Big Data London 2022: The Largest UK Conference with The Ambitious Mission to Explore the Dataverse

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Anna Savchenko PR Manager

On September 21-22, the yearly Big Data LDN 2022 took place in London. The biggest and busiest show gathered more than 13,000 delegates, over 150 exhibitors, and 300 speakers. 

During these two days, participants discussed data culture and data diversity with hundreds of brands and individual experts. Big data is hiding a lot of opportunities, so tech engineers shared their inspiring experiences in the field.

This year, the major conference topics included data-driven culture, modern analytics, and DataOps. CHI Software representatives couldn’t miss a chance to participate in the event.

A Few Words About the Event 

The Big Data LDN conference first took place in London in 2016 aiming to help entrepreneurs build up forceful and data-driven companies. This two-day event gathers thousands of tech enthusiasts, sharing their insights and innovative case studies in the big data niche.

Every year, the conference is held in one of the most prominent exhibition centers – Olympia London. It’s been an iconic venue for different kinds of expositions for 136 years. Olympia is known for its incredible Victorian architecture and barrel-vaulted roof, making it the perfect exhibition space. 

The Big Data LDN 2022 comprised twelve theaters of content set up for attendees and speakers from world-renowned companies: AWS, Google, Philips, Microsoft, the NHS, the BBC, Channel 4, and the Bank of England. 

Bill Hammond, Event Director of the Big Data LDN, shared his impressions of the event: “We can say with certainty that it exceeded even our highest expectations. Session after session, our theaters were packed. On the show floor, visitors grasped the opportunity to meet with leading technology providers from every discipline, ranging from startups to industry titans.”

Best Tech Talks

The Big Data LDN 2022 was a tech mecca for experts to share their knowledge, techniques, and achievements with the participants. It was impossible to attend all 300 inspirational speeches, but we were impressed with even several of them. Here is a small portion of the outstanding talks introduced at the event.

BrewDog’s Successful Digital Strategy

One of the best tech speeches “Taking an Authentic Approach to Digital: The Value of the Brewdog`s North Star” was presented by Alex James, CTO at Ascent, and Tom Reding, Digital Director at BrewDog. 

BrewDog has become the world’s first carbon-neutral brewery and gained digital success. At the event, the company presented the BrewDog Neighbourhood personalization concept. Its main idea is based on the experience that a customer gets when they visit a local bar and how staff tries to connect with them by learning about what they like and dislike and what emotions they feel. All layers of the business are affected by this approach: for example, an e-commerce shop.

Ascent created a data platform uniting business activities with customer interactions. Data helps BrewDog learn more about its guests and offer them a better experience. 

The company has also generated a recommendation system based on the customer’s individual preferences. It’s mirrored across all experiences, no matter where clients buy their beer. 

Accurate recommendations are not the only big data use case for BrewDog. The company figured out, for example, what ingredients affect the beer’s cost or why a particular taste or characteristic might appeal to a particular audience.

How Big Data Helps McLaren Win F1 Races

Another significant speech “Driving Performance: How the McLaren Formula 1 Team Is Using Data to Accelerate Performance” was presented by Andrew McHutchon, Senior Data Scientist at McLaren Racing. Throughout McLaren‘s history, the company has been driven by a determined urge to innovate, so has consistently engaged in strategic technology partnerships to improve performance. 

There are over 20 race weekends in the Formula 1 schedule, and each generates 1.5 TB of data. The ability to collect, process, and act on that data is essential. Using the Alteryx Analytics Automation Platform, McLaren Racing accelerates strategic decision-making on and off the track.

It takes 30 million simulations to test every possible scenario in a race. These simulations are based on data collected from a variety of sources, such as data from the wind tunnel and drivers themselves. During the season, such data sets allow the team to make adjustments and improve performance.

Also, a lot of data is generated during the car parts production. It’s a challenge to track the cost of every detail because of the different data formats, so Alteryx helps facilitate data collecting and processing sets. 

Matt Parker and His Disastrous Stories About Data

Big Data LDN 2022 was closed by the keynote speaker, Matt Parker, stand-up mathematician. He took the floor with a report “When Spreadsheets Attack! (and Other Maths Disasters)”. 

Parker told the attendees several real stories about misused data leading to disasters. For example, in 1983, a Canadian plane took off with insufficient fuel because of using pounds instead of kilograms for measurements. If you want to know the whole story, you can read it here.

Parker`s speech gathered a crowd of listeners and provoked an exciting discussion. It was a fantastic ending to the Big Data LDN 2022. 

Mentioning Ukraine’s Bravery

We also had a chance to meet Kevin Petrie, Vice President at Eckerson Group. Kevin was a chairman of the panel debate “Data Mesh – What You Need To Know”. It covered the reasons why data mesh has become mainstream, what you need to know before starting a project, and what are the benefits of big data adoption. We particularly enjoyed the discussion!

After his great speech, we talked to Kevin in person. Our conversation started with his supportive words and admiration of the bravery of Ukrainian soldiers who successfully liberated previously occupied territories in the East of Ukraine. He got a weekly newspaper from his bag and added: “Now I’m even more excited to read how this week’s The Economist says Ukraine can win.”

P.S. In May this year, Bogdan Steblyanko, CEO at CHI Software, was a guest at Wayne Eckerson’s podcast: “Impact of the War in Ukraine on Data Teams.”

We’re thankful to our clients, foreign friends, and public figures who keep supporting Ukraine, continue working with Ukrainian developers, and recommend our company as a reliable partner. It means the world to our team and motivates us to remain strong, no matter what. With massive support of the global community, we believe we can overcome the challenges ahead.

Stand for Ukraine! Be with Ukraine!

About the author

Anna Savchenko PR Manager

Anna is a PR Manager who is catching every opportunity to cooperate with journalists and enhance CHI Software's brand awareness.