The PASS Business Analytics Conference starts today in Chicago. In the next two days, there will be two keynotes. The most famous Steven Levitt, author of Freakonomics, will be on stage on Friday, and tomorrow (Thursday) we will see Kamal Hathi and Amir Netz. I will have two speeches at the conference that I already described here, but before them I will cover the keynotes on my blog and on my twitter account (@marcorus).

I do not expect a detailed coverage of technical details of the products we know and love. I look forward to see a conversation about the goals of data analytics: the why, the how and what are the tools available. Advances in tools and software are important, because they are enabling scenarios that were simply not possible before, but the directions for the road ahead are not written in stone. I will write my thoughts here during the conference – stay tuned!