Eliot Horowitz presented "Big Data is Modern Data" at the Big Data LDN 2018 conference, highlighting the requirements of modern applications that go beyond just being large in scale. These requirements include flexibility, inherent distribution, and high availability across various client types. The presentation emphasizes the need for better productivity from developers, smarter infrastructure, and new approaches to application connectivity. Eliot Horowitz then outlines the ideal data platform to address these challenges, focusing on rich flexible data structures, distributed data as the default, and ability to run anywhere. He also critiques other database players' approaches to addressing these aspects and how MongoDB explicitly addresses them.