Demographics User Group Conference 2014

Back in the office after the Demographics User Group Conference yesterday. I met some great people and reconnected with old friends. This was an excellent meeting of minds for those focused on data analysis, customer insight and the open data agenda. There was an impressive roster of fellow academics and people from a wide range of commercial companies. Some key takeaways for me:

1. Every organisation is wrestling with the issues of how to extract, manage and analyse data, in order to find meaningful insights.
2. Customers are willing to share their data, but the benefits need to be clearly visible and must add value to their lives.
3. Whitehall has an appetite to engage in open data sharing, but acknowledges the challenges of transparency, trust, education and good communication.
4. There is some stunning work being supported by the ESRC with their Masters students' competition.
5. The genie is out of the bottle in terms of data sharing and we academics will benefit greatly by greater collaboration with industry.

I also had a chance to discuss my dynamic pricing research topic and received a lot of encouraging suggestions. I'm looking forward to following these up.