Description: This presentation is a panel discussion from the 1991 Annual Meeting of the Society of Actuaries, held October 20-23 in Toronto. The panelists, discussing their own experiences in Canada and the U.S., present their views on why they chose to leave insurance companies for a consulting career. Their individual experiences include joining existing firms, as well as starting a practice as an independent consultant. The panelists discuss the tradeoffs between an insurance company career and consulting, and how to start a consulting practice, including skills needed, marketing, financing, and finding a niche. Discussion from participants is included. From the Record of Society of Actuaries, Volume 17, No. 4B.

Description: The Shiny web application framework by RStudio has become a popular way for data scientists working in R to create interactive data analytics. When the developer is ready to share their application with others, internally or externally, there are a number alternatives and factors to consider. This talk presents the main Shiny application hosting alternatives and considers their advantages and disadvantages. In addition, the steps necessary to deploy an application on Shiny Server, both on-prem and in the cloud using Microsoft Azure as an example, are described.