White House Chief Technology Officer to Participate in Live Twitter Chat as Part of Big Data Week

LONDON and SAN FRANCISCO, CA and NEW YORK, NY and CHICAGO, IL and SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA--(Marketwire - Apr 23, 2012) - Todd Park (@todd-park), United States Chief Technology Officer for the White House, will be participating in a LIVE Twitter chat as part of Big Data Week, a series of community-led events and hackathons relating to Big Data. The LIVE Twitter chat, taking place on Tuesday, April 24 at 2:00 p.m. ET, provides the big data community with an opportunity to ask Todd Park questions about the White House's new Big Data Research and Development Initiative and specifically its efforts around big data in the health sector.

WHO:
Todd Park, U.S. Chief Technology Officer

WHAT:
LIVE Twitter chat on the White House Big Data Research and Development Initiative

WHERE:
Ask your questions now and during the live event via the hashtag: #AskToddCTO. Follow the LIVE Q&A via @todd_park.

WHEN:
Tuesday, April 24 at 2:00 p.m. ET
The chat will be LIVE on Twitter for 30 minutes

A summary of the LIVE chat with Todd Park will be available at www.bigdataweek.com.

Todd Park joined the Obama Administration as the U.S. Health and Human Services (HHS) Chief Technology Officer in August 2009. In that role, he was responsible for helping HHS leadership harness the power of data, technology and innovation to improve the health and welfare of the nation. He was named by President Obama to be the second U.S. Chief Technology Officer and Entrepreneur in Residence at the White House in March 2012. Mr. Park co-founded Athenahealth in 1997 and co-led its development over the following decade into one of the most innovative, socially-oriented and successful health information technology companies in the industry.

Founded by DataSift, the social data platform company, Big Data Week will bring together the communities of data scientists, data visualizers, data technologists and CIOs to gain a better understanding of the diverse aspects of Big Data, from the technology challenges to the commercial opportunities. The event kicks off today in the UK, US, Germany, Finland and Australia and features the world's first Global Data Science Hackathon on April 28^th, a 24-hour challenge taking place in eight cities around the world, where teams will compete to solve specific Big Data challenges by creating new analytical and predictive insights from public data. Details on the event can be found at http://datasciencehackathon.com/.

Big Data Week is the brainchild of Stewart Townsend, head of client services at DataSift, with the goal of bringing together the various Big Data communities to provide a platform for networking and learning. With more than 50 events on three continents, Big Data Week is open to anyone who wants to understand the emerging trend of Big Data, the transformational impact it will have on business, and the role of social media in Big Data. The full list of events can be found at http://www.bigdataweek.com.

For more information about the events taking place in London and across the globe visit: http://bigdataweek.com/ or follow Big Data Week on Twitter at @bigdataweek, #bdwldn and #bigdataweek.

About DataSift
DataSift Inc. is a social data platform company, enabling enterprises and entrepreneurs to aggregate, filter and extract insights from the billions of public social conversations on Twitter, leading social networks and millions of other sources. Through a licensing agreement with Twitter, DataSift provides companies with both real-time and historical Tweets to filter and uncover insights and trends that relate to brands, businesses, financial markets, news and public opinion. DataSift is an on-demand platform with a flexible pricing scale that makes enterprise-level data accessible to companies of any size. DataSift has offices in San Francisco and Reading, U.K. It has received investment from IA Ventures (Roger Ehrenberg), a fund that is focused exclusively on Big Data, and from GRP Partners (Mark Suster). For more information, visit http://www.datasift.com and follow us on Twitter @datasift.