My colleague I-Kong Fu introduced me and several of other SAS colleagues to Nathan Gilliat, co-founder of AnalyticsCamp, which is an unconference for analytics. Whatever flavor of analytics you work with—web, email, social media, marketing, big enterprise BI, you name it—this is the place to meet and learn from interesting people in the field.

AnalyticsCamp is a Barcamp-style unconference, and anyone can pitch a session. Sessions include technical, business and career topics, from beginner to advanced levels, so everyone is sure to learn something. The first AnalyticsCamp took place at UNC’s Kenan-Flagler Business School in Chapel Hill, NC on February 6, 2010. The next one will take place at the same location, hosted by UNC’s MBA Technology and Marketing Clubs this Saturday, March 12, 2011.

I-Kong, Nathan and other leaders are looking for session leaders to cover all kinds of analytics topics such as text analytics, visualization, web analytics, social media analytics, BI, data mining, bioinformatics, “big data”, etc. Most of the sessions will be picked based on pitches in our opening session. The method is simple: anyone who wants to present a session, or lead a discussion, can propose it.

We'll fill out the schedule based on which sessions people want to attend (if you haven't been to an unconference before, this works better than you might think). We'll have a few invited speakers to cover some important topics, but most of our day will be based on sharing what we know with people who want to learn.

If you would like to pitch a session, please add it to the list . We hope to see you there!