Hundreds of people took part in this week's Charlotte Informatics Conference. The event held on Tuesday at the Westin Uptown brought together a diverse group of leading national thinkers, visionaries, experts, and executives from business, technology and education to discuss the impact of “Big Data” and Analytics.

“The ‘Big Data’ era hasbegun,” said Yi Deng, dean of UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics. “It will be transformative for competition and growth of businesses across all major industries in the greater Charlotte region. It is the next frontier for innovation, competition, and productivity. The time to act is now.”

According to the company Tech Target, Big Data is a general term used in speaking about unstructured and semi-structured data a company creates and which is unwieldy and costly to analyze. A primary goal for analyzing big data is to discover repeatable business patterns that can be exploited to aid the organization. If left unmanaged, the sheer volume of unstructured data that’s generated each year within an enterprise can be costly to store. Unmanaged data can also pose a liability if information cannot be located in the event of a compliance audit or lawsuit. In other words, big data has big ramifications.

The goal of the conference was to raise awareness about the opportunities that “Big Data” brings, and to develop regional strategies to take advantage of the emerging informatics industries to enhance the business competitiveness, attract talents, stimulate business innovation, and entrepreneurship in Charlotte.

The national think tank of analytics experts included keynote speaker, Tom Davenport, chair of Information Technology and Management at Babson College, one of the world’s leading business strategy consultants. Others included: Renato Derraik and Todd Scheidt, McKinsey & Co.; Glenn Finch, IBM; Mike Stonebraker, MIT; Joseph Kielman, Dept. of Homeland Security; Todd Wilkes and Dena Richardson, Premier, Inc.; Dave Joffe and Tim Bendel, Bank of America; Steve Page, Wells Fargo; Richard Maltsbarger, Lowe’s; Michael Dulin, Carolinas Healthcare and Bob Morgan, Charlotte Chamber.

The conference was a collaborative effort between UNC Charlotte’s College of Computing and Informatics, The Belk College of Business and the Charlotte Chamber.

“UNC Charlotte has a long tradition of collaborating with the business community to develop programs that respond to forces of change and emerging trends,” said Steve Ott, dean of the Belk College of Business. “Analytics presents a particularly exciting opportunity because it impacts a wide variety of industries. The academic programs we’re developing will create a highly skilled workforce to meet these business needs.”

“The race is on,” says Bob Morgan, president of the Charlotte Chamber.” “Organizations and regions that effectively use “Big Data” first and best will win the day.”