At each of our Conferences - In person or virtual via Videoconference, - DMC strives to identify and bring the leading minds in the Data space to share their knowledge and experience with our Audience. Below are some of the speakers that have delivered their knowledge at our events.
Wayne Eckerson Wayne is a sought after thought leader and consultant in BI. A noted speaker who thinks critically, writes clearly and presents persuasively about complex business topics. Wayne has written two widely read books: The Secrets of Analytical Leaders and Performance Dashboards. He is an industry analyst at TechTarget and principal consultant of Eckerson Group. For many years, Wayne served as director of education and research at The Data Warehousing Institute, where he oversaw the company's research and training programs and chaired its BI Executive Summit. He also served previously as an industry analyst at the Patricia Seybold Group. Dr. Peter Aiken
Peter Aiken is acknowledged to be a top data management (DM) authority. His expertise has been sought by some of the world's most important organizations and his achievements have been recognized internationally. He has held leadership positions and consulted with more than 75 organizations in 21 countries across numerous industries, including defense, banking, healthcare, telecommunications and manufacturing. He is a sought-after keynote speaker and author of multiple publications, including his latest the "Case for the CDO" & "Monetizing Data Management." Peter is the Founding Director of Data Blueprint, a consulting firm that helps organizations leverage data for competitive advantage and operational efficiencies. He is also Associate Professor of Information Systems at Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) and past President of the International Data Management Association (DAMA-I). |
George Firican
George Firican is a passionate advocate for the importance of data, a frequent conference speaker and a YouTuber, being ranked among Top 10 Global Thought Leaders and Influencers on Digital Disruption and Top 15 on Innovation and Big Data. His innovative approach to data management received international recognition through award-winning program and project implementations in data governance, data quality, business intelligence and data analytics. George is currently the Director of Data Governance & BI at UBC. In his spare time, he loves to create informative, practical and engaging educational content. George is also the proud founder of LightsOnData.com |
Ron Huizenga
Ron Huizenga is Enterprise Architecture Team Lead at Finning International, the world’s largest Caterpillar equipment dealer. Ron has over 35 years of business and IT experience as an executive and consultant, spanning a diverse range of industries. His manufacturing background in particular instilled a commitment to continuous improvement and quality, resulting in Six Sigma Lean and Black Belt certifications. His hands-on experience in large-scale enterprise initiatives includes enterprise and data architecture, business transformation, and software development. His background provides practical, real-world insights to enterprise data architecture, business architecture, and governance initiatives. |
Steve Holder
Steve is the SAS Canada evangelist for the technology including Artificial Intelligence, Cloud and emerging technologies. Steve’s passion is making technology make sense for everyone regardless of their technical skill set. Prior to joining SAS Steve was held leadership positions at SAP and IBM. With many years of software industry experience, spanning: management, solutions architecture, pre-sales and sales, Steve brings alignment and execution across SAS’ customers, sales teams, and partners.Steve received his Bachelor of Arts from McMaster University and lives in Toronto with his wife and two daughters. During his spare time, he enjoys traveling, cycling, skiing and spending time outdoors. |
Dr. Kewal Dhariwal
Kewal Dhariwal is the Executive Director of the ICCP – an international organization that certifies business, data and computer professionals globally. He is the program chair of the Data Management Conference – Canada. He is a founding director of the DAMA Edmonton Chapter, currently serving as President. Prior to that he was a key founder of the Certified Data Management Professional (CDMP) program which today is known as Certified Data Professional (CDP); he also founded the Certified Business Intelligence Professional (CBIP) program with TDWI and was instrumental in starting the Certified Data Scientist and Blockchain management programs at ICCP. He founded the NAIT Microcomputer Institute (which today is known as the NAIT Computer Training Center) a facility that trains over 6,000 people annually in Edmonton. Kewal was recently recognized as a Fellow of the Canadian Information Processing Society. He is an avid soccer fan, former soccer coach, and golf enthusiast and donates to and volunteers his time for youth sports teams. |
Susan Earley
Susan is one of the co-editors of the DAMA DMBoK (Data Management Body of Knowledge). Susan will talk about Generally Accepted Data Management Principles. Financial relevance, feasibility, transparency, accountability, collaboration, ownership, consistency, reuse and entropy management. Susan will define and describe what each of those elements mean and how they should be looked after within each organization. Susan is a graduate of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champagne campus in Computer Science and has worked as a senior data architect, test validater, project manager and numerous other business intelligence and data related positions. She is a Certified Data Professional - Principal and has taught online courses as well as developed examinations and test instruments for professionals in industry. She is an exceptional talent who has lead DAMA International and her local chapter and her organization through extensive change and improvements. A committed individual to our fostering higher standards in our profession. |
Justin Langseth
Justin is a business innovator and Snowflake is one of the hottest and fastest growing companies in the US. The new model of cloud based data warehousing able to access and use AWS, Azure and a myriad of other technologies on a data usage model versus a software use licence is sure to provide great value - a game changer. Justin is a serial startup company addict - which you can see from his success record. Justin is the technical founder and CEO/CTO of 5 data technology startups: Claraview (sold to Teradata), Zoomdata (sold to Logi Analytics), Clarabridge, Strategy.com, and Augaroo. 25 years experience in business intelligence, natural language processing, big data, and AI. He has raised over $100m in VC funding across three companies. Justin holds 24 patents, and graduated from MIT Sloan School of Management. |
Rob Novotny
We are all too familiar with Artificial Intelligence, Extended Intelligence, and Business Intelligence, but none if it matters if it’s not “Impactful Intelligence”. Join Groundswell’s Chief Digital Officer and key thought leader Rob Novotny as he shares his insights on why “it’s not about the tech, it’s all about the use case.” But not all use cases drive transformation. Using real world, local, examples Rob will share some of Groundswell’s recent success stories, and how they are changing the way businesses and government see data driven modernization. |
Chan Beauvais
Chan is the Pharmacy Director of Business Information Services at Costco Wholesale. He is a Certified Data Professional - Mastery Level; a Certified Data Governance & Stewardship Professional - Mastery Level and a Certified Enterprise Architect. He is a consummate data modeler and very much a hands-on technology expert. As a member of ICCP's Certification Council he provides ongoing volunteer support to the development of global industry standards improvement. He teaches data related courses at Edmonds Community College and Bellevue College in Seattle. Chan is also a talented Guitar player. At Costco Wholesale he provides unique insights into accounting sales, receivables, and margin analytics and other ad-hoc information services. Learn what new developments Chan has been experimenting with as a view into how global companies do data analytics. |
Dr. Ewan Affleck
A digital health information systems expert, he pioneered the implementation of an enterprise electronic medical record system in the Northwest Territories that is unprecedented in Canada in its level of integration. A graduate of the McGill School of Medicine, and Dalhousie University where he studied history, Ewan Affleck has worked and lived in northern Canada since 1992. He currently serving as the Senior Medical Advisor – Health Informatics, for the College of Physicians & Surgeons of Alberta. Prior, he has held positions as the Medical Director of the Yellowknife Health and Social Services Authority, Clinical Director of Family Medicine at Stanton Territorial Hospital and Chief Medical Information Officer of the Northwest Territories. Ewan’s passion is developing sustainable health services for northern communities.Ewan serves on the Board of Directors for the Canadian Medical Association and is a faculty member for the University of Calgary. He maintains an active clinical practice, teaches and provides both hospital-based and community services. Ewan is an avid adventurer, a musician, a husband and a father. In 2013, he was appointed to the Order of Canada for his contribution to northern health care. |
Dr. Osmar Zaiane
Osmar is the Scientific Director of the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute. Amii (Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute) is one of the world's top machine learning and artificial intelligence research groups. Osmar received an MSc in electronics (DEA) from the University of Paris XI, France, in 1989 and an MSc in Computing Science from Laval University, Canada, in 1992. He received his PhD in Computing Science from Simon Fraser University in 1999 specializing in data mining. He is a Professor at the University of Alberta with research interest in novel data mining techniques and currently focuses on e-learning as well as Health Informatics applications. He regularly serves on the program committees of international conferences in the field of knowledge discovery and data mining and was the program co-chair for the IEEE international conference on data mining. He is the editor-in-chief of ACM SIGKDD Explorations and Associate Editor of Knowledge and Information Systems. |
Dongxiao (Don) Qiu
Don is the Director of Tsingdata D-Lab and for Cases Studies of the Institute of Data Science at Tsinghua University, Director of Tsingdata D-Lab Innovation Center, Council Member of China Society for the Promotion of Science and Technology Commercialization, and Executive Vice Secretary-General of Tsingdata Big Data Industry Alliance. Prior to current positions, Don Qiu worked as Head of Nokia's Global Corporate Development, responsible for technology strategy and business development. Don also worked as Director of Strategic Development of AMD Greater China and as Director of Motorola's mobile products. Prior to returning to China in 2004, Don had worked at ATI, a graphic chips company, leading Chip Production Management and Asia Pacific Market. Don graduated from Fudan University in China, National University of Singapore, and Ivey Business School in Canada. |
Eric Dressler
Eric leads a team of 20+ data scientists, data engineers, BI developers and business and market research analysts using today’s leading big data technologies, machine learning and analytics to drive business performance across all of Alberta Motor Association’s line of businesses (including roadside assistance, insurance, travel, registries, banking, driver education, marketing and rewards). Eric is an innovative business developer with Machine Healthcare and as a past associate VP Analytics and Insight for LoyaltyOne. Prior to that he worked for IPSO Ried as a Data Analyst. |
Parul Kalve
Parul is a Data Governance evangelist with diverse industrial experience in data space within Finance, Telecom, Insurance, Local Government and Oil & Gas. Her strong passion for data and people has motivated her to focus her career on Data Management and Governance for the last decade. One of her success stories includes launching and establishing a Data Governance program at Enbridge (North America’s largest energy distribution company). Currently, she is managing the data governance program at Canadian Western Bank. Parul has a Masters degree in MIS (from US) and certifications in Data Management & Governance (CDMP), Project Management, Business Analysis, Data Analysis and Insurance. |
Cory Janssen
Cory is CEO and co-founder of AltaML, a developer of machine learning applications. Previously, Cory was co-founder of Investopedia.com, a financial education site that provided content and tools to help educate individual investors. From its founding in 1999, Investopedia became one of the most popular financial sites on the web and was sold to Forbes Media in 2007. The business model for Investopedia was then replicated through Janalta Interactive Inc., a holding company for digital media properties. Currently, Janalta publishes over a dozen websites. Cory is past-President of the Edmonton chapter for Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) and active in the Alberta entrepreneurial community as a member of the A100, the Venture Mentoring Service (VMS) program at the University of Alberta and as an associate for Creative Destruction Labs (CDL) Rockies. |
David Horvath
The role of the Data Engineer is becoming increasingly important and critical in data analytics. David works as a VP of Data Analytics and is an experienced data engineer helping the analytics teams access and use data for analytics. He has worked in highly regulated industries and the data cannot identify the individuals in the data. David has authored books such as Unix for the Mainframer available on Amazon.com. David is a team lead for the ICCP certification council in applications, programming and engineering examinations such as C, C++, Java and procedural programming. David is an avid history buff, and a pilot and loves to compete in shooting competitions. He is also a member of the ICCP Education Foundation having contributed significantly as a volunteer to the computer and engineering professions. David teaches online for the University of Phoenix and is a mentor for students at Temple University. David is a member of the data science community and professional associations in his Philadelphia region. |
Bruce Matichuk
Bruce has worked with startups for a long time: these include Celcorp, Xymbiant Systems Inc. and Clinitrust Global Inc. These days, at Salu Design Group, he is focused on creating the worlds first compact wearable, cuffless blood pressure monitor, and Aidant Intelligent Technology building face recognition and other health monitoring systems some of which are embedded in watches. Bruce works with integrating software, with facial recognition, finger touch technologies and the Internet of Things, including collaborating autonomous devices. If you are working or exploring how to improve your business processes by automating some elements of those, this is a must attend session. |
Mark Miskiman
Mark is a highly accomplished enterprise architect who has worked for SAS as a solution principal since 2014. He has a wide range of experiences in that he has worked for Fujitsu as a consulting director in enterprise architecture and at SAP, ATB Financial and Progress software. He will lead a hands-on session on utilizing SAS to develop Intelligent analtyics solutions. Come and learn about how the major corporations use SAS to provide innovative solutions to their data analytics. |
Michael Lo
Michael Lo is a Data Governance Analyst from Silver Creek Software that has been working on the Data Governance team at Canadian Western Bank for the last 1.5 years. Michael leverages his past experiences as a teacher, developer, Business Analyst, and Business Intelligence Analyst to help organizations manage and leverage there data. He has helped plan and execute numerous initiatives to educate members of organizations on how proper data management and data usage can make individuals more efficient and effective in their day-to-day responsibilities. Michael believes that people are the key to healthy organizational data. He uses creative methods to engage individuals in data related issues such as managing data quality and leveraging data analytics. In order to stay sharp both mentally and physically, Michael is a keen cyclist and trains in Muay Thai and Brazillian Jiu Jitsu. |
Wilf Ulmer
Wilfred is the Enterprise Architect for Strathcona County. He has been involved in architecture in various companies including Telecommunications, Railway, Utility, WCB, Government and Insurance Industries. He has been a presenter on architecture and metadata at local, national and international conferences for ISACA, ARMA and DAMA presenting on enterprise architecture frameworks, threat and risk assessment and EA tools. |