Summit Agenda

09:00 - 09:10

MC OPENS

09:10 - 09:20

Welcome Address By Dataiku

Siddartha Bhatia, RVP and General Manager - Middle East & Turkey, Dataiku

09:20 - 09:30

Digital Leadership – Paving Pathways To Progress With Advanced Technologies

• ‘The Digital Imperative’: How solving digital challenges will transform the MENA region to a global powerhouse
• Discussion & progress update on the UAE Digital Economy Strategy which spans 30 initiatives with programs targeting 6 sectors and 5 new areas of growth
• Dialogue on ‘Looking to the Future’ & ‘Shaping the Future’ – What role does Artificial Intelligence (AI) play in revolutionizing economic prosperity and how to leverage its ‘multiplier effect’?
• Strategic update and discussion on the UAE Coders Community & Initiatives

Hoda Al Khazaimi, Director of Cyber Security Center, New York University Abu Dhabi

09:30 - 09:50

FEATURED FIRESIDE CHAT: Artificial Intelligence (AI) & The Roadmap To The Digital Realm For The Mena Region

• Current State: How are AI applications Viewed in the MENA region today?
• AI Ethics: Why AI and Data Strategies need to consider AI Ethics?
• Data, AI and Societal Wellbeing: How can AI utilization strike a balance between social benefits and economic growth, whilst maintaining compliance with policies and regulations?
• Data-based decision making (and policy-making): How can data-based decision/policy making support economic prosperity, social well-being, environmental sustainability, and good governance?
• Roadmap for the Future: What should the Future Roadmap of Companies working in the AI/Data domains include?

Dr. Fadi Salem, Director of Policy Research, MBR School of Government

09:50 - 10:00

Why you should believe in a logical data fabric

• According to a recent Forrester survey, while 85% of organizations want to improve their use of data insights in their decision making, 91% of the respondents report that they are not able to improve upon their data-driven decision making.
• The problem - organizations often turn to the data lakes, data lake houses, cloud data warehouses etc. as their monolithic data repository, for all of their data and analytics needs. But the hard reality is that data is and will be spread across multiple repositories that extend across cloud and regional boundaries.
• Attend this session to gain key insights on why a logical data fabric powered by data virtualization is critical for any organization's data and analytics and how it helps business users, data scientists, and other data consumers alike in data access, consumption and data-driven decisions.

Alexey Sidorov, Data Management Director & Chief Evangelist, MEA, Denodo

10:00 - 10:10

How Ghassan Aboud Group developed a strategy for a successful digital transformation and became a catalyst of change with Snowflake

• Modernising a data ecosystem built on trust and transparency
• Building for the business’ current needs while laying the foundation for the future
• Enabling decision-making at incredible speed
• How Snowflake's Data Cloud enables organisations to mobilize their data, power essential workloads, and unlock seamless collaboration

Ali El Hafiani, Sales Director, Middle East and Africa, Snowflake
Prajwal Ram Gowda, Corporate Strategy and Development, Ghassan Aboud Group

10:10 - 11:10

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: MENA Governments & Public Sector Industry Discussion

• What are some key trends around Digital Transformation (DX) currently being witnessed across MENA governments & public sector enterprises? How has your data strategy evolved & matured to leverage AI technology capabilities?
• A conversation on investments in data analytics & AI technology for public sector enterprises – how to continue inspiring government leaders in the pursuit of advanced technology possibilities? Are demonstrable real-life scenarios & outcomes helping to drive the mission strategy for your public sector organization?
• Developing new metrics for success & challenging traditional models – have you been able to deploy modern data stacks, data warehousing capabilities, data virtualization or dashboards to make an impact on internal & external end-users?
• What is the right data architecture strategy for your government enterprise?
  • Is bespoke data architecture always a necessity? Or will PaaS (Platform as a Service) and off the shelf solutions be adequate for your needs?
  • Does your strategy include the ability to scale up? What’s the use-case road map at your organization?
  • How important is data governance & ethics for government enterprises? Is there a data steward to prevent reputational risk? Are there processes to mitigate bias and test fairness to ensure ethical outputs?

Frédéric Gauzy, Alliances & Channels Manager, Opendatasoft
H.E.Thuraya Al Hashimi, Executive Director - Digital Data Enabling Sector, Federal Competitiveness & Statistics Centre, Ministry of Cabinet Affairs - UAE
Latifa Saleh AlShehhi, Data Futurist, UAE
Raphael Mendes Stein, Division Director Knowledge, Abu Dhabi Department of Education and Knowledge

11:10 - 11:20

What Is A Modern Data Stack?

Digital transformation has influenced changes in the data & analytics industry over the last several years, leading to the creation of a modern data stack. In this session, you will learn about the history of a modern data stack, how the data world evolved to necessitate it, and what a modern data stack looks like today.

• How strides in technology enabled the current state of data platforms
• The essential components & features that make up a modern data stack
• What data teams need to know to take advantage of emerging trends

Bradley Flemming, Senior Sales Engineer, Fivetran

11:50 - 12:50

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: My Data, My Customer, My Story & My Platform: Customer Experience (CX), Marketing & Predictive Analytics in the MENA region

• Is CX doing enough in today’s world with customer behaviors, habits & priorities continuing to evolve? What can brands do to keep up with all the new tech popping up every quarter? And what role can automation play as part of customer journeys?
• Is unifying customer facing functions the best possible strategy in improving CX standards? How far has the MENA market progressed towards hyper-personalization? Would predictive AI technology work in improving CX?
• All about MarTech – what’s your pick? CDP vs. DMP vs. Hybrid? Customer data platforms: what are some CDP use cases? Would it be best to build vs. buy? What’s the best strategy in deploying CDPs effectively and by when can you expect to see results?
• How do I maximize the return on every marketing dollar that I spend? Does the answer always start with data? Do scalable data warehouses & cloud data stacks represent a solution for digital native organizations whether big or small?
• Quantifying the business impact of CX initiatives & what are some unique regional customer insights?
• How to build a business case for CX improvement at your organization? How to ensure key stakeholders buy-in and remain excited about the impact whilst you define direction & strategy?

Khaled Nazif, Chief Operating Officer, Dsquares
Dr. Magdi Fahmy, Chief Executive Officer, LIFEPharma
Gino George, Head of Customer Analytics and Intelligence, First Abu Dhabi Bank
Mohit Lodha, GM Global Digital Marketing, Newby Teas of London
Siba Salloum, Head of Corporate Data & Analytics, Gems Education

12:50 - 13:00

Data-Driven Customer Loyalty: How personalized loyalty goes beyond customer retention?

• In today's data era, companies remain to be limited on their knowledge of their customers from one angle only, while loyalty programs can help them broaden that view from multiple aspects.
• By integrating loyalty data along with the company data, how can data-driven loyalty programs empower the company to understand their customers more and enhance their experience through data analytics.
• Beyond customer retention and satisfaction, how can loyalty programs be used as an acquisition channel?

Gasser Akila, Head of Data Analytics, Dsquares
Marwan Kenawy, Co-Founder & CEO, Dsquares

13:00 - 13:10

Analytics at Jazz Pakistan

• Role of analytics in their journey from a conventional telecom operator to a digital company

Haider Altaf Malik, Head of Data Services & Sciences, Jazz

13:10 - 14:10

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: The Human Factor: People & Workforce Strategies to Succeed in the World of Metaverse, Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning & Business Intelligence

• Talent Pooling: Does it work? Is it always necessary to hire a data-scientist vs. training one from within the ranks? And Is hiring a consultant the right choice for my organization?
• Are people the biggest barriers to change? Workforce strategies to help dispel myths & using disruption as an effective tool within your organization
• What are some effective methods to bring diversity and inclusion to your team? What does it take to have a strong and successful data analytics workforce?
• Leadership lessons: How can you as a Data / AI practice leader be wary of global scenarios to sense and respond to societal change? How relevant are issues related to the ongoing social fracture to technology leaders?

Dr. Kevin Moat, Executive Director, Solution BI
Ahmad Seddik Abdelrahman, Head - Business Intelligence & Research, Dubai Integrated Economic Zones Authority
Alok Gupta, Regional Head & Innovation Chair - Compliance Analytics, HSBC
Dmitry Menshenin, Business Intelligence and Data Intelligence Team Lead, Sanofi Greater Gulf
Redha Al Ansari, Head of Research, Data & Analytics, MEA, London Stock Exchange Group - Bahrain

14:10 - 14:20

How data democratization generates value in your ecosystems?

• What are the main barriers to data sharing and open data?
• How to simplify data consumption by everyone and make it easy to share and use data-driven information?
• Focus on use cases that create value:
  • Create better services to your citizen
  • Make your local communities more innovative
  • Attract both businesses and tourists

Franck Carassus, Co-Founder & CSO, Opendatasoft
Frédéric Gauzy, Alliances & Channels Manager, Opendatasoft

08:50 - 09:00

MC OPENS

09:00 - 09:40

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: Cloud Data Security & Resiliency: An Overview of Technologies & Strategies to Help you Anticipate, Protect Against, Withstand & Recover from Cyber-Attacks

• Reinforcing the concept of cyber-resilience – have you personally witnessed the increased frequency of malware attacks with the recent pandemic & shift to hybrid work models?
• Overview of the cyber-threat landscape in the MENA region – are attacks getting more sophisticated? What are some of the attacks associated with IT service continuity for ‘always-on’ enterprises?
• How to go about protecting against the most predominant cloud security breaches like – advanced malware, compromised credentials, misconfiguration of environments, unpatched vulnerabilities, insider threats & zero-day vulnerabilities?
• What are some of the best practices whilst revising your IT Service Continuity Management (ITSCM) framework? How to prioritize strategies to increase awareness, proactivity & readiness?
• Are Zero Trust Services the best bet to protect business critical data using strict access authentication to keep malicious insider threats and advanced outsider attacks at bay?
• Disaster Recovery – Is it possible to leverage intelligent automation to accelerate response times & reliable recovery using automated patterns?

Dr. Claude Fachkha, Cybersecurity Instructor, University of Dubai
Ali Husnain Shah, Head of IT Department, East Delta Saudi Co. - KSA
Hamad Abdulrahman, Director of ICT Directorate, King Hamad University Hospital - Bahrain
Shaheela Banu, Information Security & Compliance Officer & Auditor, Kuwait Gulf Oil Company

09:40 - 10:40

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: Chief Data Officers (CDOs) Cross-Industry Spotlight Discussion

• What should my data & analytics strategy look like? Has data & analytics strategy evolved from being a discipline to a wider set of capabilities that translates to enterprise digital transformation & strategy?
• In especially challenging economic times, does the business management team turn to data as a trusted source for quality decision making? And are you able to deliver that data with the right context?
• Deriving value from data at your organization – what would you count as a recent win? Are we limiting the use of data to just fuel fact-based decision-making? How about expanding offerings for internal & external end-users with more data-focused products?
• What does the future hold? Outcomes or Predictions?
  • Will ELT evolve to become fully managed or will we still need to be worried about overloading data warehouses fearing slower query times or crashes?
  • Will the DataOps ecosystem mature? Will we start seeing DataOps built features directly within end-user apps & products with tools for data lineage tracking & version control?
  • Will data become more accessible within your enterprise with ‘Operational Analytics’ being used on a day-to-day basis by frontline staff?
  • What about collaborative analytics? When will business units & data teams within the same enterprise start using the right lingo for progress on how data is shared internally?
  • Will we see the continuous rise of automation? What about the use of coding frameworks that enable distributed data processing at scale?

Maged Mahmoud, Sales Lead - Middle East, Dataiku
Deepak Dinakaran, Head of Big Data, Emirates Steel Arkan
Emmet Kelly, Chief Data Officer, YAP
Faten Ali Abdullatif, Chief Specialist - Big Data Analytics and Data Science, Roads & Transport Authority
Hesham Saad Al Ghamdi, Group Chief Data & Analytics Officer, Abdul Latif Jameel - KSA

10:40 - 11:40

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: BFSI (Banking, Financial Services & Insurance) Industry Panel

• Leaving behind disconnected data silos, large pools of replicated data, unsynchronized data sets & tradition data processing – is it possible to leverage data virtualization capabilities to implement a logical data warehouse which promotes a data sharing culture within your bank?
• How to go about accelerating digitalization in the MENA BFSI industry? What is your take on forming partnerships with platform players & ecosystem hosts to go mainstream?
• Open Banking & Open APIs – how to build trust, mitigate competition risk and offer customers real-time, dynamic, contextual & scalable services?
• Will enabling modern data mesh architecture help bring about more efficiency?
• What are some of the best practices when it comes to ‘Alternative Data’ in financial institutions? Will transaction analytics help to gain a competitive edge, leverage open banking & open up the unbanked market in the MENA region?

Mohammed Khodr, Sales Director, Snowflake
Bart Pietruszka, Chief Data Officer, HSBC Bank Middle East
Manoj Mishra, Chief Manager - BI & DBM, A Leading Insurance Company
Sri Lakshmi Bannigol, Vice President, Head of Analytics and AI, First Abu Dhabi Bank

11:40 - 11:50

The Data Deluge an excellent opportunity to enhance your Customer Experience

The gap between the demands of markets and the ability of banks to meet those demands is costing
profitability now and competitiveness in the future. How to take advantage on the available additional
data sources in a wise way to delight your customers and bring better results to your Bank?

Daniel Melo, Sr. Director Global Partners & Alliances, FICO

12:20 - 13:10

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: Data Governance, Data Ethics & Data Privacy – Is the MENA region Moving towards Maturity?

• Struggling with the basics & finding the right start points for governance focused activities – Do you often find that data & analytics governance dominates your time & energy? Moving from a compliance-driven mindset to value-driven mindset. What are some of the foundational pillars for a healthy governance program?
• Have self-service analytical tools embedded within apps empowered employees across your enterprise and demonstrated actionable insight? Have you considered implementing self-service governance to mitigate security risks?
• ‘Connected Governance’: Will an advanced governance platform help address complex challenges that arise due to enterprise structures spanning across international borders, group holding companies or inter-department data restrictions?
• Is the concept of analytics democratization at odds with governance? How to maintain the balance with seemingly conflicting approaches?
• How to turn ‘Privacy Automation’ into a competitive differentiator? Going beyond merely ticking the compliance boxes to building trust with your end-users
• Augmented Data Governance – Is it possible to develop a self-learning model using Metadata that identifies risks & detects benefits?
• How to go about adapting data governance to the culture and maturity of our organizations? What are some of our stories here in the Middle East?

Seema Alidily, Sales Director, Denodo
Armin Kech, Head of Data Governance, MBC Group
Imran Chowdhury, Global Head of Data Protection & Governance, Al Jazeera Media Network - Qatar
Sultan Altukhaim, General Manager, Communications and Information Technology Commission (CITC) - KSA
Vineesha Satwani, Advisor - Digital Transformation, H.H Rulers Court

13:10 - 14:00

INTERACTIVE PANEL DISCUSSION: Retail, Digital E-Commerce & Consumer Packaged Goods (CPGs) Industry Discussion

• Drawing up a holistic view of every potential customer for your brand: Is it possible to leverage 360-views of targeted customers to draw up a marketing campaign for a bigger impact? Modeling your marketing mix to make sense for the MENA based customer & how does applying advanced analytics improve customer lifecycle management?
• How to catalog vast sets of data volumes which is quite common in the retail industry in an efficient manner? Is there an emphasis on data collaboration to build the foundation of trusted enterprise data which is used to transform data assets to positive customer experiences?
• Prioritize & personalize customer engagement using MarTech stacks – how to learn from use cases in dynamic segmentation with a Data Cloud & marketing optimization with built-in ROI engines?
• How does informed decision-making help you with web-stores and ecommerce applications? Can transaction & loyalty data from targeted data mining be utilized to update pricing, promotions and sort local availability of products?
• How can the retail & CPG (Consumer Packaged Goods) industries leverage secure data sharing to coordinate decisions across supply chain, brand marketing, pricing & promotions? What are some of the current trends that are driving growth & efficiency?
• Has the pandemic helped push MENA consumers over the digital / online barrier? How does your brand bridge the in-store to web-store divide?

Amiit Deep Kumarr, Business Head Retail, Convergytics
Anuvrat Gaurav, Country Manager UAE, SellAnyCar.com & Carnab
Jayakumar Mohanchandran, Group CIO, Easa Saleh Al Gurg Group
Jurie Fourie, Head of Big Data Analytics, Spinneys