Past Conference – 2015

IFD&TC 49th Annual Conference
May 17th – May 20th, 2015

2015 Program and Presentations
2015 Attendees


Invited Addresses:

Trends in Web Surveys and Online Panels

Mario CallegaroMario Callegaro
Google London
Quantitative Marketing Team

Mario Callegaro is senior survey research scientist at Google, London. He focuses on measuring customer feedback and consults on numerous survey and market research projects in terms of survey design, questionnaire design, sampling, and reporting.

Mario holds a B.A. in Sociology from the University of Trento, Italy, and a M.S. and Ph.D. in Survey Research and Methodology from the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. Prior to joining Google, Mario was working as survey research scientist for Gfk-Knowledge Networks. He is associate editor of Survey Research Methods and in the editorial board of the International Journal of Market Research.

Mario serves in numerous boards of professional associations in order to work on task force reports and guidelines. Examples include the 2008 AAPOR task force on cell phones, and the 2014 AAPOR task force reports on emerging technologies in public opinion research: social media in public opinion research and mobile technologies for conducting, augmenting and potentially replacing surveys.

Mario served in the 2014 UK National Centre for Research Methods funded network of methodological innovation called “Web Surveys for the General Population: How, Why and When?” Finally, Mario is working on the ESOMAR new guideline for online research (forthcoming 2015).

Mario has published numerous papers and book chapters in the areas of web surveys and online panels. He just published (May 2014) an edited book with Wiley titled Online Panel Research: A Data Quality Perspective and his new book coauthored with Katja Lozar Manfreda and Vasja Vehor: Web Survey Methodology is forthcoming with Sage in April of 2015.

Research website:
http://research.google.com/pubs/MarioCallegaro.html

Twitter: @mariocallegaro


“That… Is the Right Question”

Sam AdamsSam Adams
Cognitive Algorithms Group in IBM Research

Currently in the Cognitive Algorithms group in IBM Research, Sam Adams was elected to the IBM Academy of Technology in 1995, and in 1996 appointed as one of IBM’s first Distinguished Engineers. After helping to found the first Object Technology Practice in the IBM Consulting Group, he led a study on Self Configuring Systems that foreshadowed IBM’s Autonomic Computing initiative. Sam co-authored IBM’s XML Technical Strategy, focusing on machine-to-machine communication which became the core of IBM’s Web Services strategy, coining the term “Service Oriented Architecture” and defining the Publish-Find-Bind triangle model for SOA in 1998.

In 2000, Mr. Adams led the Joshua Blue project, resulting in a number of breakthroughs in the field of Artificial General Intelligence, including the Superstition and Forgetfulness model for autonomous learning. Later, Sam developed the first internet mash-up technologies at IBM and led IBM’s Research’s Enterprise 2.0 Initiative. In 2013 he served as CTO for Contextual Computing in IBM Research, leading the exploration of peta-scale graph-based analytics and programming systems across IBM Research’s global labs. Over the last 5 years he has helped drive a number of Global Technology Outlook topics in IBM Research, each of which has had a profound impact on IBM’s strategic direction.

Today, Sam is developing cognitive computing systems capable of self-bootstrapping their knowledge of the world, continuously learning, and exploiting artificial creativity and imagination to develop novel approaches to complex situations.