Like every Discovery Summit, this week’s goals in Sorrento are to solidify our position as a statistical powerhouse of helpers, turn JMP users into JMP enthusiasts who champion our products, and grow existing accounts. So far, so good.
Volcano data is the best data
It’s no coincidence that the Discovery Summit, located “on the doorstep” of Mount Vesuvius, featured a talk by volcanologist Dr. Sam Mitchell. “Let’s jump into the world of volcanoes,” he said. He didn’t mean it literally. Or did he?
After meeting users, sitting in on talks, and meeting our experts, Mitchell said, “I’ve learned more in the past 48 hours than I had in the months leading up to this.” He joked that, as a novice JMP user, it is up to other attendees to tell him how JMP can solve his problems. “Everyone’s just excited about data,” he said.
The volcanologist further joked, “Geoscience is the most important science of all. And our data is the most important data of all.”
The topic is serious, of course, as he moved from Mount Vesuvius – one of the deadliest volcanoes in the world – to Mount Kilauea and the massive amount of data collected last year. “They are huge data sets.” And there are many of them.
He lamented that with just one data set, you can’t do anything. With two, you can do something, he said. With 20, you can do so much. “We want to be able to forecast what might come next.”
Built for social connections
Yes – data are explored. Yes – innovations are inspired. But just as importantly, social connections are made and maintained via in-person networking and sharing at Discovery Summits. Just as new friendships are forged over dinners and drinks, connections are bolstered in demo halls, during poster presentations, and in catch-up conversations.
Papers are the backbone
It’s hard to say which single element of a conference is most important, but it’s clear that papers are key drivers of attendance. Time and again, we hear that users want to know what other users are doing. They want to see what else they could do to speed up analyses or increase decision-making confidence.
Because we live in interesting times, one of this year’s papers had to be presented remotely. It’s not anything we’ve done before – and hope never to have to do it again – but it was a special circumstance: John Linden, a professor at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, could not leave the country due to the no-fly zone resulting from recent aggression in the Middle East. JMP’s dedicated production team made the remote presentation possible, which made Professor Linden and his audience very happy. His paper is titled "Precision by Design: Applying DOE and MSA to Engineer Robust Measurement Systems."
Curious about the other papers that were presented at this conference or at previous Discoveries? Explore a plethora of papers in the Discovery portion of Community.jmp.com.
We love the affinity lunch
As Discovery Summit Europe usually lands near International Women’s Day, hosting a women’s affinity lunch has become a tradition. At lunch, 50-some women and allies gathered to discuss gender-related issues in the workplace and strategies to address them. Early career mixed with more senior women, sharing perspectives and hopes for fewer future hurdles. The call to action was to join the women in STEM group on Community.jmp.com.
A common purpose: Advocating for analytics
While not all Discovery attendees consider themselves analytic advocates, many of them do. And those who do may need help or encouragement from time to time. Global Marketing’s Meg Hermes chaired a plenary session dedicated to helping users spread analytics across their organizations. “Resist the temptation to treat analytics as a binary problem,” she said. “Most progress is iterative. The small repeatable changes influence behavior.”
In a TED-style talk, Dr. Nicola Brammer said the acceleration of AI will help break down silos and lower barriers to analysis, but only humans can bring context. “We can help distinguish the signal from the noise. It’s up to us to know when to trust analysis and when to challenge it,” she said. “We need people who think statistically.”
With his podcast partner, Markus Gershater of Synthace, JMP’s own Phil Kay interviewed Linden Schrecker of SOLVE Chemistry. Schrecker said he wouldn’t “get into the weeds” with his answers. “I’ll try to keep it nice and light and statistical,” he promised. He mostly kept his promise.
When Kay asked about the future of experimentation, Linden closed with a parable about collecting data now for scientists of the future. He said, “A wise man plants the seed for an oak tree that he’ll never get to sit under.”
The perfect backdrop
The Hilton Sorrento Palace, home to this year’s Discovery Summit Europe, elegantly displayed JMP and Discovery signage. Staff, attendees, and curious hotel guests were greeted with event signage outside and throughout, Sorrento proving to be the perfect backdrop for this gathering of the brightest minds.
Pre-conference learning
The upcoming papers, posters, and plenary sessions aren’t enough for all attendees. For those registrants, we held pre-conference training, including one on Bayesian optimization as an active learning technique to reduce the time and cost of bringing new products to market. Christopher Gotwalt taught that one.
Discovery registrants weren’t the only ones learning before the event. JMP’s Global Technical Enablement group leveraged the time together for some training of their own.
And, of course, to ensure that all employees know what to do and where to be, the Global Events and Production & Design teams hosted an on-site question-and-answer session. During the meeting, John Sall recommended tying a knot in your lanyard to shorten it and make your name more visible to our guests.
Steered by a committee?
Fun fact: Every Discovery Summit is backed by a Steering Committee of JMP users from our key industries and across the geographies they represent. Europe’s Steering Committee is no different. We have representation from newer users and veteran users, as well as JMP users, JMP Pro experts, and JMP Live enthusiasts.
Note that the word “steering” was chosen strategically because these committees guide our decisions, primarily focused on which papers and posters to accept. Because JMP makes the budgetary and programmatic decisions, we don’t call the groups “executive” committees. It’s a relationship that has worked well for many years, and we appreciate the time and dedication of our devoted committee members.
From the plenary stage, Jeff Perkinson said, “One thing that helps us show up and show up well is the Steering Committee.”
New perspectives
A view reserved for very few – the view from the plenary stage. Granted, it’s an hour before the show started, which explains the empty seats. Here, John Sall and Jeff Perkinson prep for their parts in the opening session.
Just moments before the opening plenary started, one of the projectors died. Good thing our team thinks of everything and had a backup ready. It would have been difficult to show JMP without a big screen to go with the big stage. This is a view of the stacked projectors.
Projectors aren’t the only thing in the control room. There you’ll find JMP staffers—like designer Ed Harriss—as well as trusted contractors running the show.
A different kind of opening session
Pin Hu, JMP Systems Engineer who traveled from Singapore for the conference, said she loved the opening plenary because it wasn’t about product features. “It gave us a deeper understanding of JMP. It gave us the ‘why,’” she said.
And that’s what Jules Parris, Jeff Perkinson, and John Sall were going for. Sall presented 10 foundational ideas that JMP was built upon, Perkinson showed what those ideas look like, and Parris drove the idea home.
