NEW YORK, Feb. 7, 2012 -- Analytics visionary Seth Grimes has released the speaker line-up for the fourth Sentiment Analysis Symposium, slated for May 8, 2012 in New York. Grimes states that with speakers and panelists from leading firms (including American Express, Fidelity Investments, Kraft Foods, the Red Cross, Thomson Reuters, and Yahoo), start-ups, and academia, the New York symposium will be the best yet.

The Sentiment Analysis Symposium bridges technology and business in one of the most exciting applications to emerge in recent years: software that discovers business value in opinions and attitudes in social media, news, and enterprise feedback. Keynotes kick off the morning sessions: Prof. Jan Wiebe of the Univ of Pittsburgh is a sentiment-analysis pioneer. She will speak on Sentiment, Subjectivity, and Sense, providing a leading researcher's view of the state of sentiment, and where we're heading. Drinking from the Fire Hose authors Chris Frank (American Express) and Paul Magnone (Openet Telecom) are slated to tackle (working title) Emotional Versus Rational in Customer Decision Making.

Registration is online at http://www.sentimentsymposium.com/registration.html.

The Sentiment Analysis Symposium series has drawn steadily growing numbers, from 95 attendees in April 2010 to 120 (capacity) in April 2011 to 154 in San Francisco last November. (Videos of the last two symposiums' presentations are online.) The symposium both builds on past success and aims to stay on the leading edge of sentiment technologies and applications. The symposium showcases ground-breaking sentiment-analysis applications and provides unique learning opportunities.

In addition to talks by Prof. Jan Wiebe and a new presentation by Prof. Ronen Feldman of Hebrew University, who co-founded solution provider Digital Trowel — Feldman will speak on Unsupervised Learning: Insight in Business News, Medical Forums, and Public Filings — the symposium will once again have a half-day, day-before Practical Sentiment Analysis tutorial, on May 7, this year taught by Prof. Bing Liu, another sentiment/opinion-mining expert. Liu was featured in a January 26 New York Times article, For $2 a Star, an Online Retailer Gets 5-Star Product Reviews.

Other May 8 speakers include two San Francisco symposium panelists, Banafsheh Ghassemi of the American Red Cross (A Multi-Channel Proposition: Customer Sentiment and (Much) More) and Carol Haney, now with Toluna (Tween Pants Cut Too Low!! (or, Combine Survey Research & Social Monitoring to Discover the Unknown)). Rich Brown from Thomson Reuters is another repeat, a highly rated presenter at the April 2010 symposium. Brown's title this go-around is Forecasting Financial Market Response from News and Social Media Sentiment.

New to the symposium is Andera Gadeib, CEO of German-based Dialego AG, speaking on Market Research Beyond Sentiment: Differentiating the Engaged and Pleased.

Talks will teach attendees how to use sentiment analysis and how to combine it with data from diverse online and enterprise sources and cover beyond positive/negative analysis that help user understand and exploit emotion, mood, and opinion in the spectrum of sources. The symposium also focuses on User Perspectives in a series of three shorter presentations followed by a panel discussion:

Can automated sentiment analysis be less accurate than flipping a coin? — Dana Jacob, Yahoo

Who are the most loyal customers? — Sobhan Hota, Fidelity Investments

"How Can I Listen If I'm Talking?": The Power Of Social Media Listening — Frank Cotignola, Kraft Foods

As usual, the symposium will have a series of 5-minute lightning talks just before the lunch break:

Sentiment As A Service — Michael Tupanjanin, Metavana

Political Sentiment Analysis — Dr. Stuart W. Shulman, Texifter

Sentiment Visualization — Vsevolod Gavrilyuk, SemanticForce (tentative)

Data-driven Sentiment Analysis of Financial News — Matt Sommer, MarketChorus Inc.

And features a new Innovators & Innovation panel to close this year's program, with Leslie Barrett (The Ladders), Prof. Bing Liu (University of Illinois at Chicago), and Romi Mahajan (Metavana).

Lastly, in order to maximize networking opportunities, the symposium will once again planning evening-before and post-symposium receptions.

Sentiment Analysis Symposium information is online at sentimentsymposium.com. Symposium organizer Seth Grimes singled our sponsors Attensity, Lexalytics, and NetBase for thanks, given their support that makes the symposium possible.

Media Contact: Seth Grimes Alta Plana Corporation, 3012700795, grimes@altaplana.com