Last week I was lucky enough for Quantiful to send me to attend the 2018 Apache Spark AI Summit in San Francisco. Apache Spark is an open-source large scale computing framework. Essentially, it provides an easy way for data scientists to crunch and process large amounts of data. Apache Spark allows programmers to scale the processing of big data as well as perform machine learning at scale.
The summit was an extravagant affair hosted in the heart of the technology capital of the world, Silicon Valley. The speakers included big players in the analytics industry such as Andrej Karpathy (director of AI at Tesla), Chief Data Scientist of AllianceBernstein and the creators of Apache Spark from Berkley among others. The talks ranged from "Forecasting Bitcoin prices" to NASA’s "Using Deep Learning to find water on the moon".
Attending the summit was an enjoyable experience where I had the opportunity to learn about the latest technologies and developments in big data and AI. In particular, there are a few developments which I am excited to implement back home. The one I am most excited about is "mlflow".
mlflow is an API designed to help data scientists build, test and productionise machine learning models in a reproducible, managed workflow. This will allow Quantiful to quickly release improvements to our own Machine Learning API and ensure our clients get the best solution delivered in the fastest way.
Overall the Spark AI summit reassured me that even though we are a small-start up based in NZ our technical sophistication and thinking ranks well enough to impress some of the best minds in the industry. I am excited to bring my learnings home and extend our products sophistication in order to deliver the best results for our clients.
An old adage in business is that the closer you get to your customer, the better you will understand what they really want – but what happens if those customers are constantly changing their position? In this new world of Covid19, the ‘new normal’ is characterised by a high level of uncertainty and volatility in […]
Sales and Operations Planning is the central point of most enterprise decisions as big bets are placed on anticipated demand which result in portfolio planning and procurement outcomes. This age-old process is critical to unlocking spend for product and services but sadly is somewhat of a dying art as enterprises' commitment to it wanes in […]
Kevin Cooney, Acting CEO, Farmlands, discusses how AI could be the answer to forecasting demand in an increasingly volatile ag industry. Political and social pressure on farmers to make changes to farming practices to address growing climate and environment concerns gained new impetus this month with Environment Minister David Parker, saying that the farming sector […]
Throughout COVID-19 we have been looking at how the immediate impact of physical distancing and other restrictions translates into longer term, structural change in consumer buying behaviour. For example it seems likely that time spent online gaming increased in line with enforced time at home for consumers during various stages of COVID-19, but what are […]
We are excited to welcome Rebecca Kemp to our team as Chief Product Officer, responsible for understanding the customers’ perspective and ensuring global market fit for QU, our cloud-based demand driven prediction platform. Rebecca brings a self-described obsession with customer focus, believing that only by living in their world can digital products truly hit the […]
Consumer buying behaviour is continuously evolving and your forecasting should be too. Using state-of-the-art AI and real-time demand sensing, QU brings more accuracy to your new product introduction and predicts Demand Drivers™ ahead of time.
Health, animal welfare, the environment - no matter the reason, the plant based trend is here to stay. You may have noticed plant based eateries popping up left, right and centre as more restaurants and retail outlets adapt their menus and shelves to cater for their vegan or plant based clientele. Environmental concerns, animal welfare concerns […]
Our co-founder, Jamie Cormack, presented Quantiful at the Icehouse Flux Demo Day in front of over 250 investors. Watch his video below!
In 2019 African swine flu devastated China’s pork production and it turned to South America and the USA, once tariff wars settled down, for pork and beef to avoid shortages. Now, supply chains in these countries are again in trouble due to COVID-19 shutting down or severely restricting production capacity, putting at risk supply to […]
The new iPhone range is finally here - What was the initial consumer response and what does this mean for planners looking to forecast in one of the most unpredictable launch years to date? To answer this, we analysed consumer buying signals coming out of the iPhone 12 launch announcement and from the equivalent iPhone […]
