Here is an announcement from Predictive Analytics World, the worlds largest vendor neutral conference dedicated to Predictive Analytics alone. Decisionstats has been a blog partner of PAWCON since inception. This is cool stuff!
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Tag: ceo
Interview with Rob La Gesse Chief Disruption Officer Rackspace
Here is an interview with Rob La Gesse ,Chief Disruption Officer ,Rackspace Hosting.
Ajay- Describe your career journey from not finishing college to writing software to your present projects?
Rob- I joined the Navy right out of High School. I had neither the money for college, or a real desire for it. I had several roles in the Navy, to include a Combat Medic station with the US Marine Corps and eventually becoming a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist.
After the Navy I worked as a Respiratory Therapist, a roofer, and I repaired print shop equipment. Basically whatever it took to make a buck or two. Eventually I started selling computers. That led me to running a multi-line dial-up BBS and I taught myself how to program. Eventually that led to a job with a small engineering company where we developed WiFi.
After the WiFi project I started consulting on my own. I used Rackspace to host my clients, and eventually they hired me. I’ve been here almost three years and have held several roles. I currently manage Social Media, building 43 and am involved in several other projects such as the Rackspace Startup Program.
Ajay- What is building43 all about ?
Rob- Building43 is a web site devoted to telling the stories behind technology startups. Basically, after we hired Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica we were figuring out how best we could work with them to both highlight Rackspace and customers. That idea expanded beyond customers to highlighting anyone doing something incredible in the technology industry – mostly software startups. We’ve had interviews with people like Mark Zuckerberg, CEO and Founder of FaceBook. We’ve broken some news on the site, but it isn’t really a news site. It is a story telling site.
Rackspace has met some amazing new customers through the relationships that started with an interview.
Ajay- How is life as Robert Scoble’s boss. Is he an easy guy to work with? Does he have super powers while he types?
Rob- Robert isn’t much different to manage than the rest of my employees. He is a person – no super powers. But he does establish a unique perspective on things because he gets to see so much new technology early. Often earlier than almost anyone else. It helps him to spot trends that others might not be seeing yet.
Ajay – Hosting companies are so so many. What makes Rackspace special for different kinds of customers?
Rob- I think what we do better than anyone is add that human touch – the people really care about your business. We are a company that is focused on building one of the greatest service companies on the planet. We sell support. Hosting is secondary to service. Our motto is Fanatic Support®
and we actually look for people focused on delivering amazing customer experiences during our interviewing and hiring practices. People that find a personal sense of pride and reward by helping others should apply at
Rackspace. We are hiring like crazy!
Ajay – Where do you see technology and the internet 5 years down the line? (we will visit the answers in 5 years 🙂 )?
Rob- I think the shift to Cloud computing is going to be dramatic. I think in five years we will be much further down that path. The scaling, cost-effectiveness, and on-demand nature of the Cloud are just too compelling for companies not to embrace. This changes business in fundamental ways – lower capital expenses, no need for in house IT staff, etc will save companies a lot of money and let them focus more on their core businesses. Computing will become another utility. I also think mobile use of computing will be much more common than it is today. And it is VERY common today. Phones will replace car keys and credit cards (they already are). This too will drive use of Cloud computing because we all want our data wherever we are – on whatever computing device we happen tobe using.
Ajay- GoDaddy CEO shoots elephants. What do you do in your spare time, if any.
Rob- Well, I don’t hunt. We do shoot a lot of video though! I enjoy playing poker, specifically Texas Hold ’em. It is a very people oriented game, and people are my passion.
Brief Biography- (in his own words from http://www.lagesse.org/about/)
My technical background includes working on the development of WiFi, writing wireless applications for the Apple Newton, mentoring/managing several software-based start-ups, running software quality assurance teams and more. In 2008 I joined Rackspace as an employee – a “Racker”. I was previously a 7 year customer and the company impressed me. My initial role was as Director of Software Development for the Rackspace Cloud. It was soon evident that I was better suited to a customer facing role since I LOVE talking to customers. I am currently the Director of Customer Development Chief Disruption Officer. I manage building43 and enjoy working with Robert Scoble and Rocky Barbanica to make that happen. The org chart says they work for me. Reality tells me the opposite 
Go take a look – I’m proud of what we are building there (pardon the pun!).
I do a lot of other stuff at Rackspace – mostly because they let me! I love a company that lets me try. Rackspace does that.Going further back, I have been a Mayor (in Hawaii). I have written successful shareware software. I have managed employees all over the world. I have been all over the world. I have also done roofing, repaired high end print-shop equipment, been a Neonatal Respiratory Therapist, done CPR on a boat, in a plane, and in a hardware store (and of course in hospitals).
I have treated jumpers from the Golden Gate Bridge – and helped save a few. I have lived in Illinois (Kankakee), California (San Diego, San Francisco and Novato), Texas (Corpus Christi and San Antonio), Florida (Pensacola and Palm Bay), Hawaii (Honolulu/Fort Shafter) and several other places for shorter durations.
For the last 8+ years I have been a single parent – and have done an amazing job (yes, I am a proud papa) thanks to having great kids. They are both in College now – something I did NOT manage to accomplish. I love doing anything someone thinks I am not qualified to do.
I can be contacted at rob (at) lagesse (dot) org
you can follow Rob at http://twitter.com/kr8tr
Related articles
- Rackspace offers hosted virtual desktops from Citrix (infoworld.com)
- Citrix Taps Open Stack For Building Private Clouds (informationweek.com)
- A2SM Podcast #22 – Special Report: Robert Scoble on the Rackspace Cloud Going Open Source (a2sm.com)
- Support from Rackspace Customers Helped me Finish the Ironman (rackspace.com)
Heritage offers 3 million chump change for Monkeys
My perspective is life is not fair, and if someone offers me 1 mill a year so they make 1 bill a year, I would still take it, especially if it leads to better human beings and better humanity on this planet. Health care isnt toothpaste.
Unless there are even more fine print changes involved- there exist several players in the pharma sector who do build and deploy models internally for denying claims or prospecting medical doctors with freebies, but they might just get caught with the new open data movement
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A note from KDNuggets-
Heritage Health Prizereleased a second set of data on May 4. They also recently modified their ruleswhich now demand complete exclusivity and seem to disallow use of other tools (emphasis mine – Gregory PS)
21. LICENSE
By registering for the Competition, each Entrant (a) grants to Sponsor and its designees a worldwide, exclusive (except with respect to Entrant) , sub-licensable (through multiple tiers), transferable, fully paid-up, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable right to use, not use, reproduce, distribute (through multiple tiers), create derivative works of, publicly perform, publicly display, digitally perform, make, have made, sell, offer for sale and import the entry and the algorithm used to produce the entry, as well as any other algorithm, data or other information whatsoever developed or produced at any time using the data provided to Entrant in this Competition (collectively, the “Licensed Materials”), in any media now known or hereafter developed, for any purpose whatsoever, commercial or otherwise, without further approval by or payment to Entrant (the “License”) and
(b) represents that he/she/it has the unrestricted right to grant the License.
Entrant understands and agrees that the License is exclusive except with respect to Entrant: Entrant may use the Licensed Materials solely for his/her/its own patient management and other internal business purposes but may not grant or otherwise transfer to any third party any rights to or interests in the Licensed Materials whatsoever.
This has lead to a call to boycott the competition by Tristan, who also notes that academics cannot publish their results without prior written approval of the Sponsor.
Anthony Goldbloom, CEO of Kaggle, emailed the HHP participants on May 4
HPN have asked me to pass on the following message: “The Heritage Provider Network is sponsoring the Heritage Health Prize to spur innovation and creative thinking in healthcare. HPN, however, is a medical group and must retain an exclusive license to the algorithms created using its data so as to ensure that the algorithms are used responsibly, and are only used to provide better health care to patients and not for improper purposes.
Put simply, while the competition hopes to spur innovation, this is not a competition regarding movie ratings or chess results. We hope that the clarifications we have made to the Rules and the FAQ adequately address your concerns and look forward to your participation in the competition.”
What do you think? Will the exclusive license prevent you from participating?
Related articles
- $3.2M in prizes for predicting hospitalization (revolutionanalytics.com)
Mash Hash Smash
Mash Hash Smash
To all the Larries of the world
the Joes, the Jims, the Steves
A shout out, much respect, you have unfurled.
To all the Larries of the world
the Joes, the Jims, the Steves
A shout out, much respect, you have unfurled.
Mash
First create a mash, an aggregated stash
Cross Domain platforms , the blurring of silo edges,
Intra department rivalries have no place in Klaatus world
Create a mash-up , shut up and draw
Do not swallow your own FUD in AAker’s brand indentity trap
Cognitive Bias leads to agency conflict
Ignore the little guys who bond in dorms at your peril,
Statistically the young still have more time than the boomers
to adapt , to change, to nurture the trees that stood for 300 million years
Hash
Congratulations, you got some money
Enjoy the lunch, the San Fransisco strip pubs, attention
Working furiously as the launch date approaches
Dont leave your prototype when you schmooze
remember your hommies and bro
Nice people last nice products have faltered
Everyone hates pompous software marketing
Create a hash tag in your blog
make title tag both tweet optimized and web search crawl able
If you are good to the search engine
It being fair will reward you well
On the internet phonies don’t last except in bubbles
Smash
When the economy is down is a good time to hire top talent at negotiable rates
When the economy is up is a good time to move from naive sales forecast models
The ego of the CEO is less valuable than the death of an elephant
Elephants dont dance but peacocks do
Use Fear Doubt Uncertainty selectively
Karma revolves FUD PIE on your face
be generous to schools you didnt study in
The poor have a right to college in India and China
Your medicine costs 1/10 th in Asia
Outsource but dont betray your nation
Outsource everything except your pride
Enjoy the show, welcome to the ride
QGIS and R
Qgis is Quantum GIS http://www.qgis.org/
Quantum GIS (QGIS) is a user friendly Open Source Geographic Information System (GIS) licensed under the GNU General Public License. QGIS is an official project of the Open Source Geospatial Foundation (OSGeo). It runs on Linux, Unix, MacOSX, and Windows and supportsnumerous vector, raster, and database formats and functionalities.
Learn more about QGISQuantum GIS provides a continously growing number of capabilities provided by core functions and plugins. You can visualize, manage, edit, analyse data, and compose printable maps |
Also you can use both Qgis and R through Python (!!!)
http://www.qgis.org/wiki/HomeRange_plugin#Home-range_analyses_in_QGIS_using_R_through_Python
Interesting app for webs (sometimes better suited than some R map packages)
https://plugins.qgis.org/plugins/HomeRange_plugin/
Based on a Google Summer of Code _
Also
https://sites.google.com/site/eospansite/introqgis_r
and
HomeRange_plugin
http://hub.qgis.org/projects/quantum-gis/wiki/HomeRange_plugin
Also read-
Related Articles-
R Graphs Resources
https://rforanalytics.wordpress.com/r-graphs-resources/
Using R from other Software
https://rforanalytics.wordpress.com/using-r-from-other-software/
and
Visualize NHL Play-by-Play using Tableau Public and R
http://brocktibert.wordpress.com/2011/02/13/visualize-nhl-play-by-play-using-tableau-public-and-r/
Related Articles
- Pypy wants you – now’s the time to start contributing to Pypy (morepypy.blogspot.com)
Google – Turns the Page
Meet Google’s new CEO
Larry Page
Co-Founder and President, Products
Larry Page was Google’s founding CEO and grew the company to more than 200 employees and profitability before moving into his role as president of products in April 2001. He continues to share responsibility for Google’s day-to-day operations with Eric Schmidt and Sergey Brin.
The son of Michigan State University computer science professor Dr. Carl Victor Page, Larry’s love of computers began at age six. While following in his father’s footsteps in academics, he became an honors graduate from the University of Michigan, where he earned a bachelor’s degree in engineering, with a concentration on computer engineering. During his time in Ann Arbor, Larry built an inkjet printer out of Lego™ bricks.
While in the Ph.D. program in computer science at Stanford University, Larry met Sergey Brin, and together they developed and ran Google, which began operating in 1998. Larry went on leave from Stanford after earning his master’s degree.
In 2002, Larry was named a World Economic Forum Global Leader for Tomorrow. He is a member of the National Advisory Committee (NAC) of the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and together with co-founder Sergey Brin, Larry was honored with the Marconi Prize in 2004. He is a trustee on the board of the X PRIZE, and was elected to the National Academy of Engineering in 2004.
and no coincidence but it reminded me of the Metallica video- Turn the Page. Forgive the Pun, herr Eric
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dOibtqWo6z4
Related Articles
- Meet Larry Page, Google’s New CEO (huffingtonpost.com)
- Larry Page: Google’s king of search (guardian.co.uk)
- Sergey Brin: We’ve Touched 1 Percent Of What Social Search Can Be (techcrunch.com)
- Everything You Need To Know About Larry Page, Google’s New CEO (GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
- Co-founder Larry Page to Become CEO of Google (slog.thestranger.com)
- How Larry Page’s Google Will Function (mashable.com)
- Google Shakeup: Larry Page Takes Over as CEO (sfist.com)
- TechCrunch Interview With Eric Schmidt, Larry Page And Sergey Brin (techcrunch.com)
- Google CEO Schmidt to step down, hand reins to Larry Page (techflash.com)
PAW Blog Partnership
Please use the following code to get a 15% discount on the 2 Day Conference Pass: AJAY11.
Predictive Analytics World announces new full-day workshops coming to San Francisco March 13-19, amounting to seven consecutive days of content.
These workshops deliver top-notch analytical and business expertise across the hottest topics.
Register now for one or more workshops, offered just before and after the full two-day Predictive Analytics World conference program (March 14-15). Early Bird registration ends on January 31st – take advantage of reduced pricing before then.
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Driving Enterprise Decisions with Business Analytics – March 13, 2011 |
| James Taylor, CEO, Decision Management Solutions | |
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NEW – R for Predictive Modeling: A Hands-On Introduction – March 13, 2011 |
| Max Kuhn, Director, Nonclinical Statistics, Pfizer | |
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The Best and Worst of Predictive Analytics: Predictive Modeling Methods and Common Data Mining Mistakes – March 16, 2011 |
| John Elder, Ph.D., CEO and Founder, Elder Research, Inc. | |
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Hands-On Predictive Analytics – March 17, 2011 |
| Dean Abbott, President, Abbott Analytics | |
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NEW – Net Lift Models: Optimizing the Impact of Your Marketing – March 18-19, 2011 |
| Kim Larsen, VP of Analytical Insights, Market Share Partners |
Download the Conference Preview or view the Predictive Analytics World Agenda online
Make savings now with the early bird rate. Receive $200 off your registration rate for Predictive Analytics World – San Francisco (March 14-15), plus $100 off each workshop for which you register.
Register now before Early Bird Price expires on January 31st!
Additional savings of $200 on the two-day conference pass when you register a colleague at the same time.
Related Articles
- JMP Launches Global Online Store Powered by e-academy, Inc. (prweb.com)
- In case you missed it: December Roundup (revolutionanalytics.com)
- IBM Study Predicts Collaboration, Analytics And Cloud Computing As Drivers Of Growth In Midmarket (cloudave.com)
- StatSoft Releases STATISTICA Version 10 Analytics Solutions (prweb.com)
- In-Depth Hands-on Workshops Delivered By Analytics Experts and Leading Practitioners at Predictive Analytics World March 13-17, 2011, San Francisco, California (prweb.com)
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