Hello, and welcome to the inaugural edition of Bill’s Bytes! For those of you who might not know me, I serve as the Goodnight Executive Director of the Institute for Advanced Analytics (IAA).

My plan is to use this space in our newsletter every month to share what is currently on my mind. You can expect topics ranging from what the Institute is up to and trends in data science, to random ramblings about my own adventures. This first column is definitely an example of the latter, offering a brief look into what I’ve been up to this summer.

Balancing Campus Life and Global Research

In addition to helping our faculty and staff plan for the new academic year, which we officially kicked off at the end of June (our 20th class, btw — more to come on that later), I am also still an active researcher, which means I spend a portion of every summer attending conferences around the world. Sometimes I present my own research, sometimes I help run the event, and other times I am simply there to keep up to speed on the latest academic advancements.

Earlier this summer, my travels took me to four distinct conferences:

• The European Marketing Academy Conference (EMAC) in Bath, England: A marketing conference I attended to keep up with current research.
• The Marketing Science Conference in Lisbon, Portugal: Another marketing conference where I spent time observing the latest academic trends and connecting with some co-authors.
• The Statistical Challenges in Ecommerce Research (SCECR) in Tokyo: A business analytics conference I attended to view presentations, collaborate with co-authors, and successfully pitch hosting a future event.
• The Inaugural NetLogo Conference in Chicago: A computer modeling conference where I presented some of my recent work.

AI, Creativity and the Future of Marketing

At the two marketing conferences, EMAC and Marketing Science, I was mostly there to listen and learn. Unsurprisingly, there was a lot of discussion surrounding generative AI and its effect on marketing. There is extensive research exploring how consumers perceive AI in marketing, though it is not clear to me that much of that research will even matter in 3-5 years, as public opinions on this topic are evolving so rapidly. What I found truly interesting, however, is a different set of research focused specifically on using AI to improve the creativity of marketing content. Despite concerns that AI might decrease creativity and cause a reversion to the average, there seems to be growing evidence to the contrary. It appears that when humans and AI collaborate, they can often produce content that is far more innovative and creative than what either could achieve alone.

Returning to My NetLogo Roots and Looking Ahead

At the NetLogo conference, I had the opportunity to present my work on data-driven agent-based models (ABMs). For a bit of background, NetLogo is a software tool that helps developers build ABMs. During my postdoc, I worked in the lab that developed NetLogo, which ultimately led me to co-author a textbook with the language’s inventor, Uri Wilensky. That book remains the most popular ABM textbook today. The meeting was fascinating because it was both interdisciplinary (involving researchers from many different fields) and transdisciplinary (featuring presenters from all academic levels, from high school teachers to college professors to students).

As for my time at the SCECR conference, I am thrilled to share that I successfully pitched hosting the 2028 edition of the event in Budapest, Hungary at Eotvos Lorand University (ELTE). I will be helping organize this event alongside my colleague, Laszlo Gulyas at ELTE.

All in all, it has been a highly productive summer! I am excited to see how we can incorporate the insights I gained at these meetings into our curriculum here at the Institute.