Thank you all for attending Data Con LA 2019!! We hope to see you again next year!!
Highlights Reel / 2019
Photos
Keynote Speakers / 2019
Slides
Startup Showcase / 2019 Startup Showcase
Congratulations to our winners!!
1) Lexset
2) EVVEMI
3) Blue.Social
Prizes:
First Place – $1000 cash and a 1 one-on-one feedback and strategy session with a VC from TenOneTen Ventures.
Second Place – $500 cash.
Third Place – $250 cash.
Data Con LA Business Data Scholarship
The Data Con LA 2019 Startup Showcase and MountainTop Data are partnering to offer data scholarships to all qualifying startups. This scholarship is available for any startup that needs targeted account and contact information for marketing, or access to a large business data pool for product functionality, or has a product that monetizes business data. MountainTop Data maintains a database of tens of millions of business contacts and companies. Data Con LA’s partnership with MountainTop Data can give you access to this data, free. For more information and to apply for a data scholarship check here.
Finalists
Judges
Aaron Crow
Aaron is the head of engineering at SPIDR Tech, building the world’s first automated customer service platform for law enforcement agencies and fire departments. SPIDR's platform is allowing police and others serve their communities better, every day. Among other things, Aaron cares about strong engineering culture, team building, and surfing.
Arvind Murthy
Arvind is an entrepreneur with experience in brand building on social media. He is the founder of Ursa South, a digital agency that helps startups and established global brands connect with and craft brand stories that resonate via social media and in-person activations. He is an active startup advisor and early-stage investor with a focus on consumer wellness, personal care and the future of food. Arvind received his undergraduate degree from the UC Riverside and a Master of Science from Columbia University.
Dr Vandana (Ana) Mangal
Dr Mangal teaches AI, Transportation and Program Management at UCLA. She also advises Higher Ed institutions including Pepperdine University to bring innovation into the curriculum in the digital era. In her previous role as ED of the Easton Center at UCLA Anderson, she played a key role in bringing technology into the curriculum and Anderson now ranks #4 in tech careers for MBAs. She has published four books, papers and articles and speaks at conferences and forums.
Ethen Yao
Ethen is a financial technologies innovator with more than ten years of experience in financial technologies. He has thirteen financial technologies related patents, and has co-founded several financial technology platforms, such as, Blast.com, a FinTech savings and investment platform; Armatic.io, a Software as a Service accounts receivables automation and management platform, and more. Ethen's expertise in finance is supported by degrees from Harvard University and Villanova University. He also has professional subject matter certifications from Oxford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Harvard University. Ethen is also an investor and advisor at Blast, ATM.com and Givsum. Ethen is currently leading esports innovation efforts and agency digital transformation at Damage Esports in Los Angeles.
Michael Rivera
Michael is the Founding Director of the USC Marshall Venture Fund. The Venture Fund is an industry agnostic venture capital fund investing in early-stage startups created by USC students, alumni, faculty, and staff or that stem from intellectual property generated at the university. Michael is active in the Southern California ecosystem as a mentor with Backstage Accelerator, Quake Capital Accelerator, and Blackstone Launchpad Accelerator. Michael founded and managed an early-stage venture firm in Santa Monica prior to joining USC. Michael received his J.D. from the Pennsylvania State University School of Law and his B.A. from Georgetown University. He is a member of the Washington, D.C. Bar. He serves on the Board of the Jason E. Sabbag Memorial Scholarship Fund at Georgetown University.
Minnie Ingersoll
Minnie is a long-time Silicon Valley product leader and operations executive with experience building and scaling impact through elegant technical solutions and great teams. She recently moved back to LA after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California as an early-stage tech investor. Minnie started her career as an early product manager at Google where she co-founded the Access team; a cross-functional product, policy, and engineering team that spun off Google Fiber. After 11+ years, she left Google to begin her own entrepreneurial journey as the co-founder and COO of Shift, an online marketplace for used cars. Minnie learned a lot of lessons hiring hundreds of employees and scaling a $100M+ business. She is an active mentor and non-profit board member. In her spare time she volunteers for local government, surfs baby waves, and raises baby people. She recently moved back to LA after 20+ years in the Bay Area and is excited to be a part of the growing tech ecosystem of Southern California as an early-stage tech investor and host of LA Venture podcast
Punnoose Isaac
As a thought leader in the BigData world, PI has pursued his several roles and responsibilities with a passion for analytics, business strategy, and engineering. Punnoose was previously Head of Analytics & Data Services, Edmunds.com
Panels / 2019
Panels
IoT
The panel will start by talking about how the city and county are evolving toward being a data driven organization, what that means, and the challenges such a transformation means. The panel will look at what it means for success when it requires government to move from treating data like a tactical resource to being a strategic resource. For this to happen, data has to transcend organizational boundaries within the government. And, as we make progress on this front, we have to also start working to ways where data transcends government boundaries so that neighboring cities and county/city are sharing operational data. This is a far cry from where we are at today but we look at this as a journey, something to progress toward over time. Over the course of that journey, policies, politics, and needs will change so we a key need is not just to solve specific problems, but to lay a foundation for evolution.
Big Data
Overview: Join us and data science thought-leaders for a screening of excerpts from the documentary “Big Data: Unlocking Success.” Learn about ___. This film profiles trailblazing experts from MGM Resorts International, Toyota Financial Services and other innovative companies. We’ll discuss the power, pitfalls, and potential in harnessing and interpreting data. Our panelists will reveal how today’s wealth of data drives strategic decisions across industries and share their visions for the future.
Why It Matters: According to a Forbes article, “Whether gathering data on the front end or making big decisions in the C-Suite, every single person in your organization must buy into the value [data] analytics brings”.
What You’ll Take Away: Learn how you can leverage data in your role—no matter the industry. The demand for data science talent will only increase in our economy as data affects all aspects of our lives. Discuss and network with our guest experts to learn about exciting career and business opportunities.
Women Leading Data
From AI and machine learning to data discovery and real-time analytics, women are leading the advancement of data technologies. In this session, Stacey Broadwell, Brand Ambassador, Linkedin Local – Los Angeles, will interview five women leading data at prominent brands. This is a must-see session for anyone interested in catapulting there careers to the next level. We will discuss career paths, overcoming obstacles, blind spots and leading as a woman. But must importantly, we will discuss how we can raise the boats of every woman through kindness, words and action. Join us! Men welcomed and encouraged to attend.
Sponsors / 2019
Host
Platinum
Gold
Networking
Silver
Bronze
Partner
Tutorials / 2019
DataScience
Data Science tutorial is designed for people who are new to Data Science. This is beginner level session so no prior coding or technical knowledge is required. Just bring your laptop with WiFi capability. The session starts with a review of what is data science, the amount of data we generate and how companies are using that data to get insight. We will pick a business use case, define the data science process, followed by hands-on lab using python and Jupyter notebook. During the hands-on portion we will work with pandas, numpy, matplotlib and sklearn modules and use a machine learning algorithm to approach the business use case.
Zia Khan
BlockChain
Blockchains permeate society and have cultivated followings ranking in the tens of millions. Many have hailed bitcoin, the progenitor of all blockchains, digital gold and one of the most important technologies to date. By design, they are trust-less, permanent, and censorship resistant. This tutorial will help you understand some of the important design decisions that go into building a blockchain and get you started writing your own. The session will be broken down into 4 parts with activities in-between:Introduction To Blockchains: A brief description of what this technology is and some history about how it got started.A High Level Architecture: The different components of blockchains including: networking, block validation, consensus, state management, etc.In-Depth On Validation: A deep dive on blockchain validation including: consensus, fault tolerance, and consistency.In-Depth On Networking: A deep dive into blockchain networking including: gossip and synchronization.Since there are so many different kinds of blockchains and technologies involved in constructing them, this tutorial will be focused on developing an example blockchain.
Abraham Elmahrek
Speakers / 2019
Organizers / 2019 Organizers
Subash D’Souza
Director, Cloud Data Engineering at CSU - Chancellor's Office, Founder at Data Con LA & Data 4 Good
Organizers / 2019 Committee Leaders
Annie Flippo
Marketing Co-Chair
Arti Annaswamy
Senior Manager, Reporting Solutions & Data Operations at WB
Charla Myers
Marketing Co-Chair
Germain Louie
Associate Director - Private Equity & Venture Capital at Consero Global
Jason Brancazio
Sessions Co-Chair
Jimmy Kim
Locations & Catering Co-Chair
John Kim
Watchmaker's Apprentice | E-Commerce
Kaloyan Todorov
Managing Sr. Data Scientist at FIGS
Marc Waddell
Marketing Peofessional
Rich Ung
Data Scientist at Disney Media & Entertainment Distribution
Ruben Barrios
Software Engineer en MAAS Companies, Inc.
Sanjeev Sehgal
SVP at Satwic
Subash D’Souza
Director, Cloud Data Engineering at CSU - Chancellor's Office, Founder at Data Con LA & Data 4 Good
Volunteers / 2019 Volunteers
Aaron Artea
Systems Engineer at VPLS
Adriana Chavez
Recent Graduate of Mathematics, BS
Alexandra Stone
Marketing Coordinator at Evocative Data
Aman Mathur
Data Science Engineer at SnackNation
Anastasia Ivleva
Marketing Specialist
Andy Nakamura
Senior SQL DBA at Keck Medical Center of USC
Angela Chung
Data Specialist at Beverly Hills Cancer Center
Anna Damir
Junior Data Scientist at Rouse Services LLC
Arnold Borres
Associate Software Architect at UST Global
Bob Newstadt
Director of Business Intelligence at HopSkipDrive
Bradley Fojas
Full Stack Engineer at Programination
Calvin Huang
Technical Recruiter at SMCI
Cassidy Liu
Senior Business Intelligence Analyst at Green Dot Corporation
Courtney Fowler
Supply Chain Operations Manager at Flexport
Crystal Sandoval
Project Management Intern at The Walt Disney Company
Damita Chavis
Marketing Strategist at Creative L
Darla Higgins
Senior Manager, Systems Projects at Los Angeles Metro
David Harnick-Shapiro
Data Engineering Consultant
Dimas Soeprapto
Sr. Analyst, Advanced Analytics at Edwards Lifesciences
Edmond Choi
Volunteer at Data Con LA
Eli Selkin
Co-Founder & CTO at upful.ai
Emily Coit
College Student
Eric Mena
Inventory Modeling Technical Specialist at The Boeing Company
Farrah Au-Yeung
Project Management Intern at SCOPE
Glen Porter
Music/Film/TV Entrepreneur
Hafeez Poladzade
Data Scientist
Hamed Gorjiara
Graduate Student Researcher at UCI
Hana Ueda
Volunteer at Data Con LA
Hasan Diwan
Director of Analytics at Jackson Street Analytics
Humberto Zuniga
Sr. Product Owner at Disney
Jack Jeng
Executive Director - Research & Analytics at Paramount Pictures
Jagruthi Prabhudev
SDE Intern at Amazon
Jeffrey Guerra
Security Analyst at Verizon
John Park
Solution Architect
Josue Louis
Technical Recruiter at Eleven Recruiting
Justin Doh
Data Analyst at Advanced Bionics
Justin Javier
Data Analyst at Kaiser Permanente
Kanad Basu
Senior Data Scientist at SnackNation
Ken Chang
Cybersecurity Researcher at University of California - Berkeley
Kimberly Ming
Graduate Student Researcher at CGU
Kingsley Nwankwu
Undergrad Biomedical Engineer at USC
Korok Chatterjee
Postdoctoral Researcher at UCB
Kunal Lalwani
Machine Learning Engineer Intern at Qualcomm
Manimaran Ramasamy
Senior Technical Analyst at UST Global
Maria Zhang
Business Analyst at friendly Franchisees Corporation
Mario Brenes
Application Architect at Falkonry
Maryna Pavlenko
Volunteer at Data Con LA
Mercedes Vega
First-year MPH Student at CSULA
Michael Ma
Financial Engineer at Amerihome
Michelle Emelle
Regional Manager, Southern California at TEALS Program
Miguel Niblock
Data Science Intern at Gaming Analytics Inc
Mitzi Bandera
F-1 Visa Advisor at UCLA
Murali Kadambala
Sr. Director, Finance(Technology) at LA Metro
Nancy Melucci
Lecturer at CSUDH
Nathan Danielsen
Senior Software Developer at Farmers Insurance
Nicole Jeong
Data Integration Analyst at Zillow
Niloufar Pour
Software Engineer at Teradata Labs
Olga Pyatokha
Data Scientist at FanDuel
Oren Ben-Joseph
Manager of Systems & Analytics at Los Angeles Metro
Priya Chauhan
Volunteer at Data Con LA
Reza Rahman
Volunteer at Data Con LA
Robin Olaya
Production Manager at L'agence
Rosana Lin Ho
Data Scientist at KB Home
Ryan Hsu
Standardized Test Instructor at Elite Prep
Samantha Chappell
Data Scientist at UCLA
Samara Miramontes
Development Partner at Private LLC
Shailesh Shukla
Vice President at Bank of America Merrill Lynch
Sheila Torrico
International Project Manager
Sitotpal Sarkar
SQL Server DBA at USC
Sudha Raamakrishnan
VP, Product Manager - Enterprise Data Lake at PennyMac
Susan Thompson
Business Analysis Consultant
Sylvia Tran
Data Scientist at Gracenote
Tianxing Wang
Product Management Intern at WB Games Boston
Tina Wang
Business Intelligence Manager at Endpoint
Tony Chia
DevOps at IRIS.TV
Vanya Koonce
Partner at Thrive
Yvonne Coit
Director at Capgemini