Sponsor Sessions
For 45 minutes on both Thursday and Friday, our sponsors take over the breakout rooms to talk about things that excite them about business and technology today. Check them out – you may just win a prize!
A special presentation will be given during lunchtime on Thursday, where IBM Cloud Data Services will be kicking off the Sponsor Sessions from the main stage while you eat.
Sponsor Session Kickoff
Thursday, January 7, 2016 11:45 AM – 12:35 PM
Thursday, January 7, 2016 1:00 PM – 1:50 PM (encore presentation)
Machine Learning with Apache Spark

David Taieb, Architect, IBM Cloud Data Services
Along with Spark Streaming, Spark SQL and GraphX, MLLib is one of the four key architectural components of Spark. It provides easy-to-use (even for beginners), powerful Machine Learning APIs that are designed to work in parallel using Spark RDDs. In this session, we’ll introduce the different algorithms available in MLLib, e.g. supervised learning with classification (binary and multi class) and regression but also unsupervised learning with clustering (K-means) and recommendation systems. We’ll conclude the presentation with a deep dive on a sample machine learning application built with Spark MLLib that predicts whether a scheduled flight will be delayed or not. This application trains a model using data from real flight information. The labeled flight data is combined with weather data from the “Insight for Weather” service available on IBM Bluemix Cloud Platform to form the training, test and blind data. Even if you are not a black belt in machine learning, you will learn in this session how to leverage powerful Machine Learning algorithms available in Spark to build interesting predictive and prescriptive applications.
About the Speaker: For the last 4 years, David has been the lead architect for the Watson Core UI & Tooling team based in Littleton, Massachusetts. During that time, he led the design and development of a Unified Tooling Platform to support all the Watson Tools including accuracy analysis, test experiments, corpus ingestion, and training data generation. Before that, he was the lead architect for the Domino Server OSGi team responsible for integrating the eXpeditor J2EE Web Container in Domino and building first class APIs for the developer community. He started with IBM in 1996, working on various globalization technologies and products including Domino Global Workbench (used to develop multilingual Notes/Domino NSF applications) and a multilingual Content Management system for the Websphere Application Server. David enjoys sharing his experience by speaking at conferences. You’ll find him at various events like the Unicode conference, Eclipsecon, and Lotusphere. He’s also passionate about building tools that help improve developer productivity and overall experience.
Sponsor Sessions
Timeslot | Room | Organization | Title (Speaker) |
---|---|---|---|
Thu 14:15 | Aloeswood | Billhighway | Stack the API odds in your favor with ServiceStack(dot)NET (Patrick Steele) |
Thu 14:15 | Cypress | Microsoft | Fun with Mind Reading: Using EEG and Azure Machine Learning to Perform Lie Detection (Jennifer Marsman) |
Thu 14:15 | Guava/Tamarind | Telerik | Introduction to NativeScript! (Ruslan Mursalzade) |
Thu 14:15 | Indigo Bay | CareEvolution | Flat organizations: can they scale? (Marina Fedner and Brandon Charnesky) |
Thu 14:15 | Mangrove | Code Connect | Live Programming a Roslyn Analyzer with Alive (Josh Varty) |
Thu 14:15 | Nile | Deque Systems | Taming the Beast: Agile and the Automated Testing of Accessibility (Ian Kelly) |
Thu 14:15 | Orange | Quicken Loans | The Beating Heart of CQRS, or Actor-Based Message Routing on the CLR (Quicken Loans) |
Thu 14:15 | Portia/Wisteria | JumpMind Inc | Metl – Introducing an open source integration by configuration platform (Greg Wilmer and Chris Henson) |
Thu 14:15 | Rosewood | Tenable | The Evolution of Vulnerability Management (Jack Daniel) |
Thu 14:15 | Sagewood | Datalogics Inc | Intelligently Extracting Data from PDFs (Matt Kuznicki, CTO, Datalogics) |
Thu 14:15 | Salon A | JFrog | Docker Container Lifecycles – Problem or Opportunity? (Baruch Sadogursky) |
Thu 14:15 | Salon D | madRooster.com | HoneyPots, they are not just for Winnie the Pooh Anymore (Tony Holloway – madRooster.com | George Egri – Bitninja) |
Thu 14:15 | Salon E | OEC | How To Gamify Your Security Awareness For Better Security And A More Engaging Employee Experience (Mike Woolard, OEC, IT Security Control Analyst) |
Thu 14:15 | Salon H | IBM | Offline-First Apps with PouchDB (Bradley Holt, Developer Advocate, IBM Cloudant) |
Thu 14:15 | Zambezi | PreEmptive Solutions | Application Risk and Reward: manage the value you create (Sebastian Holst, Chief Strategy Officer, PreEmptive Solutions) |
Fri 13:30 | Aloeswood | CoverMyMeds | Applying the 4 Rules of Simple Design in Complex Software (Brandon Joyce & Kelli Searfos) |
Fri 13:30 | Cypress | DevExpress | Using a Secure WebAPI Web Service from a Mobile App (Mehul Harry) |
Fri 13:30 | Guava/Tamarind | Centric Consulting | Event Driven Architecture: A Primer (Shawn Wallace) |
Fri 13:30 | Indigo Bay | ICC | A Complete History of the Marvel Universe (Scott Preston & James Bender) |
Fri 13:30 | Mangrove | GrapeCity | Let’s Make Pie with Xamarin.Forms and Xuni (Greg Lutz) |
Fri 13:30 | Nile | HMB | So You Know How To Code? A Gameshow For Geeks. (Heath Murphy) |
Fri 13:30 | Orange | Quicken Loans | Software Gardening (Quicken Loans) |
Fri 13:30 | Portia/Wisteria | ||
Fri 13:30 | Rosewood | ||
Fri 13:30 | Sagewood | ||
Fri 13:30 | Salon A | Robert Half Technology | Star Wars vs. Star Trek |
Fri 13:30 | Salon D | Dynamit | Fabricating Websites (Luke Askew) |
Fri 13:30 | Salon E | Manifest Solutions | How to Apply the Open-Closed Principle (Dustin Williams) |
Fri 13:30 | Salon H | Stout Systems | Estimation – The Third Rail of Software Development (Peg Bogema and Dave Sweeton) |
Fri 13:30 | Zambezi | Graph Story | Stronger Than Fear: Mental Health in the Developer Community (Ed Finkler) |