Social Sentiment and Engagement Signals, at Oct 30 SF Symposium

I have released the speaker line-up for the fifth Sentiment Analysis Symposium, slated for October 30, 2012 in San Francisco. The symposium will feature speakers and panelists from leading firms (including Dow Jones, IBM, Infosys, J.D. Power, Thomson Reuters, and Toluna), start-ups, and academia. We’ll also, once again, have a solution-provider exhibit area for demos and one-on-one discussions with sponsors and pre- and post-conference networking receptions, at San Francisco’s Bently Reserve.

The symposium will look at applications in marketing and market research, customer experience, and social intelligence.

Given our timing just a week before the 2012 national election, we will have a special Voice of the Voter segment. What’s that about? As we know, Twitter, Facebook, blogs, and online news sources provide an up-to-the-second picture of the mood of the electorate: The reaction to key campaign themes and events. Ability to hear, respond to, and shape the ‘voice of the voter’ will make or break future politics. Campaign ‘social intelligence’ capabilities have become essential, so we’re featuring expert speakers — from IBM, the University of Southern California, Verint, and other organizations — to help us understand how, who’s winning the online/social sentiment race — Obama or Romney, and why.

The symposium kicks off with thought-leader talks covering a range of sentiment analysis applications:

• Professor VS Subrahmanian of the University of Maryland will speak on “Sentiment and Signals,” providing a leading researcher’s view on the use of sentiment and semantic analysis and data mining for government, industry, and intelligence
• Rich Brown, head of quantitative and event driven trading solutions at Thomson Reuters, will speak on the role emotion plays in financial markets.
• Toluna vice president Carol Haney, a pioneer in coupling survey research to social-media analytics, will speak on “Social Media Insights and the Mind of the Consumer.”

Registration is online at sentimentsymposium.com/registration.html, with early-registration prices available through September 10, 2012. Government employees are eligible for a 50% government-academic discount.

The Sentiment Analysis Symposium series has drawn steadily growing numbers, at three New York symposiums and the first in San Francisco in November 2011. (Videos of the last three symposiums are available free, online.) The symposium both builds on past success and aims to stay on the leading edge of sentiment technologies and applications. The symposium showcases ground-breaking sentiment-analysis applications and provides unique learning opportunities.

In addition to talks by Prof Subrahmanian, Mr. Brown, and Ms Haney, the symposium will once again have a half-day, day-before Practical Sentiment Analysis tutorial, on October 29, to be taught by Diana Maynard, research fellow at the University of Sheffield, UK. Ms Maynard is a key member of the team behind GATE, the open-source text-analysis platform.

Other October 30 talks cover customer-experience management, media analysis, market research, marketing, and social intelligence topics. They include:

• Using Sentiment Analysis to Make Net Promoter More Actionable — Bill Tuohig, J.D. Power and Associates
• Amplify Sentiment by Measuring Impact — Barry Parr, Dow Jones
• Harvesting Mobile Micro-Slang — Jeannine Bartlett, Earley & Associates
• Sentiment Analysis and the Consumer Genome — Vaidyanatha Siva, Infosys Ltd.
• Multi- and Cross-lingual Concept Based Sentiment Analysis — Catherine Havasi, Luminoso

As usual, the symposium will have a series of 5-minute lightning talks just before the lunch break. This year’s showcase innovative start-ups with presentations:

• Analyzing Weibo, the Chinese Twitter — Ken Hu, Soshio
• Extraction of Sentiment from Social Networks — Kristie Wells, Swipp
• Quantifying Crowd Psychology — Dr. Erin Olivo, SmogFarm
• Analysis and Visualization of Social Media Content — Tereza Pařilová, Masaryk University (tentative)
• Beyond Sentiment: The Next Generation of Social Intelligence — Rob Key, Converseon

The conference will conclude with the Voice of the Voter segment. To maximize networking opportunities, the symposium will once again planning evening-before and post-symposium receptions.

Sentiment Analysis Symposium information is online at sentimentsymposium.com. I will single out sponsors Attensity, Converseon, Lexalytics, and NetBase for thanks, given their support that makes the symposium possible.

We do have additional sponsorships available, and I’m still looking for a couple of business-user (non-vendor) speakers. Contact me!