Spaces.”Business Forecast Systems, Inc.
Eric A. Stellwagen, BA, CEO & Co-Founder, on “Beyond Time Series Forecasting: Improving Forecasting Accuracy by Modeling the Impact of Promotions, Business Interruptions and Other Aperiodic Events.”Chevron Corporation
Franklyn G. Koch, MS, Decision Analysis Practice Leader, Chevron Projects Resources Company, on “How Game Theory Yields New Insights to Decision Analysis in the Energy Industry.”Federal Energy Regulatory Commission
Richard O’Neill, PhD, Chief Economic Advisor, on “Better, Smarter Electricity Markets: How Better Optimization Software Can Save Billions.”Forio Business Simulations
Michael Bean, MS, President, on “How to Create Web-Based Simulations and Interactive Data Visualizations.”.Georgia Institute of Technology
Ellis L. Johnson, PhD, Professor & Coca-Cola Chair; Industrial & Systems Engineering, on “A Framework for Choosing Optimization Software.”Hewlett-Packard Corporation
Pramod Singh, PhD, Analytics Solution Architect, on “Marketing Campaign Optimization Is Hard (Especially in the Future).”IBM Research
Robin Lougee-Heimer, PhD, Research Staff Member; Program Manager, COIN-O.R., on “Using Open-Source Solvers in Prime-Time Applications.”Innovative Decisions, Inc.
Donald L. Buckshaw, MS, Senior Principal Analyst, on “The Balance Beam Process for Prioritization and Weight Elicitation.”Intechné
Sanjay Saigal, PhD, President, on “Fueled by Randomness: Practical Probability Management.”Intel Corporation
Erik F. Hertzler, MBA, Capital Supply Chain Staff Engineer, TME Capital Planning Group, on “Using Option Contracts with Suppliers to Reduce Risk and Build Win-Win Relationships.”SAS Institute Inc.
Michael Gilliland, MS, MSE, Product Marketing Manager, Forecasting, on “Why are Forecasts So Wrong? What Management Must Know About Forecasting.”Schneider National, Inc. & Princeton University
Ted L. Gifford, MS, Distinguished Member of Technical Staff and Hugo Simao, PhD, Senior Operations Research Engineer, on “Approximate Dynamic Programming Captures Fleet Operations for Schneider National.”University of Cincinnati, College of Business
Jeffrey D. Camm, PhD, Professor and Head; Quantitative Analysis & Operations Management, on “The Art of Modeling.”Xerium Technologies, Inc. & Vanguard Software Corporation
David Bryant, Vice President, Operations and Brian Lewis, PhD, Vice President, Professional Services, on “Global Optimization for Complex Production Scheduling Decisions.”Veritec Solutions
Warren H. Lieberman, PhD, President, on “Effective Pricing.”
A few points: it is surprising how many tutorials are being given by non-academics: it will be fantastic to get a real-world view on these issues. Second, I am very impressed with the range of topics being discussed. Third, I would really like to see about 2/3 of these, but know that I will only have time for 2 or 3 (since Monday is fully scheduled for me for the Edelman competition). This is going to be frustrating! I think I will volunteer to do the conference scheduling in order to maximize the number of tutorials I can see.
If you are interested in this conference, note that the super saver registration deadline is March 1.
Mike, I don’t believe this list is quite correct. A few non-tutorial presentations have crept in.
* O’Neil delivers one of the two plenaries. (The other is by Mark Shafer, SVP @ Disney.)
* Gilliland, Hertzler and Singh speak in the track on Managing Uncertainty & Risk. (Since, as track organizer, I get a 25% bonus if *you* attend, I’ve asked for it to be scheduled on Tuesday.)
* Bryant & Lewis speak in the SCM track.
* Koch speaks in the DA track.
You’re astute to observe that all but a couple of the tutorials are presented by practitioners. That isn’t out of place in a practice-focused meeting, is it?
Hi Sanjay, I took the list from the email sent by INFORMS, but you are certainly right that some of these don’t look like methodology tutorials (though they look interesting!). Perhaps they are cross-listing?
And while it isn’t out of place to have practitioners do the tutorials, some of the past conferences have stressed academics presenting tutorials to practitioners: the 2005 conference had 7 of the 10 tutorials given by academics. So I do think it is noteworthy that this year’s committee drew from the practitioner community.