Inspire 2013: The Ultimate Moneyball Conference

[RickS]

This year’s annual Alteryx conference on strategic analytics, Inspire 2013, has become the ultimate “Moneyball” conference – perfect for anyone interested in advanced analytics, baseball and how lessons from the sports analytics world can be applied to industries like Retail, Real Estate, Telecom, Marketing Services and Financial Services.   If this description fits you, here are four reasons why you should register for Inspire 2013, in addition to all the great content and training you can find on the agenda:

• Paul DePodesta will deliver part of the opening keynote.  Paul was brought to the salary-challenged Oakland A’s by General Manager Billy Beane to use data and analytics to completely change the way they evaluate player potential, and create a competitive advantage.  Paul later went on to be the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, and now serves as the VP of Player Development and Scouting for the New York Mets. Hardcore baseball fans and those who’ve read the Michael Lewis classic book “Moneyball:  The Art of Winning an Unfair Game” know that Paul is considered the originator of the Moneyball concept, and deserves much of the credit for transforming how baseball teams scout, draft, trade, sign, and manage players. In fact, when I recently saw Billy Beane keynote a Big Data event in San Francisco, he called the hiring of Paul as one of the smartest moves he’s ever made.  More casual fans or viewers of the movie tend to ask, “Was he the Jonah Hill character?” … the answer is yes, though he was referred to as “Peter Brand” in the movie because he did not release the use of his name, something he explained in this interview. 

• Spring Training:  These two magical words are relevant for this event as the Cactus League draws 15 Major League Baseball teams for the month of March including the World Champion San Francisco Giants, Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Milwaukee Brewers, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, Texas Rangers and other West Coast teams.  I’ve been to Spring Training with my kids the last two years to watch the SF Giants, and if you’ve never been it’s a unique experience not to miss – and completely worth tacking an extra day or two onto your trip. The Spring schedule for all of these teams can be found on the Cactus League website.

• The World Baseball Classic:   This is the year that the international baseball competition, launched in 2006 and modeled after soccer’s World Cup, takes place around the world. Fortunately, Phoenix is one of the sites for the early rounds of this event, and you can catch a game from the “Pool D” group featuring USA, Mexico, Canada and Italy (yes, Italy has a baseball team) immediately after Inspire concludes. From our event at the Sheraton Phoenix Downtown Hotel you could literally walk a few blocks to Chase Field and catch Mexico vs. USA, and see players such as Mike Trout and Buster Posey.

• Ari Kaplan:  While DePodesta is one of a handful of qualified public speakers on the topic of baseball analytics, Ari Kaplan is one of the few others…and he will help close out the conference with a Business Leadership session on the afternoon of Thursday, March 7th.  Having worked for the Cubs directly and also as a consultant for half the teams in Major League Baseball, Ari can speak to some of the details of how teams really use analytics and how these same approaches can be applied in other businesses – something he did recently in his talk at Teradata’s Big Analytics conference in New York, entitled “Cross Industry Lessons From Moneyball Analytics”. 

So in early March, shortly after pitchers and catchers and position players report, so do Data Artisans and Analytic-focused Business Leaders.  If you have not already done so, register now to catch the Moneyball conference of 2013.