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Science Week - Data literacy for all: creating a data culture within an organisation

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Venue: Birkbeck Clore Management Centre

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Modern organisations – business, charities, governments – are awash with data and it seems obvious to state that they should be making decisions based on that data, not on gut feeling. That’s still not always true today though. Hiring or training data scientists is only a partial solution; everyone in an organisation needs to be data literate to some degree. But what does “data literacy” actually mean and how can organisations make the technical and cultural changes necessary to achieve it? In this talk Chris Webb, a Birkbeck alumnus who currently works at Microsoft and who has spent the last 25 years working in data and analytics, will present a personal view of this topic.

This event will include a Q&A session and continue into the evening with the opportunity to explore the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences poster exhibition. Attendees will be able to meet the speaker, as well as current faculty researchers and students to continue conversations.

The lecture will be live streamed so attendees who are unable to join the event in person may watch it. please note though, we are unable to stream the Q&A session. A link will be shared with ticket holders nearer the time.

 

The Andrew and Kathleen Booth Memorial Lecture is delivered annually by world-renowned scholars and practitioners of computer science, to commemorate the pioneering work of Professor Andrew Booth and Kathleen Booth (née Britten) at Birkbeck. 

In 1947, both academics visited the Institute of Advanced Studies at Princeton University, where they worked with John von Neumann, one of the most influential early computer pioneers. Their best-known machine, the APEC (All-Purpose Electronic Computer), was designed in Birkbeck’s Computation Laboratory (which became the former Department of Computer Science and Information Systems) in 1952.

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Speakers
  • Chris Webb -

    Chris Webb has worked as a consultant and trainer in the data and analytics space for 25 years. He currently works at Microsoft on the Fabric Customer Advisory Team helping some of the largest companies in the world with Fabric and Power BI adoption. He is a regular speaker at conferences around the world, has written several books and blogs about business intelligence technology at https://blog.crossjoin.co.uk/. He has an MSC in Computing Science from Birkbeck.