The first-ever Indy Big Data Conference last Tuesday celebrated Edward Deming's idea "In God we trust. Everyone else must bring data." And bring data they did. 478 speakers, attendees and sponsors gathered at the JW Marriott for the conference, the first of its kind, hosted by ST Logics and its new spinoff big data company Beyond Predictive. 

Indianapolis  Mayor Greg Ballard congratulated STLogics’ CEO Sandeep Allam for assembling the conference, saying it demonstrated the strength of Indianapolis as an IT hub for innovation. The mayor gave his conference welcoming remarks wearing a pair of Google Glass, which broadcasted what he was seeing on the event’s  big TV screens.

The Indy Big Data Conference Tweet Wall captured over 900 Tweets related to the conference, most of which used Conference hashtags #IndyBigData and #BigData. 

Still riding the big data wave after the release of her book Big Data Marketing, Lisa Arthur, Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) at Teradata Applications, kicked off the conference with marketing's take. She outlined five steps to improved customer experience via big data marketing: 
 
1. Get smart and get strategic
2. Tear down the silos and figure out a holistic organizational cadence
3. Untangle the data hairball. "We've cobbled together pieces and parts to try to run marketing." 
4. Make metrics your mantra
5. Process is the "new black," i.e. marketing should be a strategic process. It can't be ad hoc anymore. 
 
Arthur referenced Teradata's recent marketer survey revealed trends among marketers several times throughout her remarks. You can download the full report here. 
During his breakout presentation on digital personas, Marty Muse, VP of Client Success at Digital Relevance said that there is "more weird" outside the box than there is "normal" inside it. 

"If you don't get into big data, your company and your brand are going to get left behind," he said. His message recurred throughout the day, as experts from Indy and across the US spoke on subjects that spread the gamut, pinpointing big data's role in each. 
 
The second Indy Big Data Conference will be held at the JW Marriott on April 23, 2015.