The F2010 Business Forecasting Conference will take place June 7-8 in Cary, NC at SAS Headquarters. Here’s the transcript from a brief interview with the conference co-chairs.

Jerry Oglesby is the Director of Higher Education Consulting and Global Certification within the Education Division at SAS. He has been a conference co-chair since its inaugural year in 2006. Tim Rey is the manager of Dow Chemical’s Advanced Analytics group and is this year’s external co-chair, bringing his 30+ years of experience to the conference program.

1. What speaker are you most looking forward to meeting and why?

Oglesby: Dr. Sven Crone. His keynote presentation titled "Artificial Neural Networks – the Science of Forecasting?" will be a good look at combining some of the data mining techniques for modeling with forecasting techniques and has a great deal of promise for new and innovative ways of doing forecasting.

Rey: Joseph Ellis because of his pragmatic approach to choosing variables/structure for forecasting problems.

2. What three presentations are essential for SAS users to attend?

Oglesby: I would expect that the presentation to be given by John Willey and Ken Seiden of The Cadmus Group titled "What Does “Green” Mean for Utilities? Sales Forecasting in a Green Future" would be a good one;

I would also recommend Sven Crone’s paper noted above;

I would also suggest that the presentation to be given by Anne Robinson and Harjit Singh of Cisco, titled "How do you take an Operationally Focused Organization and Transform it into a Customer-Centric One?" will be a great one to attend as well.

Rey: I would recommend the presentations given by:

- Oral Capps (Does More Information Imposed on the Forecasting Process Lead to Improved Performance?"),

- Kevin Nitz "Leading a Forecasting and Demand Planning Transformation at MillerCoors"),

- and Anne Robinson and Harjit Singh "How do you take an Operationally Focused Organization and Transform it into a Customer-Centric One?").

All three talks have a focus on organizational and informational transformations in forecasting.

3. If you could sum up the conference in one word, what would it be and why?

Oglesby: "Opportunities" because of the abundance of opportunities to learn from leading experts in the forecasting field.

Rey: "Change" because the forecasting field is changing: more complexity, more data, more "blending" of approaches (simulation, neural networks).