Here is an interview with Scott Gidley, CTO and co-founder of leading data quality ccompany DataFlux . DataFlux is a part of SAS Institute and in 2011 acquired Baseline Consulting besides launching the latest version of their Master Data Management product. Continue reading “Interview Scott Gidley CTO and Founder, DataFlux”
Tag: science
Interview Beth Schultz Editor AllAnalytics.com
Here is an interview with Beth Scultz Editor in Chief, AllAnalytics.com .
Allanalytics.com http://www.allanalytics.com/ is the new online community on Predictive Analytics, and its a bit different in emphasizing quality more than just quantity. Beth is veteran in tech journalism and communities.
Ajay-Describe your journey in technology journalism and communication. What are the other online communities that you have been involved with?
Beth- I’m a longtime IT journalist, having begun my career covering the telecommunications industry at the brink of AT&T’s divestiture — many eons ago. Over the years, I’ve covered the rise of internal corporate networking; the advent of the Internet and creation of the Web for business purposes; the evolution of Web technology for use in building intranets, extranets, and e-commerce sites; the move toward a highly dynamic next-generation IT infrastructure that we now call cloud computing; and development of myriad enterprise applications, including business intelligence and the analytics surrounding them. I have been involved in developing online B2B communities primarily around next-generation enterprise IT infrastructure and applications. In addition, Shawn Hessinger, our community editor, has been involved in myriad Web sites aimed at creating community for small business owners.
Ajay- Technology geeks get all the money while journalists get a story. Comments please
Beth- Great technology geeks — those being the ones with technology smarts as well as business savvy — do stand to make a lot of money. And some pursue that to all ends (with many entrepreneurs gunning for the acquisition) while others more or less fall into it. Few journalists, at least few tech journalists, have big dollars in mind. The gratification for journalists comes in being able to meet these folks, hear and deliver their stories — as appropriate — and help explain what makes this particular technology geek developing this certain type of product or service worth paying attention to.
Ajay- Describe what you are trying to achieve with the All Analytics community and how it seeks to differentiate itself with other players in this space.
Beth- With AllAnaltyics.com, we’re concentrating on creating the go-to site for CXOs, IT professionals, line-of-business managers, and other professionals to share best practices, concrete experiences, and research about data analytics, business intelligence, information optimization, and risk management, among many other topics. We differentiate ourself by featuring excellent editorial content from a top-notch group of bloggers, access to industry experts through weekly chats, ongoing lively and engaging message board discussions, and biweekly debates.
We’re a new property, and clearly in rapid building mode. However, we’ve already secured some of the industry’s most respected BI/analytics experts to participate as bloggers. For example, a small sampling of our current lineup includes the always-intrigueing John Barnes, a science fiction novelist and statistics guru; Sandra Gittlen, a longtime IT journalist with an affinity for BI coverage; Olivia Parr-Rud, an internationally recognized expert in BI and organizational alignment; Tom Redman, a well-known data-quality expert; and Steve Williams, a leading BI strategy consultant. I blog daily as well, and in particular love to share firsthand experiences of how organizations are benefiting from the use of BI, analytics, data warehousing, etc. We’ve featured inside looks at analytics initiatives at companies such as 1-800-Flowers.com, Oberweis Dairy, the Cincinnati Zoo & Botanical Garden, and Thomson Reuters, for example.
In addition, we’ve hosted instant e-chats with Web and social media experts Joe Stanganelli and Pierre DeBois, and this Friday, Aug. 26, at 3 p.m. ET we’ll be hosting an e-chat with Marshall Sponder, Web metrics guru and author of the newly published book, Social Media Analytics: Effective Tools for Building, Interpreting, and Using Metrics. (Readers interested in participating in the chat do need to fill out a quick registration form, available here http://www.allanalytics.com/register.asp . The chat is available here http://www.allanalytics.com/messages.asp?piddl_msgthreadid=241039&piddl_msgid=439898#msg_439898 .
Experts participating in our biweekly debate series, called Point/Counterpoint, have broached topics such as BI in the cloud, mobile BI and whether an analytics culture is truly possible to build.
Ajay- What are some tips you would like to share about writing tech stories to aspiring bloggers.
Beth- I suppose my best advice is this: Don’t write about technology for technology’s sake. Always strive to tell the audience why they should care about a particular technology, product, or service. How might a reader use it to his or her company’s advantage, and what are the potential benefits? Improved productivity, increased revenue, better customer service? Providing anecdotal evidence goes a long way toward delivering that message, as well.
Ajay- What are the other IT world websites that have made a mark on the internet.
Beth- I’d be remiss if I didn’t give a shout out to UBM TechWeb sites, including InformationWeek, which has long charted the use of IT within the enterprise; Dark Reading, a great source for folks interested in securing an enterprise’s information assets; and Light Reading, which takes the pulse of the telecom industry.
Biography-
Beth Schultz has more than two decades of experience as an IT writer and editor. Most recently, she brought her expertise to bear writing thought-provoking editorial and marketing materials on a variety of technology topics for leading IT publications and industry players. Previously, she oversaw multimedia content development, writing and editing for special feature packages at Network World. Beth has a keen ability to identify business and technology trends, developing expertise through in-depth analysis and early-adopter case studies. Over the years, she has earned more than a dozen national and regional editorial excellence awards for special issues from American Business Media, American Society of Business Press Editors, Folio.net, and others.
Interview Rapid-I -Ingo Mierswa and Simon Fischer
Here is an interview with Dr Ingo Mierswa , CEO of Rapid -I and Dr Simon Fischer, Head R&D. Rapid-I makes the very popular software Rapid Miner – perhaps one of the earliest leading open source software in business analytics and business intelligence. It is quite easy to use, deploy and with it’s extensions and innovations (including compatibility with R )has continued to grow tremendously through the years.
In an extensive interview Ingo and Simon talk about algorithms marketplace, extensions , big data analytics, hadoop, mobile computing and use of the graphical user interface in analytics.
Special Thanks to Nadja from Rapid I communication team for helping coordinate this interview.( Statuary Blogging Disclosure- Rapid I is a marketing partner with Decisionstats as per the terms in https://decisionstats.com/privacy-3/)
Ajay- Describe your background in science. What are the key lessons that you have learnt while as scientific researcher and what advice would you give to new students today.
Ingo: My time as researcher really was a great experience which has influenced me a lot. I have worked at the AI lab of Prof. Dr. Katharina Morik, one of the persons who brought machine learning and data mining to Europe. Katharina always believed in what we are doing, encouraged us and gave us the space for trying out new things. Funnily enough, I never managed to use my own scientific results in any real-life project so far but I consider this as a quite common gap between science and the “real world”. At Rapid-I, however, we are still heavily connected to the scientific world and try to combine the best of both worlds: solving existing problems with leading-edge technologies.
Simon: In fact, during my academic career I have not worked in the field of data mining at all. I worked on a field some of my colleagues would probably even consider boring, and that is theoretical computer science. To be precise, my research was in the intersection of game theory and network theory. During that time, I have learnt a lot of exciting things, none of which had any business use. Still, I consider that a very valuable experience. When we at Rapid-I hire people coming to us right after graduating, I don’t care whether they know the latest technology with a fancy three-letter acronym – that will be forgotten more quickly than it came. What matters is the way you approach new problems and challenges. And that is also my recommendation to new students: work on whatever you like, as long as you are passionate about it and it brings you forward.
Ajay- How is the Rapid Miner Extensions marketplace moving along. Do you think there is a scope for people to say create algorithms in a platform like R , and then offer that algorithm as an app for sale just like iTunes or Android apps.
Simon: Well, of course it is not going to be exactly like iTunes or Android apps are, because of the more business-orientated character. But in fact there is a scope for that, yes. We have talked to several developers, e.g., at our user conference RCOMM, and several people would be interested in such an opportunity. Companies using data mining software need supported software packages, not just something they downloaded from some anonymous server, and that is only possible through a platform like the new Marketplace. Besides that, the marketplace will not only host commercial extensions. It is also meant to be a platform for all the developers that want to publish their extensions to a broader community and make them accessible in a comfortable way. Of course they could just place them on their personal Web pages, but who would find them there? From the Marketplace, they are installable with a single click.
Ingo: What I like most about the new Rapid-I Marketplace is the fact that people can now get something back for their efforts. Developing a new algorithm is a lot of work, in some cases even more that developing a nice app for your mobile phone. It is completely accepted that people buy apps from a store for a couple of Dollars and I foresee the same for sharing and selling algorithms instead of apps. Right now, people can already share algorithms and extensions for free, one of the next versions will also support selling of those contributions. Let’s see what’s happening next, maybe we will add the option to sell complete RapidMiner workflows or even some data pools…
Ajay- What are the recent features in Rapid Miner that support cloud computing, mobile computing and tablets. How do you think the landscape for Big Data (over 1 Tb ) is changing and how is Rapid Miner adapting to it.
Simon: These are areas we are very active in. For instance, we have an In-Database-Mining Extension that allows the user to run their modelling algorithms directly inside the database, without ever loading the data into memory. Using analytic databases like Vectorwise or Infobright, this technology can really boost performance. Our data mining server, RapidAnalytics, already offers functionality to send analysis processes into the cloud. In addition to that, we are currently preparing a research project dealing with data mining in the cloud. A second project is targeted towards the other aspect you mention: the use of mobile devices. This is certainly a growing market, of course not for designing and running analyses, but for inspecting reports and results. But even that is tricky: When you have a large screen you can display fancy and comprehensive interactive dashboards with drill downs and the like. On a mobile device, that does not work, so you must bring your reports and visualizations very much to the point. And this is precisely what data mining can do – and what is hard to do for classical BI.
Ingo: Then there is Radoop, which you may have heard of. It uses the Apache Hadoop framework for large-scale distributed computing to execute RapidMiner processes in the cloud. Radoop has been presented at this year’s RCOMM and people are really excited about the combination of RapidMiner with Hadoop and the scalability this brings.
Ajay- Describe the Rapid Miner analytics certification program and what steps are you taking to partner with academic universities.
Ingo: The Rapid-I Certification Program was created to recognize professional users of RapidMiner or RapidAnalytics. The idea is that certified users have demonstrated a deep understanding of the data analysis software solutions provided by Rapid-I and how they are used in data analysis projects. Taking part in the Rapid-I Certification Program offers a lot of benefits for IT professionals as well as for employers: professionals can demonstrate their skills and employers can make sure that they hire qualified professionals. We started our certification program only about 6 months ago and until now about 100 professionals have been certified so far.
Simon: During our annual user conference, the RCOMM, we have plenty of opportunities to talk to people from academia. We’re also present at other conferences, e.g. at ECML/PKDD, and we are sponsoring data mining challenges and grants. We maintain strong ties with several universities all over Europe and the world, which is something that I would not want to miss. We are also cooperating with institutes like the ITB in Dublin during their training programmes, e.g. by giving lectures, etc. Also, we are leading or participating in several national or EU-funded research projects, so we are still close to academia. And we offer an academic discount on all our products 🙂
Ajay- Describe the global efforts in making Rapid Miner a truly international software including spread of developers, clients and employees.
Simon: Our clients already are very international. We have a partner network in America, Asia, and Australia, and, while I am responding to these questions, we have a training course in the US. Developers working on the core of RapidMiner and RapidAnalytics, however, are likely to stay in Germany for the foreseeable future. We need specialists for that, and it would be pointless to spread the development team over the globe. That is also owed to the agile philosophy that we are following.
Ingo: Simon is right, Rapid-I already is acting on an international level. Rapid-I now has more than 300 customers from 39 countries in the world which is a great result for a young company like ours. We are of course very strong in Germany and also the rest of Europe, but also concentrate on more countries by means of our very successful partner network. Rapid-I continues to build this partner network and to recruit dynamic and knowledgeable partners and in the future. However, extending and acting globally is definitely part of our strategic roadmap.
Biography–
Dr. Ingo Mierswa is working as Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Rapid-I. He has several years of experience in project management, human resources management, consulting, and leadership including eight years of coordinating and leading the multi-national RapidMiner developer team with about 30 developers and contributors world-wide. He wrote his Phd titled “Non-Convex and Multi-Objective Optimization for Numerical Feature Engineering and Data Mining” at the University of Dortmund under the supervision of Prof. Morik.
Dr. Simon Fischer is heading the research & development at Rapid-I. His interests include game theory and networks, the theory of evolutionary algorithms (e.g. on the Ising model), and theoretical and practical aspects of data mining. He wrote his PhD in Aachen where he worked in the project “Design and Analysis of Self-Regulating Protocols for Spectrum Assignment” within the excellence cluster UMIC. Before, he was working on the vtraffic project within the DFG Programme 1126 “Algorithms for large and complex networks”.
http://rapid-i.com/content/view/181/190/ tells you more on the various types of Rapid Miner licensing for enterprise, individual and developer versions.
(Note from Ajay- to receive an early edition invite to Radoop, click here http://radoop.eu/z1sxe)
Interview Mike Boyarski Jaspersoft
Here is an interview with Mike Boyarski , Director Product Marketing at Jaspersoft
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the largest BI community with over 14 million downloads, nearly 230,000 registered members, representing over 175,000 production deployments, 14,000 customers, across 100 countries.
Ajay- Describe your career in science from Biology to marketing great software.
Mike- I studied Biology with the assumption I’d pursue a career in medicine. It took about 2 weeks during an internship at a Los Angeles hospital to determine I should do something else. I enjoyed learning about life science, but the whole health care environment was not for me. I was initially introduced to enterprise-level software while at Applied Materials within their Microcontamination group. I was able to assist with an internal application used to collect contamination data. I later joined Oracle to work on an Oracle Forms application used to automate the production of software kits (back when documentation and CDs had to be physically shipped to recognize revenue). This gave me hands on experience with Oracle 7, web application servers, and the software development process.
I then transitioned to product management for various products including application servers, software appliances, and Oracle’s first generation SaaS based software infrastructure. In 2006, with the Siebel and PeopleSoft acquisitions underway, I moved on to Ingres to help re-invigorate their solid yet antiquated technology. This introduced me to commercial open source software and the broader Business Intelligence market. From Ingres I joined Jaspersoft, one of the first and most popular open source Business Intelligence vendors, serving as head of product marketing since mid 2009.
Ajay- Describe some of the new features in Jaspersoft 4.1 that help differentiate it from the rest of the crowd. What are the exciting product features we can expect from Jaspersoft down the next couple of years.
Mike- Jaspersoft 4.1 was an exciting release for our customers because we were able to extend the latest UI advancements in our ad hoc report designer to the data analysis environment. Now customers can use a unified intuitive web-based interface to perform several powerful and interactive analytic functions across any data source, whether its relational, non-relational, or a Big Data source.
The reality is that most (roughly 70%) of todays BI adoption is in the form of reports and dashboards. These tools are used to drive and measure an organizations business, however, data analysis presents the most strategic opportunity for companies because it can identify new opportunities, efficiencies, and competitive differentiation. As more data comes online, the difference between those companies that are successful and those that are not will likely be attributed to their ability to harness data analysis techniques to drive and improve business performance. Thus, with Jaspersoft 4.1, and our improved ad hoc reporting and analysis UI we can effectively address a broader set of BI requirements for organizations of all sizes.
Ajay- What do you think is a good metric to measure influence of an open source software product – is it revenue or is it number of downloads or number of users. How does Jaspersoft do by these counts.
Mike- History has shown that open source software is successful as a “bottoms up” disrupter within IT or the developer market. Today, many new software projects and startup ventures are birthed on open source software, often initiated with little to no budget. As the organization achieves success with a particular project, the next initiative tends to be larger and more strategic, often displacing what was historically solved with a proprietary solution. These larger deployments strengthen the technology over time.
Thus, the more proven and battle tested an open source solution is, often measured via downloads, deployments, community size, and community activity, usually equates to its long term success. Linux, Tomcat, and MySQL have plenty of statistics to model this lifecycle. This model is no different for open source BI.
The success to date of Jaspersoft is directly tied to its solid proven technology and the vibrancy of the community. We proudly and openly claim to have the largest BI community with over 14 million downloads, nearly 230,000 registered members, representing over 175,000 production deployments, 14,000 customers, across 100 countries. Every day, 30,000 developers are using Jaspersoft to build BI applications. Behind Excel, its hard to imagine a more widely used BI tool in the market. Jaspersoft could not reach these kind of numbers with crippled or poorly architected software.
Ajay- What are your plans for leveraging cloud computing, mobile and tablet platforms and for making Jaspersoft more easy and global to use.
Mike-The cloud Continue reading “Interview Mike Boyarski Jaspersoft”
Machine Learning Contest
New Contest at http://www.ecmlpkdd2011.org/dcOverview.php
Discovery Challenge Overview
Organization | Overview | Task and Datasets | Timeline
General description: tasks and dataset
VideoLectures.net is a free and open access multimedia repository of video lectures, mainly of research and educational character. The lectures are given by distinguished scholars and scientists at the most important and prominent events like conferences, summer schools, workshops and science promotional events from many fields of Science. The portal is aimed at promoting science, exchanging ideas and fostering knowledge sharing by providing high quality didactic contents not only to the scientific community but also to the general public. All lectures, accompanying documents, information and links are systematically selected and classified through the editorial process taking into account also users’ comments.
The ECML-PKDD 2011 Discovery Challenge is organized in order to improve the website’s current recommender system. The challenge consists of two main tasks and a “side-by” contest. The provided data is for both of the tasks, and it is up to the contestants how it will be used for learning (building up) a recommender.
Due to the nature of the problem, each of the tasks has its own merit: task 1 simulates new-user and new- item recommendation (cold-start mode), task 2 simulates clickstream based recommendation (normal mode). Continue reading “Machine Learning Contest”
Movie Review -Source Code
Jake Gyllenhaal has always been a dear chap from his Donny Darko days. So when you mash some quantum physics (parabolic calculus as per movie), with science fiction to capture terrorists (a very topical topic)- you get Source Code– an investigative and recursive logical thriller. Lead actress Vera Farmiga from the Departed (remember the scene of making love to Comfortably Numb) seems a bit bored today and the tension never crackles. This is a movie for science fiction or action thrillers not geeks- and the name source code is a bit of a misleading title- as it should probably be called Complex Event Processing. It is also a terrible name to search for in Google Image Search- you dont get movie images at all.
The movie is very watchable, but it wont be winning any Hugo awards yet.
Also stars Michelle Monaghan of MI3 ,
with the cute upturned nose made famous by
Nicole not Kid(ding)man
Related articles
- MOVIE REVIEW The last eight minutes (tech.mit.edu)
Tom Davenport to Keynote at PAW New York
message from Predictive Analytics World. If you are NY based you may want to drop in and listen.———————————————————————————-Tom Davenport to Keynote at
Predictive Analytics World New York
Take advantage of Super Early Bird Pricing by May 20th and recognize savings of $400. Additional savings when you bring the team*
Join your peers October 17-21, 2011 at the Hilton New York for Predictive Analytics World, the business event for predictive analytics professionals, managers and commercial practitioners, covering today’s commercial deployment of predictive analytics, across industries and across software vendors. |
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| RAVE REVIEWS:“I came to PAW because it provides case studies relevant to my industry. It has lived up to the expectation and I think it’s the best analytics conference I’ve ever attended!“
Shaohua Zhang, Senior Data Mining Analyst
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T-Mobile PAW NYC’s agenda covers black box trading, churn modeling, crowdsourcing, demand forecasting, ensemble models, fraud detection, healthcare, insurance applications, law enforcement, litigation, market mix modeling, mobile analytics, online marketing, risk management, social data, supply chain management, targeting direct marketing, uplift modeling (net lift), and other innovative applications that benefit organizations in new and creative ways. Take advantage of Super Early Bird Pricing and realize Note: Each additional attendee from the same company registered at the same time receives an extra $200 off the Conference Pass.
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Related articles
- Predictive Analytics World Conference – New York City and London, UK (decisionstats.com)
DECISION STATS 